She puts everything, good and bad, into the book: moments of connection with men from the eastern provinces, bleak humor, environmental destruction, stark natural beauty, her own feelings of complicity and homesickness, and the oil companies’ blatant disregard for the Indigenous communities in which they operate. She illuminates the larger contexts of work camps, including labor exploitation and corporate greed, toxic masculinity and a lack of mental health resources.

In scene after scene, she depicts men laughing over sexist jokes and demeaning the women they work with, and bosses dismissing her concerns.Īnd yet, without once making excuses for any of this behavior, Beaton honors the humanity of the oil workers. She’s one of only a few women in an industry dominated by men, and misogyny, sexual harassment and sexual violence occur nearly every day.

Over the next several years, she works as a warehouse attendant in the town of Fort McMurray, as well as at various temporary work camps owned by several oil companies.īeaton recounts her experiences-often harrowing, sometimes poignant-with dazzling clarity. In 2005, 21-year-old Beaton’s goal is to pay off the student loans for her arts degree, so she leaves her beloved home on Cape Breton, a small island off the coast of Nova Scotia, for a job in oil mining. With strong prose and striking art, she captures the complexities of a place often defined by stark binaries: the Alberta oil sands, one of the world’s largest deposits of crude oil. Comics artist Kate Beaton, creator of the award-winning satirical webcomic “Hark! A Vagrant,” demonstrates her remarkable range and storytelling prowess with her debut graphic memoir, Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands.

Kate beaton books