Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands

Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands

By Kate Beaton
Drawn and Quarterly, 2022. 430 pages. Graphic Novels

Before there was Kate Beaton, 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. With the singular goal of paying off her student loans, Katie 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. Katie encounters the harsh reality of life in the oil sands, where trauma is an everyday occurrence yet is never discussed.

This is a fascinating illustrated memoir that takes a sharp look into a slice of Kate Beaton's life.  I think that everyone can think of a time in their life that they sacrificed one thing for another, out of necessity or not, but maybe not on the level that Kate felt compelled to in order to crawl out from under the schooling debt that she had accumulated after college.  Enter the Oil Sands, where the isolation wreaks havoc on it's occupants both physically and mentally, and being a girl is a rarity that the many male occupants take startling note of.  Trigger warning for rape, Kate handles its' depiction uniquely and portrays the gravitas of the situation without being graphic.   

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RBL