Secret Lives of Oilsands Families
Notes on family life in the wild, wild Alberta north
Part One
Tim Campbell was sick with love for Sally Ratfat. Somehow, his heartache escalated into a police chase, some gunfire, and an armed standoff in a Fort McMurray suburb. Word of a gunman in the neighbourhood triggered the “lock down” protocol of a nearby elementary school. The doors were bolted and no one was allowed in or out of the building. By afternoon, a quiet, worried mob of parents formed on the school’s front lawn. I stood in the crowd, watching nervous mothers storm up to front doors, tug on both handles, and then resign themselves to waiting with the rest of us on the stringy, October grass.
One of the moms grew tired of the understated fretting. “No one knows anything about this,” she complained in a loud growl, like an angry mother bear. “I’m calling the Edmonton news as soon as we get out of here. No one reports this stuff. All they care about’s the plants.” Of course, by “plants” she didn’t mean our ubiquitous spruce and muskeg. She meant the giant oilsands projects that brought us to Fort McMurray in
the first place.
The other parents in the schoolyard recognized the complaint as fair and we nodded our muzzles in agreement. We were part of over 40,000 people living in Fort McMurray’s well-hidden suburbs – part of the not-quite-forgotten masses raising families in the most notorious boomtown of the wild, wild north.
Oilsands families revealed
When most out-of-town reporters visit Fort McMurray, they pass by the exits to the suburbs and head to the downtown core. From beneath the marquis of strip clubs and liquor stores, they scribble notes about street people and wait for crowds to stumble out of bars. These reporters trawl what’s known as the “shadow population” – the roughly 16 per cent of Fort McMurray doing time in the region solely for work. Much of the shadow population lives in makeshift conditions like work camps, hotels, and all-season RVs. Some squat in tents, emergency shelters, backseats of cars, and on buddies’ couches.
A lot of colourful news copy springs from the antics of the largely young and male shadow population. With the lens of the popular media fixed on this troubled, flamboyant cohort, the story of the shadow population has become the story of Fort McMurray. Meanwhile, it’s the story of the struggle for healthy family life in the city that’s been pushed to the shadows.
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