Ducks
Two Years in the Oil Sands
by Kate Beaton · first published 2022
67% recommend33% neutral
Arriving in Fort McMurray, Katie finds work in the lucrative camps owned and operated by the world's largest oil companies. As one of the few women among thousands of men, the culture shock is palpable. It does not hit home until she moves to a spartan, isolated worksite for higher pay. Katie encounters the harsh reality of life in the oil sands where trauma is an everyday occurrence yet never discussed. For young Katie, her wounds may never heal. Beaton's natural cartooning prowess is on full display as she draws colossal machinery and mammoth vehicles set against a sublime Albertan backdr
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Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands by Kate Beaton [1]. A haunting and disturbing account powerfully told and rendered. Beaton is well known for Hark! A Vagrant, but this is her best work to date. The Kalevala…
on “Ask HN: What are some of the best books you have read in 2022?” ↗I’d like to recommend Kate Beaton’s book Ducks to get a vivid feel for what these “man camps” are like. That book is about camps attached to oil fields in Alberta, but the “AI camps” described here sound very similar.
on “Owner of ICE detention facility sees big opportunity in AI man camps” ↗It's hard to read in this format, but I recommend Kate Beaton's comic, "Ducks". https://beatonna.tumblr.com/post/81993262830/here-is-a-sketc...
on “A man who shoots at birds to keep them off a toxic pit [video]” ↗…perceived their real world. - and also on that medieval-tales motif, The Mere Wife by Headley is a contemporary retelling of Beowulf (the hero is a cop named Ben Wolff), great fun and well-styled. - Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands by Beaton is winning tons of awards and deservedly so. - Termination Shock and Ministry for the Future are stabs at possible approaches for solving climate change by very…
on “Ask HN: What is the best thing you read in 2022?” ↗Kate Beaton must have a brilliant publicist. Over the past few weeks there’s been a “Ducks” blitz in the outlets I follow: email newsletters, websites, magazines. “Ducks” even made the front pages of Ars Technica and HN despite no obvious tech connection. I’m sure it’s a quality work and I…
on “"Ducks,” the Canadian cartoonist Kate Beaton’s new graphic memoir” ↗This is a review of Kate Beaton's book Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands (2022).
on “I'm Still a Fisherman” ↗