'It doesn't evoke a sense of enjoyment, right? But I didn't know the details in any way. Back home, they were calling it things like 'money jail.' The fact that somebody was going to hire me and give me money was the good thing. I knew I wasn't gonna like it, but I knew that I should be grateful for the job I was going to get. Going out there, I knew that I wasn't going to have a good time. In this working class environment, the message is that any job is a good job. 'Growing up in Cape Breton, we had lived through so much economic collapse by that point. Kate Beaton on working in Alberta's oil sands I grew up listening to songs and reading stories about migrant labour before I had a complete understanding about the cycle of that kind of work. We have been exporting labour for so many generations there, way back beyond my grandparents' time. 'That's a deeply ingrained idea in Cape Breton. Beaton's success continued with the book Step Aside, Pops!and two children's books, King Baby and The Princess and the Pony. The sassy historical webcomic gained a following of 500,000 monthly visitors and was eventually turned into a bestselling book. Kate Beaton is a cartoonist from Nova Scotia who launched her career by publishing the comic strip Hark! A Vagrantonline.

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Kate Beaton's affecting Ducks dives into the lonely life of labour in Alberta's oil sands.

The CBC Books fall reading list: 30 Canadian books to read now.

( From Drawn and Quarterly)ĭucks won Canada Reads 2023, when it was defended by Jeopardy! super-champ Mattea Roach. Her first full length graphic narrative, Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands is an untold story of Canada: a country that prides itself on its egalitarian ethos and natural beauty while simultaneously exploiting both the riches of its land and the humanity of its people.

Katie encounters the harsh reality of life in the oil sands, where trauma is an everyday occurrence yet is never discussed.īeaton's natural cartooning prowess is on full display as she draws colossal machinery and mammoth vehicles set against a sublime Albertan backdrop of wildlife, northern lights, and boreal forest.

With the singular goal of paying off her student loans, Katie heads out west to take advantage of Alberta's oil rush ― part of the long tradition of East Coasters who seek gainful employment elsewhere when they can't find it in the homeland they love so much. Before there was Kate Beaton, New York Times bestselling cartoonist of Hark! A Vagrant, there was Katie Beaton of the Cape Breton Beaton, specifically Mabou, a tight-knit seaside community where the lobster is as abundant as beaches, fiddles, and Gaelic folk songs.

Ducks graphic novel