Bittersweet Sands

by Rick Ranson

  The classroom portion of the orientation finally came to a close. Now it was time for the tour of the refinery. The entire orientation class clumped onto a line of yellow schoolbuses. The refinery was so large, buses regularly circle the plant to pick up and drop off workers. It takes forty-five minutes for the busses to do a complete lap.

  Barry Acastus, The Safety Nazi, stood at the front of the bus, describing the vessels and their functions as they drove past. At one point, he lowered his head and spoke to the Teamster. The bus driver gave him a questioning glance.

  “Do it,” said Acastus.

  The driver left the refinery proper. The structures and the piping became smaller and finally receded into the horizon. The passengers looked at each other and then out at the frozen land. After fifteen minutes bumping down the gravel road, the bus slowed.

  “This’ll be good,” Acastus said to the driver.

  The buses creaked to a stop. All around them was a white sand moonscape, sterile, empty as any Arctic winter. As far as the horizon and in every direction, regular mounds of talcum powder white sand gleamed. This was the dumping ground where the used sand from the extraction process was discarded back onto the land. The men who had brought sunglasses hastily donned them.

  In the middle of that whitewashed sterility, a three-acre mound shaped like an apple core rose ten feet from the white sand. On top of the miniature mesa, seven hungry trees fought a losing battle to eke out a life in the crackling cold.

  “You see that?” Acastus asked softly. “A lot of people think that the company has no regard for the local population. But you see that? That’s an Indian burial ground. The company refuses to mine under there. That proves the company is sensitive to the wishes of the locals.”

  “Jesus,” a voice said.

  The yellow schoolbus went silent and stayed that way all the way back to the refinery.

  Day Two

  ( Selling Time in Fort McMurray )

  Fort McMurray is more than giant machines and steam and catacombs of shiny pipes that turn like snakes making love to stairs. Fort McMurray is more than anemic pine trees dying from the roots up, and bewildered moose that regularly stumble out of the woods and right into the middle of refineries. Fort McMurray is more than pick-up trucks with marker flags and dirty chrome convenience stores and parking lots carved out of half-starved forests.

  Fort McMurray is that dream of making enough money to become more than what you are. There you can walk taller, talk louder, work harder, get rich. Fort McMurray is Joe Lunchpail’s Everest, and ultimately, Fort McMurray is a tragedy.

  Fort McMurray suffers from the tragedy of too much. Too many men making too much money too fast. Too many half-civilized men disconnected from their families. Too many men getting treated like criminals by authorities who have good reason to. Fort McMurray has too much, too much of everything.

  One of the few things Fort McMurray lacks is objectivity. Bring up Fort McMurray and half the country thinks it’s a Canadian treasure, the other half thinks it’s a national disgrace. They are both wrong, and they are both right.

  The environmentalists sell the past, the oil companies sell the future, and they both slant their message.

  Imagine Highway 63 as a tree, with the city of Fort McMurray at ground level. Other than a couple of them, most of the refineries are north of the city. The trunk of that imaginary tree climbs thirty-odd miles high before you pass the first refineries, Suncor and Syncrude. These oldest and biggest refineries sit east and west of Highway 63, like massive gatekeepers on either side of the road north.

  Syncrude will always be the poster boy for dirty oil, simply because you can see it from the highway. You come over the hill and there it is, like the Emerald City in The Wizard of Oz; Syncrude sits there, in all its chrome and dripping black oil splendour behind two vast settling ponds on either side of Highway 63.

  The environmentalists don’t even have to get out of their rented Volvos to take an incriminating picture of Syncrude. It’s right there.

  Chop down every tree, scrape away every plant, get rid of every animal. Dig. Collect fifty feet of oily, dripping sand in one bite, bubble massive amounts of water from the Athabasca River through that black sand, separate the crude, dump the used water in settling ponds so large that they can be seen from space.

  The smell of the settling ponds is so pervasive that the construction workers call those squares of froth and stench “Paradise Lakes.”

  Animals are not wanted. To keep birds away, gay streamers are hung across the ponds, giving the place the look of a used car lot. Air cannons are continuously fired off at irregular intervals. Construction workers go to sleep in the camps to the faint thumping of air cannons in the distance.

