A Guide to Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands

By William R. Twitchell

THIS IS NOT A BOOK BY KATE BEATON, NOR IS IT AFFILIATED WITH HER. IT IS AN INDEPENDENT PUBLICATION WRITTEN TO OFFER AN INSIGHT ON THE ORIGINAL BOOK.

ABOUT THE ORIGINAL BOOK

Beaton's coming-of-age visual memoir, inspired by her decade-long online comic "Hark! A Vagrant." After graduating from college with student debt in 2005, Beaton, then 21, left her hometown of Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, to begin what turned out to be a two-year stint working as a miner in Northern Canada's Athabasca oil sands, a massive petroleum deposit beneath and surrounded by vast boreal forest just below the arctic tundra.

This comic novel depicts Beaton's adventures in the oil sands, where her first job is as a tool crib attendant, in charge of distributing hardware while dealing with a continual onslaught of vulgar insults, catcalling, and evident objectification from her male coworkers. As she wanders from job site to job site, she realizes that sexism and misogyny are endemic in the gasoline sector where males outnumber women 50-to-1 and that filing a harassment report will result in her being chastised for expecting special treatment.

The homespun drawings and intuitive pacing capture both the author's unforgettable depiction of capitalism's dehumanizing effect on the individual and the occasional splendor of this frozen world, with flashes of the author's trademark humor in the banter between her crusty coworkers in both robust discussions of its sociopolitical ramifications and her own keenly observed personal experiences.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0BFHWR2LP
• ISBN13: 9798353094135
• Release Date: September 2022
• Publisher: Independently Published
• Length: 34 Pages
• Weight: 0.13 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.1" x 6.0" x 9.0"