Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands

In Beaton’s memoir, nature is a motif that represents hope and resilience for the oil sands workers. Whenever Katie is frustrated or depressed, Beaton includes a natural wonder to mark the moment when she regains her equilibrium. When Katie is sexually harassed or otherwise denigrated at work, the art cuts away to illustrations of animals or the Northern Lights, offering a reprieve from these negative emotions. When Ryan has a mental health crisis and disappears, Katie faces the brunt of her other colleagues’ frustration. It is only when a coworker shows her photos of the Northern Lights that she calms down and regains her equilibrium. By the next page, she is again hopeful. Nature also offers a refuge for Katie; when she is experiencing her second rape, she dissociates and imagines herself on the cliffs in Cape Breton, a safe place for her mind during this violence.

When Katie decides to leave the oil sands for good, she is hopeful about her future, which is reflected in the farewell gift she receives: a photograph of the oil sands under a full, vibrant rainbow. While the oil sands were extremely difficult for her, Katie survived and can now look forward to better prospects in her future. Her return home shows this; Beaton illustrates a walk by the sea and a full-page view of a forested cliff by the ocean. The man who owns the land with this view is saving it for his son, hoping for his child’s return, a sign that he believes in a future for Cape Breton.

Alcohol is a motif that appears often throughout the memoir that represents both danger and the desire to fit in. While drinking is common in the communities Katie lives in—both in Alberta and at home—there is a difference between the drinking cultures in each place. In moderation, it is a tool Katie uses to make connections. She is offered a drink by a family friend during a social visit when she first moves West, and when she accepts it, she feels like she is back home. She bonds with Trish over alcohol as well, allowing her to create a new friendship in a safe environment. Both examples depict moderate alcohol consumption to fit into a group or social circumstance.

However, alcohol in excess becomes dangerous. Both times that Katie is raped, it is at parties where everyone is drunk—excessive consumption makes Katie more vulnerable but also makes others less likely to step in or notice what’s happening to her. Her rapists use alcohol to isolate Katie and put her in danger. Later, when she tries to confide in her male friends about her trauma, they reject her testimony and victim-blame her because she was drunk: “You were loaded [drunk], that’s not the same thing [as rape]. That’s regret,” they tell her (205). Alcohol becomes a scapegoat for them, a way for them to avoid taking Katie’s trauma seriously. She is not the only person endangered by alcohol; one of her female friends was harassed when she worked at a bar, another was assaulted at a college party, and another became drunk at a party and woke up to find her pants unbuttoned. These examples show how alcohol can be a tool for harm when separated from trust and care.