  Floating on the oily scum of those ponds are forty-five-gallon drums with scarecrows welded onto them, bobbing in the wind. In the summer, the construction workers call the scarecrows “The Newfie Navy.” In the winter, frozen in that slushy oil and water mix, they are called “The Newfie Hockey Team.”

  Dump the sand as white and dead as ground-up skeletons back on some barren spot. Plant trees and moss like Astroturf on top of those huge mountains of inert sand. Spray six inches of topsoil, spread grass seed and mulched hay over the planted trees. Like a scene in some science fiction movie where aliens have created what they think is Earth. Step outside the reclaimed patch, and stretching for miles you see a tortured vista like a World War I battlefield.

  This is the prevailing image of Fort McMurray, and it was an accurate image in the 1980s when I first went there. The whole attitude in Fort McMurray in the last century was “I got mine, let God replant.” And that is the story the environmentalists sell: that the technology is static, never-changing, locked in the methodology of the 1970s.

  And it’s wrong. Environmentalists sell the past. When you see pictures in the media of things that aren’t there anymore, you start wondering just how noble these environmentalists’ intentions really are. Unless a picture of the Fort McMurray is date-stamped and its location identified, I discount it out of hand.

  Because the drag-line and truck technology is getting less and less important each year. Think about it. Moving sand is really expensive. Oil companies, being oil companies, only want oil. They don’t want the sand, which is a real pain in the ass to move around. And those massive trucks and cranes are not cheap.

  After about fifty feet down into the sand, it’s too expensive to use the old dig-and-dump technology.

  Now, with the new technology, the kind you’ll find at the Firebag refinery, all you can see of the oilfields is one-acre squares cut into the forest in the centre of which stands a small wellhead the size of a man. The wells pump steam and solvent into one porous pipe which goes down anywhere from fifty to a hundred feet, then turns horizontally, where a companion pipe sucks out oil loosened by the first pipe. No more dig and dump.

  This new technology is pretty much a disaster for the environmentalists, one reason being the local moose love it. I don’t know how they did it, but the moose got the oil companies to cut these one-acre pastures all over the place just so they can graze on grasses, plus all these seismic trails through the forest just for them to walk down. And Lord help you if you take a rifle on oil company property.

  The moose got it made in Fort Mac. They must know somebody.

  Syncrude and Suncor are aware of the optics and are fixing up the tar ponds along the highway in front of their plants. They are landscaping and replanting trees where stinking oil cesspools used to be. It’s going to be a real bitch to criticize a place that looks like a park.

  To get those shock-inspiring pictures that play to the foreign media so well, they’ll actually have to drive their gas-guzzling four-wheel-drive trucks around the back of the refineries.

  But if the environmentalists sell a slanted past, the oil companies sell a slanted future.

  I can’t count the number of times I’ve seen an oil company executive stand in front of a group of
us workers and say: “We have budgeted for...” or “We are in the planning stages of...” or “In the future....”

  Well, Mr. Oil Company Executive, in my future, I plan on winning the lottery. I plan on losing twenty pounds. I plan on marrying a rich socialite. Will it happen? Maybe not. But that’s my plan.

  Call the Oil Company Exec on “The Plan” and it’s like you are desecrating holy writ. People spend their careers planning this shit, and demanding actual, concrete startup dates for their “plans” really makes them nervous.

  There’s just too much money invested in the old strip-mining technology to adjust quickly to the new methods. They just can’t do it, but they’ll talk about it, and they’ll plan it. They’ll try to sell the future.

  You see, as far as Fort McMurray is concerned, the environmentalists sell a skewed past, and the oil companies sell a wished-for future. If you don’t trust either one of them, you just about got it right.

  ( Set Up )

  The skinny woman slammed a sheaf of income tax forms on the desk. Jason looked up from his paperwork. Gwen stood with her white hands on her hips, looking as if she wanted to punch something.

  “Twenty men! Twenty men, and every one of them thinks all I want is their little pink bodies!”

  “What brought that on?” Jason asked, hoping she wouldn’t answer.

  “Taxi.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He said that making love to me would be like jumping onto a pile of moose antlers. Only he didn’t say ‘making love.’”

