Ducks

Fresh out of university and burdened by student loan debt, Kate Beaton leaves her beloved Nova Scotia for the Alberta oil sands, a remote industrial world promising financial opportunity. She enters a landscape dominated by colossal machinery and thousands of men, where the stark reality of isolation, harsh working conditions, and an overwhelming gender imbalance quickly becomes apparent.

This graphic memoir navigates Beaton's two years in an environment that tests the human spirit, revealing the profound personal costs of economic necessity, the complexities of human connection in transient communities, and the environmental impact of resource extraction. It is an unflinching look at the compromises made and the resilience required when pursuing a living in an unforgiving place.