Graphic Novel Recommendation: Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands

Posted On November 9, 2024

Hi Readers! Happy November to all of you! After having a bit of a slow reading year, I am again trying to include it consciously as part of my day. It’s always in small parts in the mornings after working out or at night after logging out at work. But, reading even those 10 to 15 pages makes me happy. It feels like I’m taking back control and determinedly investing time in what I want to do and what makes me me. So, yeah, I recently read a graphic novel, which I have been wanting read for quite some time, and I really liked it!

~~GOODREADS DESCRIPTION~~

Celebrated cartoonist Kate Beaton vividly presents the untold story of Canada.

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.

~~THOUGHTS~~

When I heard about the title ‘Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands’, I thought it was a nonfiction science book talking about the adverse effects of oil sands in Canada. But, it actually turned out to be something quite different. This is actually an autobiographical take of the author’s two years of life spent at the oil sands where she works to pay off her student loans but ends up paying for a lot more.

I found this book to be extremely enlightening, as I had never read anything earlier about the oil sands or even any books set in Canada. I think what’s most glaring throughout the novel is sexism. Kate Beaton along with very few other women worked in a place that was largely male dominated with a 50:1 ratio of men to women. I’d say that even prisons were better than the work conditions that the author described in the book. It’s a whole spectrum of violence against women starting with sly remarks about women’s bodies, or calling them, “Hey beautiful”, or how they need to learn to take a joke or to grow a thicker skin leading up to emotional abuse, everyday harassment and sexual assault. If they complain about these instances, they are told that it’s a man’s world and they need to work as a team. And, when they don’t complain, they are told that they should have. If you get someone fired, no one would even talk to you. It’s like you cannot win.

At several times, she has written about how certain things would never happen in her normal life. This just goes to show that when there is a majority of men, their behaviour towards women is almost animalistic and in a normal world they would not behave this way. And yet, we see so many instances involving sexual and emotional assault happening in our normal world.

On a deeper level, men act the way they do in these oil sands is because of unhealthy coping mechanisms because of insufficient mental health resources. And, these exist because no one thinks about how men cope with loneliness, homesickness and boredom. So, instead of working on their own mental and emotional health, they pick on women. In the normal world, they are somebody’s brother, husband, father or son, but here they forget all of it like it’s a different world and their brother/husband/father/son role doesn’t exist. Men’s mental health affects men, but it just as much affects women.

With themes of women in men-dominated workplace, sexism and mental health, Ducks is an excellent autobiographical graphic novel, and I think everyone should read it.

~~TO READ OR NOT TO READ~~

If you like reading graphic novels, I think this one should definitely be on your radar. If you like memoirs and autobiographies, then read this one. If you like books with social commentary, this one is as good as it gets. There are a lot of reasons to read this one, and can’t really think of any reason to not read it, so there you have it! I have rated Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands by Kate Beaton at 4/5 stars!

Until next time,