Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands

These chapters emphasize how Patriarchal Violence Thrives in Isolated Environments, particularly because the new Long Lake setting highlights The Dangers of Isolation, Transience, and Loneliness. While sexism was present at the other worksites, Long Lake is especially dangerous because it is even more remote and there are even fewer women working there. Katie is one of the only women in her housing block, and safety and comfort (or lack thereof) depend entirely on her male colleagues’ whims. Unwanted male attention prevents Katie from blending into the background, making her feel targeted. This situation is dependent on transience because the first rapist is leaving soon and will face no consequences for his actions, and the second is a man Katie only sees rarely. The trauma of these assaults causes Katie to withdraw into herself, and she is further isolated when her male friends don’t take her distress seriously, saying she simply regrets her actions. While misogyny creates violent situations for Katie, gender also creates opportunities for camaraderie; when she is reunited with female friends and loved ones, she finally begins to heal. This emphasizes The Value of Home and Camaraderie.

Katie’s discomfort and focus on daily sexual harassment foreshadows the scenes where she is raped. While Beaton does not draw these violent encounters, she uses artistic techniques to stress Katie’s vulnerability and alienation. In the first scene, the page layout switches from eight panels to four, which are stacked vertically in the middle of the page. The increased white space on these pages creates a literal separation between Katie—the focus of these panels—and the rest of her story. To convey the rape itself, Beaton switches to blackout panels, creating an additional layer of distance. This scene ends with two full-page black panels to convey the enormity of Katie’s pain after this sexual assault. The second rape scene uses different techniques to express the same feelings; the panels are scaled down, centered in the middle of the page and surrounded by white space. Once again, white space conveys alienation, but shrinking the panels creates a claustrophobic feeling. Beaton’s drawing style becomes more dreamlike as Katie dissociates, a spectral version of her walking away from her body and back to her hometown, emphasizing the distance between where she is and where she feels safe and valued.

Men suffer from isolation, loneliness, and transience as well. Though they are surrounded by other men, they are separated from their loved ones, which takes a toll on their psyches. As Leon points out to Katie, it’s difficult being a husband or father and missing milestone moments or going home infrequently and upsetting the “normal” family dynamics. Constant relocation also prevents men from identifying any one oil sands plant as “home,” leading to potentially drastic consequences because men like Katie’s rapist fear no retaliation for their crimes. As the Somali taxi driver warns, “People say bad things about Fort McMurray. But it is the crazy men in the camps” (142). Home and community make people feel responsible for each other. Long Lake is full of people who are uprooted and transient, making them less concerned for each other.

Alcohol takes on more negative symbolism in this section. While Katie occasionally drinks moderately with female friends, it is shown more often in excess here—at parties, Katie is drunk and vulnerable. The duality of alcohol is revealed here: In moderation, it is a way of fitting in; in excess, it creates danger. Alcohol is present both times Katie is sexually assaulted, creating an environment where predators feel emboldened to hurt others and other partygoers do not notice what is happening. While alcohol represents danger, nature represents refuge. When Katie dissociates from reality during her rape, she imagines herself on the coastal cliffs of Cape Breton. This is her safe place, her way of enduring the attacks to survive another day. Similarly, Becky notices that something is off about Katie at the beach. This is the first step in Katie’s healing because Becky gets her to open up about her repressed trauma. This creates another moment of gender-based camaraderie because Becky, as a survivor, helps Katie survive, too.

Clothing and accessories emerge as class signifiers when Katie moves to Victoria. Although she has the freedom to mostly dress how she likes in the city, her museum job thrusts her into upper-class social circles. She feels the class difference between her and others because of clothing and other material goods. She visits the opera wearing a nice dress, and her colleagues recommend fancy cafés and hotels that she can’t afford. The $200 sweaters she is hired to sell contrast with her tiny, barely furnished studio apartment, an example of labor alienation. She identifies more with the unhoused people being cleared off the street than she does with the wealthy American tourists, knowing her own situation is precarious. Though her time there is brief, Katie’s experience in Victoria is a culture shock of a different sort—that of class disparities in urban environments.