Under the dust jacket of her book, Beaton has hidden the silhouette of a duck, embossed into the cover with a pretty rainbow-wrapping-paper foil that shimmers like an oil slick. Most of the workers have traveled far to be there where the money is, many from Nova Scotia like Beaton herself. She cites a conversation with a taxi driver who takes Beaton to a site with many temporary workers and states, "You be careful, young girl. It was the sort of thing you would probably read if you also read The Toast and The Awl and Hyperbole and a Half (all of which, of course, I did): whimsical, sweetly ridiculous little sketches about Napoleon, the businesswomen of the 1980s, and the love between a pirate and his nemesis. Yes, it’s funny at moments; Beaton’s low-key wryness is present and correct, and her drawings of people are as charming and as expressive as ever.

Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands: One of Barack Obama’s

People do things here they wouldn’t do at home,” she observes to Leon, who works in the tool crib with her. We use cookies and other tracking technologies to improve your browsing experience on our site, show personalized content and targeted ads, analyze site traffic, and understand where our audiences come from. That's understandable considering it's a journalistic undertaking, not a high-spirited, episodic strip. The alternative is to go back to the mines to help the Shell corporation destroy the local drinking water; the land, much of which belongs to the First Nations; the wildlife; and the planet.

She graduated from Mount Allison University in 2005 with a Bachelor of Arts in history and anthropology. super-champion Mattea Roach is championing the graphic memoir Ducks by Kate Beaton on Canada Reads 2023! She initially works in a tool crib at Mildred Lake for Syncrude but also works at Long Lake and in various other camps taking on different roles.

Ducks by Kate Beaton review – bad boys from the blackstuff

I’ve always worried, putting this book out, that this would be what people took away from it the most, and then what it would be reduced to, because that’s what happens to women’s stories. Walking through the OPTI-Nexen camp at night, Kate hears a man playing guitar and singing a familiar maritime song alone in his room.Ducks was named one of CBC Books' top Canadian comics of 2022 and was also one of two Canadian books on Barack Obama's list of favourite books of 2022.