Join us for an enlightening hour online with highly-acclaimed Kate Beaton, the New York Times bestselling author of Hark! A Vagrant! and Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands. This is part of new series of virtual author talks that the MCL will be hosting that you can enjoy from home! Visit our website to see all the upcoming talks and check out our displays in the library of their works. We are really excited to offer this program and thank that the Friends of the MCL for providing funding!

Her first full-length graphic narrative follows Beaton after university as she 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. Arriving in Fort McMurray, Beaton finds work in the lucrative camps owned and operated by the world's largest oil companies. Being one of the few women among thousands of men, the culture shock is palpable. She encounters the harsh reality of life in the oil sands where trauma is an everyday occurrence yet never discussed. 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 backdrop of wildlife, Northern Lights, and Rocky Mountains. Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands is more than a memoir, it's also 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.

May 9, 2024, 5 PM

May 9, 2024, 6:30 to 8 PM

May 13, 2024, 6 PM