Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands

Isolation, loneliness, and transience are key aspects of Katie’s experience in Ducks as well as the people around her. As Beaton notes in the Prologue, the only way for many people in her community to make a decent living is to move 2,000 miles west to Alberta, leaving behind family, friends, and support networks. The oil sands exist in a world apart from the workers’ hometowns, leaving them isolated and uprooted. In many instances, this transience makes men more likely to behave badly because they feel less connected and obligated to the people around them. Beaton experiences the effects of this loneliness herself, not just with her own lack of connections but also by the many instances of unwanted male attention, including sexual assault.

As a memoir, Ducks primarily focuses on Katie’s isolation, loneliness, and transience. First, she leaves her family for the other side of the country, and while working on the oil sands, she experiences long stretches of solitude. These are illustrated in panels that focus on the landscape with Katie a small speck in the drawing, or else in panels that focus on Katie to the exclusion of anything else around her. The common thread in many of her experiences is the sense of being alone, whether through physical separation from her peers or being alienated by men’s misogyny and rough way of interacting with each other. These interactions always carry an undercurrent of menace as men make derogatory comments to her, but the danger reaches its peak when Katie is sexually assaulted at two parties. Ironically, though these assaults happen at parties full of people, that company does not keep her safe; Katie’s narration and the art style both emphasize how her rapists isolated her from others, drawing her away from the crowd into empty rooms. Katie feels even more alone afterward when she can’t report the crimes without fear of retaliation.

Katie has a hard time connecting with others because of her trauma; as Becky observes, Katie is “always staring at nothing and never hear[s] what I’m saying” (247). However, Beaton emphasizes that human connection is necessary for overcoming feelings of trauma and loneliness. When Katie learns her female friends have also been harassed or assaulted in the past, she finds ways to heal. Knowing she is not alone is the only way forward. This is true for the other workers as well, and the long-term impacts of loneliness can be seen in Ryan. Like many of the men on the job site, Ryan is separated from his family and does not develop earnest connections with the other men. Gendered expectations keep the men distanced from each other, illustrated by how they tease Hatim for being a caring father. Without a support network, Ryan’s condition only gets worse, and he eventually disappears entirely. While Katie suffers from being isolated among men, she still wonders, “Do you think people are different at home than they are here?” (201). She sees that similar to her, isolation and loneliness impact the men’s mental health, and they might behave differently if they were in a place that simultaneously supported them emotionally and held them accountable for doing harm. In short, isolation, loneliness, and transience are debilitating, and social support is necessary for people to heal and thrive.