Syncrude, the company that filled the tailings pond with the byproducts of oil production, was eventually fined nearly $3 million for negligence.īut at the same time, there were other problems in the oil sands - human ones - that escaped media attention, according to Kate Beaton, the author of the upcoming graphic novel Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands. The ducks’ deaths brought international attention to Northern Alberta. The birds, slick with oil, struggled to get out of the bitumen-covered water wildlife officials shot the ones that didn’t die to put them out of their misery. 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.In the spring of 2008, an estimated 1,600 migratory ducks landed in the wrong place: a pond of toxic sludge in Fort McMurray, Alberta, in the heart of Canada’s oil sands.
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. Katie encounters the harsh reality of life in the oil sands, where trauma is an everyday occurrence yet is never discussed. 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. Before there was Kate Beaton, New York Times bestselling cartoonist of Hark! A Vagrant, there was Katie Beaton of the Cape Breton Beaton, specifically Mabou, a tight-knit seaside community where the lobster is as abundant as beaches, fiddles, and Gaelic folk songs.
0 kommentar(er)
