Fort Mcmurray: Personal Narrative Analysis

I lied to my family, my friends and myself. Even before I accepted Fort McMurray as my home, the lies I verbally regurgitated became more real to me than the reality that I was participating in. Eventually, the reality I thought I had control over was in fact the reality that I lost control over. Throughout this three part essay I will attempt to explore the following: first, addressing why I began to construct lies that affected my perception of Fort McMurray from the beginning to now; second, how the interconnectedness of my life and the price of a barrel of oil dictated decisions affecting my personal and professional life; third, including alternative perspectives from interviewing local individuals in addition to examining other global
incidents related to or resulting from the oil economy downtown from 2014-2015; finally, by examining how alternatives to an oil based economy, such as solar power energy could benefit Northern Canada. Additionally, I will attempt to understand what intrinsic personal and extrinsic societal events affected my perception of reality and my unwillingness to accept opinions regarding the instability of the oil economy located directly in Fort McMurray.
Finally, I will explore the viability of potential solutions that could be utilized by myself and other Fort McMurrayites who are now forced to continue living their lives in what once was Canada’s oil mecca. For those of us, myself included, the realization that for the immediate future, we will continue to experience a reduction in the enjoyment of life due to the inability to obtain financial, housing and employment security. The exploration into my life in Fort McMurray began with a simple need: to have enough money to live for another 30
days.
Migration for survival I remember the events leading up to my migration to Fort McMurray just as if I was reliving each moment again. The desire to live the proverbial ‘American dream’ of wealth, freedom and good health in Canada was at the forefront of my mind. Within three months of graduating, I had committed to share my life with my husband Paul, relocated to Vancouver and now had to decide which was more important: eating food or paying the rent? Paul, being my senior by 6 years, reasoned with me that our current situation would have been similar if we had stayed in our hometown of Kamloops B.C. Growing up I relished the opportunities that a small town could offer: walkability score of 100; knowing all the employee’s at 7-Eleven by their first name; making an extra $20 from collecting quarters from grocery store buggies. I assumed that my eight dollar an hour employment at Domino’s Pizza and McDonalds when combined with Paul’s on call eleven dollars an hour employment with a local plumbing company would be sufficient enough to enable us to work towards obtaining the basics: employment, housing and financial security. However, there were significant errors in the scenario I had imagined if we had stayed in Kamloops. Even though Vancouver offered ample opportunities for employment, the cost of living had increased and the pay had remained the same. As the end of the month approached Paul heard from a friend of a friend that there was a small town in Alberta where a blue collared tradesman could make upwards of $1000 a week. Lured by the enticement of money we decided that Paul should secure work in Fort McMurray and I would stay in Vancouver until we could confirm if the rumors were true. After two weeks apart, Paul returned to Vancouver. Upon reuniting we enjoyed a meal at an expensive restaurant and at the same time we paid our rent, we gave our notice to our kind Asian landlord; we were Fort McMurray bound. Literally everything we owned, including one of those 1980s thirteen inch box television sets, was piled into our 1987 Ford Probe.
The vehicle would function as both a car and a home over the next three weeks until we could find suitable accommodations. After living 19 years of my life in Kamloops, whose city slogan was the “Tournament Capital of Canada” and experiencing the convenience of living in the metropolitan port city of Vancouver, Paul cautioned me that Fort McMurray possessed all the characteristics of a boom town: lack of cultural and social amenities; blue-collar tradesman securing wages comparable to that of a medical doctor; and poor infrastructure that created traffic congestion and increased the probability of accidents along the main arterial road, HWY 63 ( TravelBC, 2015; Davidsen, Deacon & Kiff, 2013, p.g 68). Herein was the first lie I began telling myself and others: Fort McMurray could be just as beautiful as Vancouver. After passing the ‘Welcome to Fort McMurray, We have the ENERGY’ sign, I was appalled to see that on Sept 14th 2003, there was so much snow on the ground that it had become a meridian which blocked the view of the oncoming lane of traffic. As we pulled into 7-Eleven for a cup of hot chocolate, I was shocked to observe that the loitering patrons were not my own kind; the everyday teenager. Instead there where prostitutes wearing six inch stiletto heels, men whose recently cashed paycheques were on hand to make a purchase, and intoxicated
youth urinating near the front entrance. Until today, I refused to admit that my first instinct was to say to hell with this desolate town and return back to the paycheck to paycheck life I had been living. My first introduction to Fort McMurray had left a sour taste in my mouth that I would spend the coming years trying to stifle.
The Unexpected Details In 2003 Paul and I were homeless. Previously, Paul had spent his first two weeks in Fort McMurray in what McMurrayites referred to as “camp.” Immediately, you and I envision an image that includes connecting with Mother Nature, roasting marshmallows by a warm fire and using cast iron skillets to cook your main meals. Instead, Paul spent his nights in a 10 x 10 room located in a long work trailer that could house up to 200 men. The camps were comprised of common living quarters, cafeteria style kitchen area and rows of trailers with bedroom and bathroom amenities. The purpose of these camps was to provide housing for contractors that serviced the plant sites by offering convenient accommodations within walking distance from the plant. Paul had come to believe that the accommodations were supplied by leading oil sand companies such as Suncor Ltd, Syncrude and CNRL for the following reasons: the prevention of contractors from squandering their entire paycheque in the Boomtown Casino; the dry camp rules prohibited alcohol consumption in order to reduce onsite incidents; finally, contractors faced an increasingly hostile rental market in which even closet space was being rented for premium dollar. As Paul’s stay progressed he realized that daily life in the oil sands seemed to abide by a set of unspoken rules that were quite different from the accepted standard that employers usually enforced. Paul recounted how he witnessed ‘hot bunking.’ I would learn that this routine practice occurs when two men share one bed: in the course of one day, the first man would sleep during the day and then the second man would sleep in the same bed during the night. Additionally, Paul observed that the male only camp site would be crowded with women supplied from one of the local brothels by the end of the day. Looking back, I would say that I had been slightly naïve. By growing up in a small town whose majority population identified themselves as practicing Catholics and where local businesses closed down at 5pm so evenings could be spent with their families, the activities of this town seemed ungodly. However, the large number of mobile homes and tow trailers in the Wal-Mart parking lot indicated that we were not facing homelessness alone in Fort McMurray. Indeed, I was certain that somewhere in this town someone else had to borrow gas money to get from their point A to here and was now unsure of what they would have to do next to survive in the Municipality of Wood Buffalo.
White picket fences are not in ample supply