Review of Ducks by Kate Beaton
Drawn & Quarterly, 2022
Kate Beaton’s new graphic memoir tells the story of her two years working on the oil sands in Alberta, Canada. While Beaton tells and draws the story in a linear, straight-forward fashion, her story is one of dislocation, both literally and figuratively. She has to relocate from a home she loves to a job she doesn’t, but she also has to live in a place that is even more patriarchal than the rest of Canada, all because of economic and class issues that lead people to leave Cape Breton.
Beaton goes to Alberta in order to pay off the student loans she accrued earning an art degree. While most of the people there don’t have college degrees, they’ve come there for much the same reason: to make more money or to find a job at all. She continually meets men who wish they could be with their families or living in their hometown, but there aren’t jobs there any more. When some of the younger men talk about spending money on motorcycles, Ambrose—one of the men who have been there longer—reminds them that they’re only “digging a hole.” When one of them retorts that the hole is “full of oil for a hundred more years,” implying that they’ll also have money, he responds, “The grand banks were full too” (114). Ambrose still sees himself as a fisherman, but he can’t make a living at that work any longer.
Drawn & Quarterly, 2022
Kate Beaton’s new graphic memoir tells the story of her two years working on the oil sands in Alberta, Canada. While Beaton tells and draws the story in a linear, straight-forward fashion, her story is one of dislocation, both literally and figuratively. She has to relocate from a home she loves to a job she doesn’t, but she also has to live in a place that is even more patriarchal than the rest of Canada, all because of economic and class issues that lead people to leave Cape Breton.
Beaton goes to Alberta in order to pay off the student loans she accrued earning an art degree. While most of the people there don’t have college degrees, they’ve come there for much the same reason: to make more money or to find a job at all. She continually meets men who wish they could be with their families or living in their hometown, but there aren’t jobs there any more. When some of the younger men talk about spending money on motorcycles, Ambrose—one of the men who have been there longer—reminds them that they’re only “digging a hole.” When one of them retorts that the hole is “full of oil for a hundred more years,” implying that they’ll also have money, he responds, “The grand banks were full too” (114). Ambrose still sees himself as a fisherman, but he can’t make a living at that work any longer.