Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands

Pursuing a humanities degree has left Kate saddled with a huge student debt and the only way she sees to pay it back is to go and work in the Alberta oil fields. Life in the camps is quite miserable: the same grind day in, day out, toxic dust and sludge that irritates the skin and kills ducks, an unsafe work environment with many work victims and, for Kate and the few women in the job, a daily experience of sexual harassment and, not infrequently, sexual violence. The drawings are simple, like a comic strip, and the narrative is very repetitive; intentionally, I think: every day is cold and filled with sexist comments. Something I enjoyed is how Kate is determined to not demonise the men around her, and tries to understand how they can be loving fathers to some distant daughters and absolute creeps to her. Loneliness and alienation are the answers she comes up with.

Something that I found maybe slightly problematic is her handling of indigenous people and their claims to the land that is being destroyed. She explains that, as a just-graduated twenty-something, she was barely aware of this issue, which is fair enough. And to be clear: I believe that we should always be curious and outraged when people are exploited and made to suffer. But the book was published a good 15 years after the end of the story, so possibly it's a shame she didn't wave this more into the stories.

I have read and enjoyed Beaton's other work, including Hark! A Vagrant and Step Aside Pops, both of which are whimsical and impish re-imagining of historical figures and events that I found both irreverent and delightful.

Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands, is something different entirely, an autobiographical telling of Beaton's time working for oil companies in Northern Alberta, and there is very little whimsy here. Graduating from college and having to pay a significant student loan, and facing a lack of jobs in her home province of Nova Scotia, Beaton takes a job in the oil sands, where pay is good, even if the work and conditions are rough. It's a bargain she reconsiders multiple times, particularly as she lives with daily sexual harassment or worse, the isolation of the camps, the physical toll and safety hazards of the work, and homesickness. She depicts her fellow workers in a candid and human way, as pawns of the system too, even when many of them treat her harshly or cruelly. And while I wouldn't call it a comedy, there is humor mixed in with the grind. The book felt honest and important, probably the most important book I've read this year so far.

Sorprendido para bien por esta novela gráfica que se va desplegando poco a poco. Que comienza con ciertos aires de inocencia demasiado 'sospechosa' y naíf, pero que enseguida vemos que se dirige hacia otra cosa, que se abre hacia temas variados y muy humanos. Apuesta la historia por desplegar sin manierismos temas variados como la ecología, el feminismo, la violencia sexual, la moral condicionada por el espacio físico, el capitalismo haciendo estragos en las gentes y los territorios... He incluido esta lectura en la lista de #lecturascasaarbol porque va de cómo el paisaje y las condiciones físicas en las que se viven condicionan las acciones y los pensamientos, también el sentir, de las gentes. Porque vemos como la ambición de una corporación que se lava las manos hace que no importe más que el dinero, que olvidemos la vida en sus variadas dimensiones, que existir no es trabajar ni todo se justifica por eso de ganarse la vida.