It’s not easy becoming an executive chef. Graduating from cooking school is barely the first step; after that is a slogging apprenticeship—years of intense 18-hour shifts, cooking over hot stoves, chopping miles of vegetables and meats, lifting heavy stockpots and meat pans while ignoring daily blisters, burns and cuts. This, in an environment where foul language and emotional abuse are still the norm, where senior chefs often behave like despotic army sergeants from a Stanley Kubrick war epic.

For Heather Gould-Hawke, there’s a better comparison: “A lot of people are horrified by what they see when they watch Hell’s Kitchen and Gordon Ramsay, but it’s not far from the truth. Those things do happen in the kitchen.”

Admittedly, Gould-Hawke has never worked for anyone quite as tyrannical as the famously choleric Chef Ramsay from the Food Network TV show. However, the 41-year-old female cook, who last March became executive chef of the Newport Grill on Lake Bonavista, has seen her share of tough kitchens. Over the 15 years since she graduated from culinary school, she’s been dressed down and verbally demeaned in front of staff more times than she cares to remember. She’s faced hostility and flare-ups—she’s even had pots and pans thrown at her in anger. And in an arena where no consideration is given for emotion or weakness, she’s had to constantly prove herself with the boys.

“That meant if they could pick up a 50-pound box of potatoes, I had to pick up a 50-pound box of potatoes,” she remarks. “If I cut myself, it was butterfly stitch, bandage it up, put a glove on my hand and get back in the thick of things.” In the kitchen, notes Gould-Hawke, “There’s no whining, no snivelling. Definitely no crying.”

Gould-Hawke is attractive, polite and friendly. Engage her in a conversation about food, her four kids or sailing on the ocean, and you’ll see her eyes light up with a smile. But there’s an iron set to her shoulders, and a kind of coiled energy in her gaze that promises: here sits someone not easily daunted.

“I’m a fighter,” says Gould-Hawke, “If I was told I couldn’t do something, my mindset was, yeah I can, and you’re not going to stop me.” It is this feisty intransigence, she adds, that has allowed her to succeed in a profession where few women make it to the top echelons.

“[The chef profession] is dominated by men. You’ve got to be a strong individual and take a lot of crap to come out ahead,” points out Gould-Hawke.

Image © Blair Hill

There’s proof in the numbers. Though typically more than one third of the 200 students in the professional cook training program at SAIT here in Calgary are women, in 2006, only eight moved on to become registered apprentice cooks. And for all the many major restaurants in the city, you can count the number of female executive chefs in Calgary using the fingers of one hand.

Some of this is a matter of choice: women opting not to pursue such a high-pressure trade. But according to Gould-Hawke, the challenges go beyond the physical and emotional demands of the profession—and into a entrenched culture of paternalism that deliberately excludes female participation. More than once, she says senior chefs tried to push her into leaving the kitchen mainstream and toward areas like cold prep, desserts and baking—widely recognized ghettos for talented female cooks. Plus, in a profession where learning new recipes and skills are fundamental to one’s progression, Gould-Hawke often found herself deliberately excluded when a chef was demonstrating a new cooking technique or needed a volunteer to prepare a sauce or slice up a side of beef. So she fought back. She pushed for the same opportunities, pestering her superiors till they finally gave in.

“I wasn’t very well liked in a lot of places that I’ve worked, because I didn’t stand back and quietly just do as I was told,” says Gould-Hawke. “A lot of times I got yelled at for asking too many questions. But I wouldn’t have gotten this far if I hadn’t done that.”

That said, she does admit that along the way she’s had some great mentors: “There are a core group of people that believed in me and made sure I did learn.”

One of those mentors was Blake Chapman. A local chef with 40 years experience (who was recently honoured as Chef of the Year by the Canadian Culinary Federation), Chapman has observed much of what he calls the “old-guard European school” attitudes that have historically discouraged women in the profession. But when he saw Gould-Hawke’s “passion and dedication,” he had no qualms about hiring his only female applicant on as sous chef (second-in-command) when he was in charge at the Chestermere Landing Restaurant two years ago.

“She’s very self-confident,” notes Chapman. “A lot of times the men didn’t like having a girl in charge and they’d try to bully her around. But Heather is like a pit bull with a stick—she will not be pushed around. That’s what’s enabled her to become successful in this industry.”

Another mentor and friend, restaurateur Heather Chell hired Gould-Hawke on at Avenue Diner three years ago because of her natural ability and a passion for cooking. Plus, Chell notes, having a “calm and level-headed” female chef like Gould-Hawke was advantageous in balancing out the kind of runaway machismo that can happen within an all-male cooking staff.

Gould-Hawke attributes her strength and perseverance to a “tomboy” childhood in rural Vancouver Island, an upbringing that included daily chores on the family hobby farm, and where playtime meant dirt bike riding, climbing trees and playing in the swamp. “I wasn’t the kind of girl that played dress up,” she admits. She also gives credit to her self-employed father. “He was a very strong individual. He made sure his little girl could stand on her feet and fend for herself.”

Nowadays, Gould-Hawke is enjoying her time as exec chef at the Newport Grill. She says she runs a tight ship, but, remembering her own experiences, avoids yelling as much as possible, instead trying to remain firm yet appreciative with her staff. And when time and opportunity arises, Gould-Hawke is a mentor to young female chefs.

“I have been told by other young female chefs that they do admire what I’ve achieved and it gives them hope that they can achieve it too. That’s when I tell them that they are going to have to develop a thick skin, and want it bad enough that they’re not going to let anybody stand in their way.” It’s fair advice—the fire-tested wisdom of someone who has survived and surpassed some of real life’s Hell’s kitchens.