ducks two years in the oil sands by kate beaton

Like in her previous works, Beaton’s talent for capturing the essence of a scenario or a conversation in a couple comic panels is finely tuned.

She starts in the “Tool Crib,” signing out adapters and wrenches to workers in the field, enduring a litany of sexist behaviour and invasive comments. Vagrant.” Her long-running webcomic and three book collections imagined the inner voices of famous women in contemporary vernacular their sardonic eyerolls often at the expense of the male doofuses favoured by western history books.įor those who associate Beaton with those internationally acclaimed comics or perhaps the cool parents who have cuddled up for storytime with her kids’ books, “King Baby” and “The Princess and the Pony” (now the animated Apple Plus series, “Pinecone & Pony”), “Ducks” might sound like a harsh jolt back to reality, but all the hallmarks of Beaton’s comic are here.ĭrawn in muted greys, “Ducks” follows Beaton from her decision to head west to her work over two years at various camps and sites. Well before it became trendy for TV series to give modern voices to historic figures like Russian empress Catherine the Great and Romantic poet Emily Dickinson, we had Beaton’s “ Hark! A.

But the pattern has repeated and repeated and I fell in step with it, without even thinking about it and without really questioning what would happen.” It might seem like it’s a singular story. “Out migration has been happening for work here, in Nova Scotia, in the Maritimes for over 100 years,” says Beaton, whose grandfather worked on the harvest trains, which during the early 20th Century would transport Eastern Canadians out west to harvest Prairie wheat by hand.

Published by her long-time press, Drawn & Quarterly, “Ducks” illustrates how Beaton followed in the steps of many trapped in a “have-not” tourism-focused economy that has suffered from decades of government neglect. In 2005, the 21-year-old recent arts grad from Mabou followed the path of “goin’ down the road,” well-trodden by generations of Cape Bretoners and other Atlantic Canadians, and took a job in the oilsands in Fort McMurray, hoping to pay off her student loans.

Ducks two years in the oil sands by kate beaton