448 pages
English language
Published Dec. 25, 2022
Before there was Kate Beaton, New York Times bestselling cartoonist of Hark A Vagrant fame, 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. After university, Beaton 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. With the singular goal of paying off her student loans, what the journey will actually cost Beaton will be far more than she anticipates.
Arriving in Fort McMurray, Beaton finds work in the lucrative camps owned and operated by the world’s largest oil companies. Being one of the few women among thousands of men, the culture shock is palpable. It does not hit home until she moves to a …
Before there was Kate Beaton, New York Times bestselling cartoonist of Hark A Vagrant fame, 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. After university, Beaton 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. With the singular goal of paying off her student loans, what the journey will actually cost Beaton will be far more than she anticipates.
Arriving in Fort McMurray, Beaton finds work in the lucrative camps owned and operated by the world’s largest oil companies. Being one of the few women among thousands of men, the culture shock is palpable. It does not hit home until she moves to a spartan, isolated worksite for higher pay. She encounters the harsh reality of life in the oil sands where trauma is an everyday occurrence yet never discussed. Her wounds may never heal.
Beaton’s natural cartooning prowess is on full display as she draws colossal machinery and mammoth vehicles set against a sublime Albertan backdrop of wildlife, Northern Lights, and Rocky Mountains. Her first full-length graphic narrative, Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands is an untold story of Canada: a country that prides itself on its egalitarian ethos and natural beauty while simultaneously exploiting both the riches of its land and the humanity of its people.
This was an incredible memoir about the grind of isolation and misogyny. I don't really want to talk too much about what happens but, like, there's a reason Carmen Machado is the first back-of-the-book blurb praising it.
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 …
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 …
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.
interessante la prospettiva sulla moralità che l'autrice ha all'interno del libro TW: violenza di genere
This story is not surprising, hopefully one day it will be. But the graphic novel format and the artwork grabbed my attention in a way I can't explain.
There are some heavy topics covered in this book. But I feel they are important to share out. Specially if you are a man, this point of view of a woman in a male-centric workplace makes you realize all the things that you may have missed. A must read for anyone who loves graphic novels
How can men be so crass, so misogynistic, so violent, when transplanted to the extreme environs of capitalist extraction far from anyplace recognizable as home? Documentary reflection after anguished disillusion and mistreatment, drolly told.
I've long been a fan of Kate Beaton's work (King Baby was one of my favorite books we read to my kid when he was a baby!), but I wasn't prepared for the emotional impact of Ducks. The wry humor in the slice of life portions were a great foundation for the deeper impacts of life at the camps, and Beaton imbues everyone with such humanity that I felt for everyone even though the impact of the work down at the sands is so horrific.
One thing I wish I had known before I had started so that I could be a bit more prepared: this book deals with rape.
What's really wonderful about this book is that Beaton never loses sight of the humanity of the people around her, no matter how many awful things someone does she can remember that they too are a complete complicated messy human.
This memoir was really quite harrowing. They are coy about it in the marketing, but it is largely dominated by the terrible misogyny and harassment Kate Beaton experienced in the extremely male dominated environment she worked in. It was a deeply affecting read, and while it was difficult at times, it gave a portrait of a place and time that was really impressive.
“Enjoy” isn’t quite the right word for a read that’s about something as nuanced and anguished as this is, but it’s also apt. I lingered over it and zoomed through it. It’s generous and devastating, sympathetic to the awful positions poor people find themselves in to get by and to the ways it warps who they are, and devastating in how it depicts the violence directed at everyone—women and the land, especially, but also the men who are used up without regard to turn profits for the company.
An all timer. So good. Will definitely read it again.
Beaton’s gritty graphic memoir about her experiences as a woman in a male-dominated industry and the crushing effects capitalism has on vulnerable people is effective and Eisner-worthy.
Es ist ungerecht, dass mir zu schlechten und mittelguten Büchern so viel einfällt und zu guten so wenig. Ich kann zu diesem hier nur sagen, dass mir alles darin unbekannt war und es mich nach dem Lesen noch lange beschäftigt hat.
Content warning CW: sexual violence
It's the feeling of dread that stayed with me the most after reading this book. There's the boredom of a monotonous job, the incessant background noise of a male-dominated working environment, the friction of having to interact with people who don't respect you, the alien, dehumanizing landscape that's your home now and that you can't easily escape from.
Kate Beaton lays it all out patiently, meticulously painting a picture of the two years that she worked in the oil sands of Alberta. Her style of writing and drawing are understated, but the trauma she goes through is unmistakable. She's scolded for being "out of it" at work the day after. She tries to confide in some male friends but is met with cold indifference. The loneliness of it all is suffocating.
Beaton explicitly spells out the thesis of her work: this story is not one of "men bad". Most of the men at her workplace never interact with her in any way. Some are shown to be genuinely good people, bringing her home-baked cookies on a lonely Christmas eve, or giving her a poster-sized print of a photo of the northern light. Some are nice enough in private but turn into cowards in a group. Some maintain a friendly face in a group but turn into creeps in private. It's about what a working culture like this does to people, both to the women and to the men. It's about the betrayal she feels from the men that seem familiar, some old enough to be her dad, some that talk in the same accent as herself, some that have families at home. And yet.
It's also about what this heavy industry does to the Indigenous people of Canada, and to the land that was stolen from them. The callous indifference they are treated with is strikingly similar to what Beaton herself goes through.
"Ducks" is not an easy read, but it's a good one.
