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.
At her second job in the area, this one at Long Lake, she talks to Doug about how everybody hates being there. He talks about how much worse he’s had it in other places. He has worked in “coal, fishing, steel…but that’s all gone isn’t it” (227). He’s not asking her a question because they both know the answer. The only hopeful moment Beaton has is when she’s back home, after having finally paid off her student loan debt. She meets a man who is saving land for his son who has gone west to work, as Beaton did, hoping he’ll be able to put a house on it.
That hope is far from assured, though, as many people who go out west don’t come home, due to the hazardous nature of the job. There are the obvious risks of working such jobs, as Beaton learns by watching the same safety video at every job, always involving somebody having a hand cut off. There are also people killed because of the physical environment, as they travel on frozen roads. When Beaton is on a bus going to work, a truck drives past them and flips over. The bus doesn’t stop, and nobody seems surprised or concerned, as such accidents occur regularly.
Beaton shows the connection between home and these hazards when two young men die in a truck accident. They are from her area of Canada, but the headline in the newspaper describes one of them as being from Calgary. While Beaton is clearly bothered by the fact that “Four people have died so far this year between here and town on the highway,” she’s also disturbed by the fact that the newspaper doesn’t correctly identify where he’s from. She says, “It’s like I know him. I could be him,” only feeling comfortable when she finds an obituary in the Cape Breton Post. If people are going to die, she at least wants their home towns to be able to recognize them.
Not all of the damage is as obvious as the deaths that occur, though. The ducks from the title only show up for a few pages and over halfway through the book, but they serve as a symbol for the environmental impact of the oil sands. While people need these jobs to survive, the work they are doing has clear climate implications. The ducks become stuck in a pond where Beaton used to work, ultimately dying. The idea of being stuck in such a place, leading to one’s death, is a metaphor for all of those people working a job they hate because they don’t have any choice. Similarly, at her first job, Beaton sees a three-legged fox that has lost one leg because of its proximity to the plant. Beaton complains that people are probably feeding the fox, encouraging it to stay near. In the same way, the people working there are kept close by the consistent work and pay, but they suffer and sometimes die due to the work. The fox and ducks represent the effects of the oil drilling on nature, but also on the people who have to take these jobs.
That hope is far from assured, though, as many people who go out west don’t come home, due to the hazardous nature of the job. There are the obvious risks of working such jobs, as Beaton learns by watching the same safety video at every job, always involving somebody having a hand cut off. There are also people killed because of the physical environment, as they travel on frozen roads. When Beaton is on a bus going to work, a truck drives past them and flips over. The bus doesn’t stop, and nobody seems surprised or concerned, as such accidents occur regularly.
Beaton shows the connection between home and these hazards when two young men die in a truck accident. They are from her area of Canada, but the headline in the newspaper describes one of them as being from Calgary. While Beaton is clearly bothered by the fact that “Four people have died so far this year between here and town on the highway,” she’s also disturbed by the fact that the newspaper doesn’t correctly identify where he’s from. She says, “It’s like I know him. I could be him,” only feeling comfortable when she finds an obituary in the Cape Breton Post. If people are going to die, she at least wants their home towns to be able to recognize them.
Not all of the damage is as obvious as the deaths that occur, though. The ducks from the title only show up for a few pages and over halfway through the book, but they serve as a symbol for the environmental impact of the oil sands. While people need these jobs to survive, the work they are doing has clear climate implications. The ducks become stuck in a pond where Beaton used to work, ultimately dying. The idea of being stuck in such a place, leading to one’s death, is a metaphor for all of those people working a job they hate because they don’t have any choice. Similarly, at her first job, Beaton sees a three-legged fox that has lost one leg because of its proximity to the plant. Beaton complains that people are probably feeding the fox, encouraging it to stay near. In the same way, the people working there are kept close by the consistent work and pay, but they suffer and sometimes die due to the work. The fox and ducks represent the effects of the oil drilling on nature, but also on the people who have to take these jobs.
Beaton wants to balance out this darkness with moments of beauty, though. During a particularly cold night at work when she cannot get warm, she goes outside to get tools men have left outside, frozen and dirty, Beaton sees the Northern Lights. Beaton uses close up views of her face to move from suffering to one of awe and wonder, as she removes her sunglasses and hard hat to look up into the sky. Even at Long Lake, the job where she works the longest but hates the most, there is a day, which Norman describes simply as a “nice day. There was a big rainbow” (403). Beaton shows the rainbow as a two-page spread, as the rainbow arcs over all the buildings, beauty covering the ugliness, if only temporarily.
