Teen cook finds employment at Disney World

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A former culinary arts student at NAIT will be leaving for Florida June 7, where he will be employed at Walt Disney World in Orlando. Nineteen-year-old Quenton Glabus, who completed a two-year program in cooking, took his first year in Lac La Biche and the other at NAIT.

"NAIT is a great school to attend. The instructors are just great," Glabus said.

Glabus is a member of the Frog Lake First Nation.

"Ever since I was in Grade 6 I was always fascinated by my Kookum and my other grandmother's and my mother's cooking," said Glabus. "My mother comes from a family of 12 kids and the thought of my grandmother putting out meals every day, three-course meals, is just phenomenal. I've been to feasts where the whole family was there. . . . The place was packed and the food was constantly coming. I've always been amazed how they could take something so simple as a chicken and turn it into this fancy, artistic dish. That is what fascinated me about cooking," he said.

Glabus' love for cooking began at an early age.

"I remember when I was six years old, the first thing I remember cooking was scrambled eggs. From there I started to cook grilled cheese sandwiches and on to rice, ribs just getting higher and higher up," said Glabus. "When I first took a food course in high school, actually a lot of my friends laughed at me. They would say 'guys should not be cooking; they should be taking welding or automotives and stuff like that.' To be honest, I know nothing about automotives. I took an automotive course and I barely passed . . . it showed that this was not my cup of tea. Cooking is," he said.

So how did he get this job?

"Actually, at NAIT the head of the culinary arts department, Ralph Walker, went to the States for a meeting of some sort and the people from Walt Disney World happened to be there. He got to talking with them, so they decided to come to NAIT to do some scouting. They came up in October and did a big presentation (and) interviews. So I thought,hey, this is a once in a lifetime sort of thing. I might as well jump on it. If I don't make it, at least I could say that I tried out for it. About four phone calls later they said that I was hired," he said.

What is Glabus looking forward to while in Florida?

"I'm looking forward to expanding my knowledge in the cooking industry. I want to expand my horizons. I want to learn so much more about cooking all the different styles. I hope to meet a wide variety of people while I'm there. I have a feeling that I'm going to. There will people from Japan and Sweden there. It sounds like it is going to be a lot of fun," he said.

Among the students and faculty, Glabus has been an inspiration at NAIT.

"I met Quenton in 1999," said Eva Stang, Aboriginal liaison co-ordinator for NAIT. "I see an extraordinary young man who is only 19 and he already knows at a very young age what he wants to do. I decided that he would be a good role model for our student role-model program," she said.

Quenton's mother Ruby Glabus says, "We've always told our kids not to get into drugs and alcohol and to make sure and focus on what they wanted to do in life.

"It might be difficult in school; there are up and downs in life, but we've told them to keep their head up high. It was a good Christmas present to the family because he found out a few weeks before Christmas that he was hired," she said.