One of the most memorable scenes from Kate Beaton’s new graphic memoir happens at a routine safety meeting. It’s April 2008, and Beaton has been working in the Alberta oil sands for over a year. She is far from home, as are most of her co-workers; people have come to the mines from across Canada and beyond its borders.
“Okay boys—couple notices here,” the man leading the meeting says. He rattles off a warning about appropriate PPE. Then, the staff learn that one of their peers has died. The worker suffered a heart attack and threw himself out of a crane to avoid accidentally landing on the controls and hurting those around it. But the death feels like a footnote at the gathering, and despite a few murmurs, it is shrugged off by those present. The staff are more preoccupied with a group of ducks that got stuck in nearby tailings ponds—the toxic sludge that results from the oil-extraction process—and the steps they need to take to avoid it happening at their facility. The birds certainly garner more attention from the public: the New York Times covers the story, and by the end of that year, more than a thousand ducks perish at the nearby pond.
