Kate Beaton’s new graphic memoir, Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands, is, I think, going to come as something of a surprise to her fans, for it could hardly be more different in tone from her popular larky strip Hark! A Vagrant, in which she gently sends up historical figures such as Napoleon and Ada Lovelace. 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. But its mood overall is deeply melancholic. Her story, which runs to more than 400 pages, encompasses not only such thorny matters as social class and environmental destruction; it may be the best book I have ever read about sexual harassment.
How do men behave when women are (mostly) not around? Alas, the answer is: not terribly well. Ducks is an account of the two years Beaton spent (beginning in 2005) working in the oil sands of Alberta, Canada, a far-off planet to which she travelled from her beloved home in Nova Scotia for the sole purpose of paying off her student loans (in these booming wildernesses, the money is too good for a humanities student from a small rural community to refuse). Naturally, the wrench involved in this move is painful; like just about everyone in the places she is employed – in a town called Fort McMurray and in various camps in outlying areas – she comes from far away and must contend with aching homesickness. But for Beaton there’s something else: her loneliness is exacerbated to an immeasurable degree by the fact that the women there are outnumbered by men by 50 to one.
