Ducks

Two Years in the Oil Sands

by Kate Beaton

Graphic novel, 448 pages

Published Sept. 23, 2022 by Drawn & Quarterly.

ISBN:: 978-1-77046-289-2

(4 reviews)

Before there was Kate Beaton, New York Times bestselling cartoonist of Hark! A Vagrant, there was Katie Beaton of the Cape Breton Beatons, specifically Mabou, a tight-knit seaside community where the lobster is as abundant as beaches, fiddles, and Gaelic folk songs. With the singular goal of paying off her student loans, Katie heads out west to take advantage of Alberta’s oil rush—part of the long tradition of East Coasters who seek gainful employment elsewhere when they can’t find it in the homeland they love so much. Katie encounters the harsh reality of life in the oil sands, where trauma is an everyday occurrence yet is never discussed.

Beaton’s natural cartooning prowess is on full display as she draws colossal machinery and mammoth vehicles set against a sublime Albertan backdrop of wildlife, northern lights, and boreal forest. Her first full length graphic narrative, Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands is an untold story of Canada: a country that prides itself on its egalitarian ethos and natural beauty while simultaneously exploiting both the riches of its land and the humanity of its people.

[from drawnandquarterly.com/books/ducks/ ]

4 editions

Señó Moshuelo reviewed Patos: Dos años en las arenas petrolíferas by Kate Beaton

Apariencia sencilla, vida que se despliega

4 stars

Sorprendido para bien por esta novela gráfica que se va desplegando poco a poco. Que comienza con ciertos aires de inocencia demasiado 'sospechosa' y naíf, pero que enseguida vemos que se dirige hacia otra cosa, que se abre hacia temas variados y muy humanos. Apuesta la historia por desplegar sin manierismos temas variados como la ecología, el feminismo, la violencia sexual, la moral condicionada por el espacio físico, el capitalismo haciendo estragos en las gentes y los territorios... He incluido esta lectura en la lista de #lecturascasaarbol porque va de cómo el paisaje y las condiciones físicas en las que se viven condicionan las acciones y los pensamientos, también el sentir, de las gentes. Porque vemos como la ambición de una corporación que se lava las manos hace que no importe más que el dinero, que olvidemos la vida en sus variadas dimensiones, que existir no es trabajar ni todo …

loppear reviewed Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands by Kate Beaton

looking back at what we laugh away to get through

4 stars

How can men be so crass, so misogynistic, so violent, when transplanted to the extreme environs of capitalist extraction far from anyplace recognizable as home? Documentary reflection after anguished disillusion and mistreatment, drolly told.

Sarah reviewed Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands by Kate Beaton

a world of violations

5 stars

“Enjoy” isn’t quite the right word for a read that’s about something as nuanced and anguished as this is, but it’s also apt. I lingered over it and zoomed through it. It’s generous and devastating, sympathetic to the awful positions poor people find themselves in to get by and to the ways it warps who they are, and devastating in how it depicts the violence directed at everyone—women and the land, especially, but also the men who are used up without regard to turn profits for the company.

el dang reviewed Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands by Kate Beaton

A deeply human look at a thoroughly dehumanising place

5 stars

This is a powerful memoir which has a lot to say about how we (particularly Canada as a resource extraction colony, but also a broader "we") treat the people whose physical labour runs parts of the economy we'd rather not think about. The experience turned out predictably badly for Beaton, but in looking back she maintained empathy for the people involved, keeping a clear on focus on what the context of oil sands work camps does to people.