In her latest book, she writes about her time with some of the world’s largest oil companies. The memoir is a departure for Beaton, the celebrated cartoonist known for the whip-smart humour of her series Hark! A Vagrant, which she began to draw during her off-hours in the province. In Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands, Beaton includes these tragedies to highlight an often-ignored part of Alberta’s oil industry: the lived experiences of its workers. I could be him,” she tells a co-worker while poring over a CBC article. She immediately knows the papers are wrong: the man was from Cape Breton Island, as is she. News reports misidentify him as a “Calgary man,” but Beaton recognizes his name as one from down home.
Not long after the safety meeting, another man dies while driving on a notoriously dangerous stretch of highway linking the oil sands north of Fort McMurray. The birds certainly garner more attention from the public: the New York Times covers the story, and by the end of that year, more than a thousand ducks perish at the nearby pond. The staff are more preoccupied with a group of ducks that got stuck in nearby tailings ponds-the toxic sludge that results from the oil-extraction process-and the steps they need to take to avoid it happening at their facility. But the death feels like a footnote at the gathering, and despite a few murmurs, it is shrugged off by those present. The worker suffered a heart attack and threw himself out of a crane to avoid accidentally landing on the controls and hurting those around it. Then, the staff learn that one of their peers has died. He rattles off a warning about appropriate PPE. “Okay boys-couple notices here,” the man leading the meeting says.
She is far from home, as are most of her co-workers people have come to the mines from across Canada and beyond its borders. It’s April 2008, and Beaton has been working in the Alberta oil sands for over a year.
O ne of the most memorable scenes from Kate Beaton’s new graphic memoir happens at a routine safety meeting.
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