Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands: One of Barack Obama’s Favourite Books of 2022

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Canada Reads winner Kate Beaton wins 2023 Eisner Awards for best writer/artist and best graphic memoir". CBC. 2023-07-25 . Retrieved 2023-07-26. I was hesitant to read this graphic novel thinking it might have a lot of horrible things happening to animals in the oil sands. As soon as I heard Kate Beaton was working on a memoir detailing her time in Northern Alberta, I was counting down the days until I could read it. While I do not know Kate personally, we’re the same age, we are both from Cape Breton and we were both in Fort McMurray around the same time (I arrived in 2007 and left in 2009). There is a lot of history to try to understand….(Indigenous rights, misogyny, environmental issues, capitalism, the complexity of real people)….

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a b c Armitstead, Claire (2022-09-15). " 'We had to leave home for a better future': Kate Beaton on the brutal, drug-filled reality of life in an oil camp". the Guardian . Retrieved 2022-11-07. This was a completely unique graphic novel for me—as strong in its narrative as it is in its artwork.

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Well, I had no difficultly, whatsoever, in believing what went on in these locations, particularly because I've heard almost everything that was said to Kate Beaton or in front of Kate Beaton at some point, or another, in my own lifetime.

Ducks - Penguin Books UK

Though the book is entirely from Beaton's perspective, there is significant subtext throughout, [4] and many moments in the story reflect larger movements in Canada around the environment, politics, culture, and economics surrounding the oil sands. [6] Beaton is a migrant worker; growing up in an economically depressed part of Canada, she understood that she would have to leave home to make money and repay her student debt. [2] She and many other workers are forced to take on difficult and undesirable jobs, and there are undertones of class resentment towards those who chastise oil sands workers while their economic standing shields them from making such a difficult compromise. [4] [2] Most of the other workers are men, outnumbering women 50-to-1. [7] Beaton is subjected to frequent sexual harassment, but because of her need to pay off her debt, she does not report others and continues to work. [4] [8] Best Books 2022: Publishers Weekly Publishers Weekly". Publishers Weekly . Retrieved 24 October 2022.I'm a Careful Person': An Interview with Kate Beaton - The Comics Journal". www.tcj.com. 4 November 2015 . Retrieved 10 February 2018. Sadly, I don't know a single woman currently over the age of 25 who could read this graphic novel without shaking her head in sadness or groaning with a great sense of solidarity and understanding of the circumstances described here. We all know these are bad times. Sometimes the forces buffeting the world–capitalism, globalism, white supremacy–seem like faceless unstoppable powers; other times the faces inflicting monstrous violence are all too human. They are the faces of politicians and CEOs, but also uncles and neighbors. It often feels like there are only two options: to tolerate the intolerable, or to be overwhelmed by anger and hate. Either option I move toward, something precious inside me gets lost. Everything's ruined, our lives around our lands are ruined, our water, the air, everything.Their almighty dollar comes first. That's pretty sad. You can't eat money.

Kate Beaton - Wikipedia Kate Beaton - Wikipedia

I need to tell you this--there is no knowing Cape Breton without knowing how deeply ingrained two diametrically opposed experiences are: A deep love for home, and the knowledge of how frequently we have to leave it to find work somewhere else.’ The highway, which links the Edmonton area to the oil sands plants north of Fort McMurray, has become infamous because of the high number of injuries and deaths on the narrow but busy roadway”. To get Kate Beaton’s impressions on it as a woman is just priceless. That she would softly contrast her time in the workcamps with her regular life as an East Coaster added so much warmth to this book, for me. That she would avoid magnifying drama to focus instead on how she felt, one wound after the other, letting the realizations sink in, won me over, as well. The author and illustrator, Kate Beaton, who hails from Nova Scotia, worked for two years in the Northern Alberta oil sands to pay off her student loans from college. While there, she worked in a remote setting, “where men outnumber[ed] women by as much as fifty to one.” Her central thesis is that the oil business is damaging to almost everyone involved. Particularly the workers who travel from all over Canada (and the world) to work in these remote locations in harsh conditions, all because the pay’s so good and there aren’t any lucrative jobs anywhere else. What’s not considered is the psychological impact of being separated from civilisation and loved ones, leading to extensive substance abuse, loneliness, mental health problems, and broken homes.

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Beaton's first children's book, The Princess and the Pony, was released in 2015. [33] In 2016, she published the picture book King Baby. NINTH ANNUAL CHILDREN'S CHOICE BOOK AWARDS WINNERS ANNOUNCED DURING THE 97TH ANNUAL CHILDREN'S BOOK WEEK". The Children’s Book Council . Retrieved 25 April 2021.

Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands review: Kate Beaton’s Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands review: Kate Beaton’s

Not an excuse, no. But it shows that people are shaped by their environment and, in a less than stellar one, might act in ways they normally wouldn't. She didn't demonize all men because of her experience there but at the same time she showed how women suffer in toxic male environments - and are expected to just "deal with it" and not complain. Hunt, Stephen (2022-12-23). "Obama holiday reading list includes Kate Beaton graphic novel about Alberta oil sands". CTV News . Retrieved 2022-12-27. She watches a TV broadcast featuring a local Cree elder where the people suffer from a high cancer rate. " Everything is ruined; our lives around our lands are ruined, our water, air, everything. At the cost of our lives as long as they get their money. They don't care how many they kill." Grossman, Lev (7 December 2011). "7. Hark! A Vagrant by Kate Beaton". Time. Archived from the original on 7 January 2012. As one of a handful of women in a camp full of men, she was under constant threat of sexual assault. She’s keen not to give away the details. “I’ve always worried, putting this book out, that this would be what people took away from it the most, and then what it would be reduced to, because that’s what happens to women’s stories. Only then do they become ‘great,’” she says. “But I also hope to build empathy and fear; I want them to worry about my character being in a dangerous place, and feel as scared for her as I felt at the time. If readers know, off the bat, what is going to happen, it robs it of that power.”

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Any person who thinks these scenarios that women have endured are “made-up” or embellished are either delusional or very sheltered. I was nothing in his life but a short release from the boredom and loneliness endemic in camp life, but he was a major trauma in mine.