“Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands”

Kate Beaton’s tale of her time working out west in the oil sands of Alberta was runner up for our Best Original Graphic Novel of 2022, and it’s easy to see why.  It’s a story that unpacks complicated socio-politics of the 21st century that are still part of our landscape today, along with one woman’s search for herself.

Cover by Kate Beaton

Written and illustrated by Kate Beaton

Before there was Kate Beaton, New York Times bestselling cartoonist of Hark! A Vagrant, there was Katie Beaton of the Cape Breton Beaton, 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.

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 boreal forest. 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.

In the year that Kate Beaton’s autobiography of her early adulthood takes place (2005), the musical Avenue Q was taking Broadway by storm, featuring the opening lyrics of “What do you do with a B.A. in English?”  No doubt that was a question Kate, recently with her B.A. from Mount Allison University, asks herself as she confronts the mountain that is student debt with the reality of finding meaningful work that uses that degree.  Facing a need to make money, Kate ships herself out west to Alberta, working in the oil sands and waitressing on the side, not rolling in the dough, but making enough to get by.

It’s not the life that her parents wanted for her.  After all, they sent her and her sisters to university so they can escape the menial and limited job opportunities that their Cape Breton community provides.

But it’s the life that Kate needs. Initially, it’s to pay the bills. But it also leads to an education in the ways of the world that four years working towards that B.A. didn’t necessarily provide: one in the world’s socio-economic complexities, one that helps Beaton find herself in those cold, vast Alberta days and nights.

All this sounds like the typical “privileged young adult finding themselves in menial labor” story trope. But there is a lot in “Ducks” that elevates this past that trope, and that’s thanks to Beaton’s art.

A graphic novel set in the prairies of western North America practically demands one and two page spreads to truly and properly capture this vast landscape. And there’s no shortage of that in this book that get that tone across, particularly in scenes where Beaton contemplates the Northern lights. But the majority of the book’s layout is multi panel grids, and these close cut squares add a level of intimacy to the story.  You feel right there with Beaton as she tackles sexual harassment and assault and attempts to understand the loneliness of her male coworkers while processing her own loneliness and realization of her privilege, long before that word became a polarized part of our daily vernacular.

Beaton also wisely eschews detail on her main characters, devoting that detail to background work. Her character artwork is recognizable and distinct for each (with helpful “who’s who” graphics at the start of each section), but remains deceptively simple and cartoonish.   That makes characters pop off the page, drawing your eye to them and their stories. And with that, “Ducks” becomes less a story about the oil sands and more of that timeless early adult coming of age story, but at the same time, never loses the uniqueness of its setting.

There’s also the choice of color, or rather lack thereof.  The entire book is processed in greyscale, the color of the oil that signs the paychecks of Beaton and her coworkers.  It’s also symbolism of the mental struggles and loneliness that everyone on those sands faces: men separated from their families for months and years at at time, Beaton as the sole woman in a man’s world.

And it’s that undercurrent of Beaton’s sexual harassment and sexual assault that fuels a majority of the socio-political content in this book. It also provides one of the more understated impactful artistic moments. Linework with a lighter hand, a more saturated greyscale, and sparsely drawn panels that play with perspective give you that sense of Beaton being taken out of her own body in that experience.   We do later see the actual act in a flashback she recounts to her older sister, one that perhaps wasn’t necessary since the absence in that moment earlier in the book says so much more.

“Ducks” also doesn’t shy away from the environmental damage the oil sands project in its back half, through commentary from a First Nations leader and the camp’s reaction to the revelation of the ducks that died at the sands.  These moments, along with discussions of economic classism, remain couched in Beaton’s ignorance of the larger issues: after all, she came to the camps to make money and pay of her student loan debt, and that can’t get in the way of that goal.  Even after she leaves camp for a year to work in Victoria, British Columbia at a museum, class differences remain in her face (or rather, hidden away from her face – Victoria prefers to hide its homeless problem with perfectly manicured streets).  Much like her time in the oil sands helped her to grow up from her sheltered experience and perhaps understand her own hometown and parents much better, the year off in Victoria opens her eyes to the world’s social injustices.  Reading this with a 2022 mindset, a more socially conscious mindset, makes these moments seem quaint by comparison. But as Beaton details in the afterword, they were necessary for her to evolve past the oil sands, a journey she still takes today.

There is a moment in “Ducks” where Beaton’s sister and friend join her for work at the oil sands, and their appearance, right down to wearing skirts, shakes her. It’s in that moment that she realizes just how much she’s changed since she left Cape Breton as a fresh faced university graduate.  And while unsaid, it’s also that moment where perhaps she realizes just how much she needed her years in the oil sands.  They didn’t just provide her with material for her webcomics (and eventually, this graphic novel). They gave her the fortitude to face whatever life throws at her, and an understanding of her place and responsibility in this world.