Reflecting on the eastern shore, Katie sings a song about the coal industry, in which ponies are forced to “pull till they nearly break their backs.” And in Alberta, she reports, the oil industry makes headlines when hundreds of ducks die after landing in Syncrude’s “toxic sludge” of a tailing pond. That makes me feel like I’m not even a person.”īeaton also underscores the effects of the energy industry upon animals, sometimes treating them as metaphors for the human toll of the businesses that employed her. “You stick out, and that’s all it takes … and someone thinks they like you. “All you need here is to be a woman,” Katie realizes. And as the resilient Katie moves from one work site to another in the oil sands – adapting to the social dynamics of different locations – Beaton expertly depicts the complexities of operating in misogynistic spaces, where sexual harassment is common. When she reports to a tool crib for the company Syncrude, Katie must deal with the dehumanizing reality of laboring in an environment where the male-to-female ratio is about 50-to-1. “Even a bad job is a good job you’re lucky to have it.” As oil prices soar and employment opportunities open up in Alberta, she sees a way to “sever that weighted anchor” of about $40,000 in student debt. “I learn, by twenty-one, that any job is a good job,” Beaton writes. Lives are calibrated to regional boom-and-bust trends. Eschewing the distancing irony that characterized many of her “Vagrant” comics, it is the most gripping graphic memoir of 2022, offering an unblinking tale of personal trial set against a nation in economic flux.īeaton is from Cape Breton Island, on Canada’s eastern shore, where coal was once king the industry’s sinking fortunes are also stripping the financial hopes of Nova Scotians (“We’re fiddles and lobster,” she says of her home province) and nearby Newfoundlanders (“accordions and codfish”). She also has created such picture books as “The Princess and the Pony,” which has spawned an Apple TV+ animated series.īeaton’s soulful masterwork, “Ducks,” her first graphic memoir, documents a period of her life – from 2005 to 2008 – before her comics brought her to public attention. Kate Beaton depicts the experience of being far outnumbered by men in her powerful new graphic memoir, “Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands,” which finds her younger self, Katie, dealing with the leering attentions of some male co-workers.īeaton, a gifted Canadian cartoonist, first burst onto the scene about 15 years ago with her popular history-and-literature-laced webcomic, “Hark! A Vagrant.” Since then, she has published collections of her “Hark!” humor, which deftly blends jabs at famous men of patriarchal privilege (see, for instance, her Andrew Jackson takedowns) with plaudits for heroic but undersung women (among them Ida B. Despite lingering tension, the duo has occasionally reunited, including a performance at the opening ceremony of the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia.For the women who migrated to work in the bitumen-rich tar sands of northern Alberta in the early 21st century, there were many ways for the gritty environment to turn toxic. broke up in 2011 as Katina and Volkova turned to solo projects. After releasing two more albums each in Russian and English, t.A.T.u.The song is a translated and reworked version of t.A.T.u.’s Russian single “Ya Soshla S Uma”. Katina and Volkova courted controversy for a same-sex kiss in the video for “All the Things She Said”, when both singers were 17.13 on the Billboard 200 albums chart in the US and going gold. Their second album, which included “All the Things She Said”, became their biggest commercial success, reaching No. Their title of their second album and English-language debut, 2002’s 200 km/h in the Wrong Lane, was essentially a translation of the Russian title of t.A.T.u.’s first album.The duo began releasing Russian-language singles in 2000 and put out their first album, 200 Po Vstrechnoy, in 2001.under the guidance of manager Ivan Shapovalov. They were around 14 in 1999 when they formed t.A.T.u. Group members Lena Katina and Julia Volkova met when they were part of the children’s music group Neposedy from 1997 to 1999.are best known for their 2002 international hit single “All the Things She Said”, which reached No.
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