On the Coffee Table: Kate Beaton

Title: Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands

Writer and Artist: Kate Beaton

via Amazon

Trigger warning: sexual violence

Comic artist Kate Beaton hails from Cape Breton in Nova Scotia, a gloriously beautiful part of the world but evidently a difficult job economy.  After she graduated from university, she did what a lot of Maritime province young people do: she left for a better opportunity elsewhere so she could pay off her student debts.  She landed in the oil sands of Alberta, a remote society where men outnumber women 50-1.  Not exactly ideal but the pay is good.  Her story also includes a year spent in Victoria working at a museum but the oil sands experience is the focus.

Rather predictably, by her own admission, Beaton and the few other women at each camp become targets of attention, not all of it exactly friendly or welcome.  She acclimates over time, eventually feeling more like "one of the b'ys" but she never loses the sense of otherness and vulnerability.  During her tenure - and mostly towards the end - she struggles with the impact of the oil industry on both the environment and the local indigenous populations.  

She's raped twice.  As a reader, you see it coming and you pray it doesn't.  She offers no graphic details about the incidents themselves but spares nothing in describing the long-term emotional impact for her.  In her afterword, Beaton reflects on the unhealthy working conditions for the men in such a high-stress, high-danger, isolated environment.  She stops short of forgiving her attackers, instead condemning the situation that enabled them - or as she describes it, created them.

The titular "ducks" have double meaning.  There are literal ducks: the flock of ducks that made world headlines when they landed in the oil sands, got covered in oil and died.  Duckies is also one of the more endearing euphemisms the male workers use to refer to the few women in their midst.

I am grateful for the new perspective on the Maritimes, even though the vast majority of the book is set in the Canadian west.  We've spent two amazing family vacations in the Maritime provinces, absolutely falling in love with that region: see here and here.  It's important to remember people actually live in such beautiful places and day-to-day living is not always so pretty.  

Overall, I'd say Ducks is good, not great.  I'm glad to have read it.