The art reflects this combination of beauty and suffering, as Beaton mainly uses black and white throughout the book, but it has tinges of blue that run throughout. The book, like the time it portrays, is not colorful, but there is consistent color. Beaton hates the jobs she works and suffers from them in a number of ways, but she also creates meaningful friendships and has moments of joy. The artwork reflects that combination of mundanity and brutality, but also the tinges of brightness in her life. She also uses the artwork to reinforce the geographical dislocation, as she uses spreads of maps and casts of characters at the beginning of each job and location to remind the reader how far she has to travel for such work.
The main area where Beaton suffers, though, is working as a woman in a male-dominated industry and world. The snide comments she endures on a daily basis are so common she becomes inured to them by the end of the book. In fact, one of the more nefarious effects on the women who work in such places is that they begin to internalize such comments, as they apologize for the men or even excuse their behavior. They become beaten down by all they endure over their time there, as they are often the only woman in their area.
One of the pressing questions of the book, in fact, is how different the men are there from how they behave outside of such an environment. Beaton and the few women she interacts with often question if it is the place that makes them behave that way or if it is simply something about men. Beaton and her sister Emily are at a Tim Horton’s talking about their father, and they wonder if he would have become the same way if he had come there to work. Becky asks, “It’s just, like, it could have happened so easily. Everyone just comes here for work. Do you wonder—if he’d be like those guys, because that’s what it makes you? That’s what it turns them into” (318). Of course, they never come up with an answer, ending by both of them saying simply that it bothers them to think about it.
The art reflects this combination of beauty and suffering, as Beaton mainly uses black and white throughout the book, but it has tinges of blue that run throughout. The book, like the time it portrays, is not colorful, but there is consistent color. Beaton hates the jobs she works and suffers from them in a number of ways, but she also creates meaningful friendships and has moments of joy. The artwork reflects that combination of mundanity and brutality, but also the tinges of brightness in her life. She also uses the artwork to reinforce the geographical dislocation, as she uses spreads of maps and casts of characters at the beginning of each job and location to remind the reader how far she has to travel for such work.
The main area where Beaton suffers, though, is working as a woman in a male-dominated industry and world. The snide comments she endures on a daily basis are so common she becomes inured to them by the end of the book. In fact, one of the more nefarious effects on the women who work in such places is that they begin to internalize such comments, as they apologize for the men or even excuse their behavior. They become beaten down by all they endure over their time there, as they are often the only woman in their area.
One of the pressing questions of the book, in fact, is how different the men are there from how they behave outside of such an environment. Beaton and the few women she interacts with often question if it is the place that makes them behave that way or if it is simply something about men. Beaton and her sister Emily are at a Tim Horton’s talking about their father, and they wonder if he would have become the same way if he had come there to work. Becky asks, “It’s just, like, it could have happened so easily. Everyone just comes here for work. Do you wonder—if he’d be like those guys, because that’s what it makes you? That’s what it turns them into” (318). Of course, they never come up with an answer, ending by both of them saying simply that it bothers them to think about it.
That question lies at the heart of the book. While Beaton as a character in her work doesn’t have an answer, it feels like Beaton as author does. The comments the men make, the way they behave, and the way they look at women all have clear counterparts in everyday life. While one could argue that their bad behavior is heightened by being in a male-dominated space, nothing the men do, unfortunately, is something that wouldn’t happen outside of that space. In the same way the ducks serve as a metaphor for everybody who has to go to the oil sands to work, they represent women who come there because they need to survive, but who are covered with the oil (the patriarchal oppression and abuse) and ultimately die (whether literally or figuratively).
While Beaton did use her time there to pay off her student loans, it’s clear those two years had a profoundly negative effect on her life and well-being, both physical and mental. Her story serves as a cautionary tale, not just about those who must go and work in such conditions, but about what women face everyday of their lives. It doesn’t take extreme situations to bring out such behavior in men; Beaton’s experience in such a place should remind readers of what women’s lives are like. While her time there was temporary, she can’t leave a world that continues to mistreat women. Like the ducks, she and other women will always be stuck, trying their best to fly to freedom.
While Beaton did use her time there to pay off her student loans, it’s clear those two years had a profoundly negative effect on her life and well-being, both physical and mental. Her story serves as a cautionary tale, not just about those who must go and work in such conditions, but about what women face everyday of their lives. It doesn’t take extreme situations to bring out such behavior in men; Beaton’s experience in such a place should remind readers of what women’s lives are like. While her time there was temporary, she can’t leave a world that continues to mistreat women. Like the ducks, she and other women will always be stuck, trying their best to fly to freedom.