270:"may be the best book I have ever read about sexual harassment" and called it "abidingly humane". Despite being often gawked at and facing sexist comments and escalating unwanted sexual attention, Beaton maintains sympathy for many of the men who work with her who suffer from the loneliness, physical exhaustion and illness, and homesickness that come with their itinerant work. The harassment is persistent to the point that men try to enter her room, and it is a severe drain on her physical and mental state. When a journalist asks her about it, she becomes protective of the men, believing they have been broken by the environment and culture in which they have been immersed. The book portrays a dangerous type of masculinity that appears in the context of men who are bored, isolated, in a
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her student debt. 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. Most of the other workers are men, outnumbering women 50-to-1. 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.
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156:, she needs to work in order to pay off her student debt. Like many in Atlantic Canada, she is forced to seek work elsewhere; whereas previous generations would travel to work in fisheries, coal mines, or auto manufacturing plants, the mid-2000s oil boom led many Easterners to work in the oil industry. She initially works in a tool crib at
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The environment is a consistent theme in the memoir. Etelka
Lehoczky of NPR draws a parallel in the story between the harassment Beaton faces and the industrial degradation of the land. She cites a conversation with a taxi driver who takes Beaton to a site with many temporary workers and states, "You
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Many moments in the story reflect larger movements in Canada around the environment, politics, culture, and economics surrounding the oil sands. 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
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be careful, young girl. You live here, they don't. Do you know how people treat a place where they don't live?" Though Beaton considers the oil sands a temporary place to live, she realizes that the industry is displacing people of the nearby
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has been positively received for its use of the graphic novel medium, its nuanced portrayal of life in the oil sands, and its exploration of themes such as social class, capitalism, environmentalism, and sexual harassment.
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and destroying their land and drinking water. She grapples with the morality of working there knowing the damage it has wrought, but ultimately needs to repay her debts.
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Though Beaton empathizes with many of the workers and their economic plight, the labour force is overwhelmingly male, and she is subjected to
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praised her drawing, calling her use of space "exceptionally skillful" in understanding how much or how little detail to give to readers.
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in order to pay off her student loans. The book is named after a disaster in which hundreds of ducks died after landing in a toxic
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reviewer Nyala Ali cited Beaton's attention to scale as a way to portray smallness and vulnerability amid the grandeur of the
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376:"'We had to leave home for a better future': Kate Beaton on the brutal, drug-filled reality of life in an oil camp"
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589:"Canada Reads winner Kate Beaton wins 2023 Eisner Awards for best writer/artist and best graphic memoir"
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is a memoir of Beaton's experiences working in the oil fields in
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is drawn in monochrome grey, and unlike Beaton's previous works, its tone is melancholic. A
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426:"Obama holiday reading list includes Kate Beaton graphic novel about Alberta oil sands"
401:"Beaton's graphic novel memoir chronicles two tough years working in Alberta oil sands"
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or the enormity of the vast industrial works of the oil sands and vehicles such as
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and finds little sympathy. Fed up with her experience, she leaves to work in
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512:"With 'Ducks,' the creator of Hark! A Vagrant reveals her shadow side"
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and in various other camps taking on different roles. She meets other
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is an extension of a five-part webcomic Beaton initially posted to
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484:"Ducks by Kate Beaton review – bad boys from the blackstuff"
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in 2014. It is an account of her experience as a woman from
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16:2022 autobiographical comic by Kate Beaton
564:"Meet the Canada Reads 2023 contenders"
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452:Woodrow-Butcher, Andrew (2022-08-24).
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454:"Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands"
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574:2023-07-26
549:2022-11-07
521:2022-10-05
493:2022-10-05
463:2022-11-07
435:2022-12-27
410:2022-11-07
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355:2022-10-05
324:References
235:review by
232:New Yorker
46:Page count
649:3 January
166:Long Lake
109:in 2022,
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49:436 pages
674:catalog)
672:WorldCat
430:CTV News
162:Syncrude
516:NPR.org
172:, many
137:Summary
127:Alberta
69:Creator
299:Awards
115:Tumblr
97:is an
268:Ducks
227:Ducks
222:Ducks
142:Ducks
111:Ducks
651:2024
160:for
79:ISBN
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Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. Additional terms may apply.
