Ducks

Two Years in the Oil Sands

448 pages

English language

Published Dec. 25, 2022

ISBN:
978-1-77046-289-2
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5 stars (8 reviews)

Before there was Kate Beaton, New York Times bestselling cartoonist of Hark A Vagrant fame, there was Katie Beaton of the Cape Breton Beatons, specifically Mabou, a tight-knit seaside community where the lobster is as abundant as beaches, fiddles, and Gaelic folk songs. After university, Beaton heads out west to take advantage of Alberta’s oil rush, part of the long tradition of East Coasters who seek gainful employment elsewhere when they can't find it in the homeland they love so much. With the singular goal of paying off her student loans, what the journey will actually cost Beaton will be far more than she anticipates.

Arriving in Fort McMurray, Beaton finds work in the lucrative camps owned and operated by the world’s largest oil companies. Being one of the few women among thousands of men, the culture shock is palpable. It does not hit home until she moves to a …

4 editions

Review of 'Ducks' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

Really powerful book about being a woman in the oil sands of Alberta. I couldn't do it. Kate's pretty clear this is her experience and not "everyone's experience" but it looks pretty intense for everyone isolated from the rest of the world (at least back in 2006) and then particularly unpleasant for women through either microaggressions or outright sexual violence.

A deeply human look at a thoroughly dehumanising place

5 stars

This is a powerful memoir which has a lot to say about how we (particularly Canada as a resource extraction colony, but also a broader "we") treat the people whose physical labour runs parts of the economy we'd rather not think about. The experience turned out predictably badly for Beaton, but in looking back she maintained empathy for the people involved, keeping a clear on focus on what the context of oil sands work camps does to people.