Kate Beaton's Ducks recounts life in the Alberta oil sands on Canada Reads
Nikky Manfredi | CBC Books | Posted: March 22, 2023 8:01 PM | Last Updated: March 22, 2023
Jeopardy! super-champion Mattea Roach is championing Ducks on March 27-30
Home or opportunity: that is the choice Kate Beaton says people in Atlantic Canada are taught to make growing up. Stay in community and struggle or leave everything you know behind to find stable work.
In Ducks, the cartoonist explores the impacts of that choice on her life.
Ducks is an autobiographical graphic novel that recounts Beaton's time working in the Alberta oil sands between 2005 and 2008. With the goal of paying off her student loans, Beaton leaves her tight-knit seaside Nova Scotia community and heads west, where she encounters harsh realities, including the everyday trauma that no one discusses.
Beaton launched her career by publishing the comic strip Hark! A Vagrant online. The sassy historical webcomic gained a following of 500,000 monthly visitors and was eventually turned into a bestselling book.
Her success continued with the book Step Aside, Pops! and two children's books, King Baby and The Princess and the Pony.
In 2022, Ducks was named one of CBC Books' top Canadian comics and was also one of two Canadian books on Barack Obama's list of favourite books of 2022.
Now, the graphic memoir is set to be championed by Jeopardy! super-champion Mattea Roach on Canada Reads 2023.
The great Canadian book debate will take place on March 27-30. The debates will be hosted by Ali Hassan and will be broadcast on CBC Radio One, CBC TV, CBC Gem and on CBC Books.
Go to 'money jail'
"Growing up in Cape Breton, we had lived through so much economic collapse. In this working class environment, the message is that any job is a good job," Beaton said to Shelagh Rogers in an interview on The Next Chapter.
In 2005, at age 21, Beaton headed to the Alberta oil sands in the midst of financial scarcity in Cape Breton and an economic boom out west.
Going out there, I knew that I wasn't going to have a good time. I knew I wasn't gonna like it, but I knew that I should be grateful for the job I was going to get. - Kate Beaton
Having just completed her arts degree, the cartoonist did not practice a trade so her uncle suggested she work in the tool crib. The tool crib supplies the tradespeople on-site with the tools they need to complete their work.
"Going out there, I knew that I wasn't going to have a good time. I knew I wasn't gonna like it, but I knew that I should be grateful for the job I was going to get. The fact that somebody was going to hire me and give me money was the good thing. Back home, they were calling it things like 'money jail,'" Beaton told The Next Chapter.
Beaton describes leaving home for work as a rite of passage in Atlantic Canada. Early on in the book, the protagonist, a younger version of the author, says, "the only message we got about a better future was that we had to leave home to have one."
The work is deeply personal. On the first page, Beaton breaks the fourth wall by having her younger self, who is drawn standing in bare, grey space, look down at her body and introduce herself to readers: "This is me at twenty-one. I'm much older now and three-dimensional."
Even at its most intimate, Beaton intended for Ducks to reflect the story of her wider Cape Breton community. In this way, the memoir is also a tribute.
"When people from home enjoy the book — that makes me feel the most gratified," Beaton said in an interview with Tom Power on Q.
Living in the camps
The book opens on an illustrated map of Canada and then, turning the page, Beaton narrows in on Alberta. A single dot marks Syncrude, an oil sands plant that Beaton described to Rogers as "something out of science fiction."
"One time they brought the biggest crane in the world. You're talking about the biggest machines of your life and then the Northern Lights show up, above everything. The scale of things is unbelievable," Beaton recalled.
Entering the oil sands reads like entering an alternate universe. The camps, where workers live, have a similar feel. Beaton told Rogers the camps are a coveted option among workers because housing is provided, but, cut off from society, they are also rife with substance abuse, mental health issues and alienation.
The author describes a heavily male-dominated environment of up to 2,500 people with few women, queer people or people of colour.
"I very much lost myself the first time that I was in those camp environments. There are so many different shades of the way that people treat you," Beaton explained to Rogers.
"If you don't know how to handle it, if you've never encountered it before, you tend to just close in on yourself and absorb it. And most of the way the people talk to you is not worth responding to."
In the camps, misogyny is rampant.
"You become unaware of the danger around you because it's so casual. They don't even see you as a real person anymore," Beaton said.
You become unaware of the danger around you because it's so casual. They don't even see you as a real person anymore. - Kate Beaton
In her interview with The Next Chapter, the author noted that if you're not living in that environment, it's difficult to understand how these situations play out. Ducks became her chance to try.
"It's too easy to dismiss the whole thing as inhuman. But that's not how human society works either," Beaton said.
"A lot of people think that if they had to come here, that they wouldn't behave the same way, and they would because that's what the place does to you. That is what the camps do."
Without justifying what she describes as "unforgivable" behaviour, Beaton explained that people are "re-socialized" within these work environments.
"I've seen people come and change. It's not that bad men come to the camps; it's that people come to the camps. And either they are able to handle it, or they can't — and it's heartbreaking," Beaton told The Next Chapter.
LISTEN | Kate Beaton spoke to Shelagh Rogers about working in the Alberta oil sands and writing Ducks:
Cape Breton on Canada Reads
Reflecting on the response to her memoir since its release, Beaton told Tom Power on Q: "There has been a lot of support since the book came out, since it's my autobiography. But I am also representing where I am from. So I always hoped that I would do a good job of that, that I would represent my community and where I am from in an honest way and a way that will make people feel seen and heard."
Fellow Nova Scotian, Mattea Roach, became one of Beaton's biggest supporters when they chose to champion the graphic memoir on Canada Reads.
Roach is the most successful Canadian competitor in Jeopardy! history. In the spring of 2022, they won a record-setting 23 games. They appeared in the 2022 edition of Jeopardy!'s tournament of champions and will star in the Jeopardy! Masters spin-off.
They are also a writer and podcast host. They are originally from Halifax, but currently live in Toronto.
Roach told Q that Beaton's autobiography should win Canada Reads because "this book is a window into so many critical conversations about the environment, about Indigenous land rights, about the student debt crisis and about gender relations. So there is an angle for every person to have their perspective shifted in some way."
This book is a window into so many critical conversations about the environment, about Indigenous land rights, about the student debt crisis and about gender relations. - Mattea Roach
Will Roach be able to shift the perspectives of the other four contenders into voting for Ducks? Tune in March 27-30 to find out.
Beaton's and Roach's comments have been edited for length and clarity.