Canadian inter-regionalism and shades of grey in Kate Beaton’s <i>Ducks</i>

Kate Beaton’s 2022 graphic memoir Ducks recounts the author’s time spent working in Alberta’s oil sands boom in the early 2000s. Although it focuses on one woman’s experiences, Beaton’s work also helps readers to understand the broader eco-social impacts of oil sands work camps, which are characterised by significant gender imbalances, regional differences, and an industry culture more concerned with the optics of safety than with its reality. In particular, it is Beaton’s use of specific techniques drawn from comics and cartooning – including colouring, panel arrangement, and use of monochromatic pages – that prompts critical reflection on how the public sees oil workers and how they understand their own roles in relation to communities, both while on the job and long afterwards. Such improved understanding of everyday experiences of oil work in Canada will be key to generating public will to act compassionately and pragmatically as the climate crisis increasingly leads disparate parts of the country to experience similar phenomena, such as extreme weather and wildfires.