Kate Beaton on Isolation, Oil, and Ducks

Kate Beaton’s new book, Ducks, is not about ducks. At least not really. It’s about people, specifically Kate and the people she worked with during a two-year period after finishing university, working in the remote oil sands region of northern Alberta, Canada.

The camps at the oil sands housed hundreds of employees and they were not an easy place to be, filled with depression, broken marriages, and rampant substance use. Kate was one of only a handful of women working at the oil sands, a fact that introduced a number of other problems.

Get your copy of Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands wherever books are sold.

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