"Ducks"

An eye-opening, heart-breaking, and fascinating way to show the whole truth to a distinctly different way of life.

Summary:

Before she was a cartoonist, Katie Beaton was a broke college graduate desperate to pay off her student loans. And the best place to make quick money was across the country in the Alberta Oil Sands. In this graphic novel, Katie bears all about the lifestyle of the industry workers, the moral balance between the environmental cost and the monetary need, and the struggles of women in an industry where men outnumber them fifty to one.

Verdict: 9.5/10

This was like show-and-tell in the best way! Beaton captures a completely different side of Canada than ever seen in this format before. It can be a hard book to read at times as it deals with a lot of hard-hitting truths. Even then, they're truths that need to be told.

To start off with, I never knew how Nova Scotians are expected to migrate for work. While I was in a different location and situation, I definitely could relate to Beaton's experience of “a degree is not a golden ticket." The struggle after college to find work and still pay the bills is something no one ever told me about. The assumption for many is that you’ll find a job as soon as you have the education, but that’s not reality. The reality is having to take unpaid work, unpaid internships, or work in a completely unrelated field to ‘pay your dues.’ So I'm glad that she covered that flaw in the system from the start.

That employment desperation feeds into the oil industry as well and was a good tie in for environmentalists who tend to automatically attack those in the system. Beaton shows that there are pros and cons to all sides. The oil sands helped get her out of debt and provide many with jobs. And the world needs oil to live. But Beaton doesn't shy away from the personal costs and the environmental impacts either.

I also found the dynamics between the West and East coasters interesting. Easterners don’t live in Alberta so they’re fine destroying the land for money and moving back. However, the Westerners do live there. They must destroy their home themselves to make a living while they hear everyone else complain about how much of a dump the province is. There's not a right or wrong side, just many many gray areas to dwell on.

I loved the artwork. The gray-scale of the book was a masterful way to capture the atmosphere and the theme. Through the loneliness and the gloom, there's still connection and hope. There were a lot of dreary images, but there were beautiful ones too - just like with the characters in the novel.

It's all a combination of good and bad. Though in this tale the depression almost wins out. It's a very difficult battle to witness for the crew and especially the women involved.

It’s really sickening how much of the harassment Kate and the women of the oil industry put up with because it was a “man’s world”. Just because there’s no other women out there doesn’t give anyone permission to do whatever they want. Seeing how much gets passed over was awful, and that the women there have to gloss over it too or they’ll go crazy. Everyone needs coping strategies, but many of those either hurt yourself (like drugs or alcohol) or hurt others (like sexual assault or infidelity). It's tragic that one setting would have all of those present in one isolated area.

As Beaton shows, telling ones story to friends or even in an article will never show the whole truth. When you’re caught between a rock and a hard place, it's all the more important to show the big picture as well as individuals. For instance, not all men are jerks, but the Oil Sands can often bring out the worst in people. There are plenty of exceptions, but the devastating effects are also more common than one would think.

Overall, this might be my favorite graphic novel of the year and possibly within the top 5 book of the year. I'll be singing the praises of this one for a long time.