  “Did he say it in front of witnesses?”

  Gwen spun around. Barry Acastus stood so close she could smell the ammonia from the starch he sprayed every day on his shirts. She turned back to Jason. Jason puffed out his cheeks and slowly shook his head.

  “Well, did he?”

  Gwen nodded.

  “He’s gone,” Acastus croaked, eyes glistening.

  Acastus hastily started to pull on his parka. He stopped as he was putting on his gloves and looked at Jason accusingly.

  “Well?

  “I’m so sorry, Jason,” Gwen said.

  “Don’t be. You don’t say that kinda crap and get away with it. Not anymore.” Jason looked at Gwen.

  “Well?” Acastus repeated.

  “Let me finish my paperwork.” Jason turned back to his work.

  Acastus stood in the middle of the office staring at Jason. “In due time, Mr. Acastus,” Jason said threateningly, never raising his voice or his head.

  The door slammed as the safety man left. Jason looked at his secretary. “If he’s smart,” he said, “he’ll shut up and let me handle it. If he’s as dumb as I think he is, he’s running over there right now to make a big speech and fire Taxi in front of everybody.”

  “Nice way to start a shutdown,” Gwen said.

  “It is what it is,” Jason replied, rubbing his right hand.

  There was silence as both people returned to their desks. Jason looked up as Gwen handed him a manila folder with “TAXI” written across the top. To his unspoken question, she pointed to the row of trailers. A lone figure stomped toward them.

  “Taxi?”

  She nodded.

  “Well, we got him fired from his cushy job as an Orientation Training Officer, and this is payback. Any bets that little motherfucker never makes it to the end of the shutdown? Where is he?”

  “Probably off somewhere ironing his clothes,” she said.

  The door slammed as Taxi stomped in.

  * * *

  Jason appeared in the doorway of the lunch trailer. Conversation ceased as twenty heads turned and watched him.

  “For those of you that missed the orientation yesterday,” he announced, “my name is Jason Navotnick. On this job, I’ll be Supervisor. General foreman duties will be shared between the other two foremen.

  “Now, I want to talk about the job, and then there’s a couple of things I want to go over before we split into groups. First: as you know by now, the Safety Nazi got reassigned. Word has it that a couple of you fifteen-watt bulbs shot your mouths off about the pool we had going, and as a result, he’s lost his cushy job.”

  “Fuckem,” Stash said.

  “Yeah, well, like, Taxi just found out, now we got a wounded tiger looking for payback. So watch your ass. Another thing. Giving the secretary a hard time is like making fun of your cook. If I was you, I’d be real nice to the lady that makes up your paycheques. Scary can make your life real difficult in a hundred ways.” Jason stared at Stash. “Just to let you know.”

  Stash put on a show of indifference.

  “You don’t think so?” Jason countered. “How many unpaid bills you got? Any ex-wives or lawyers chasing you? When they finally track you down, she can get right on that garnishee notice, or she can wait a couple of weeks. Taxi was lucky it was Scary. She spoke up for him. All he got was a layoff. Making a crack about fucking a secretary should get you fired and banned from McMurray for life.”

  “It was a joke,” Stash said, jutting out his chin.

  “Yeah, well, find out how she got her nickname. If that doesn’t scare you, nothing will.”

  “What happened?” Dougdoug asked.

  “She didn’t like somebody’s jokes,” Jason deadpanned. “All any woman here has to do is say something to the right person and you are gone. And with a charge like sexual harassment, you will stay gone.”

  Jason flipped the page on his clipboard. Stash glared back at the several sets of eyes quietly staring at him.

  Jason put his clipboard down and looked at the crew. “The shutdown, you’ve already heard, is repairs on the coker. Today, we’re on day three of a twenty-four-day shutdown. At midnight on day twenty-four, they’ll seal up this coker. Then fifty-five thousand barrels of oil will run through it every day. Anything and anybody still inside this coker at midnight of the twenty-fourth day will end up in the gas tank of some Volvo.

  “The coker is the guts of the refinery,” he continued. “They’ll bullshit you and tell you that they’ve upgraded their processes, but the fact is, basic refinery technology has never changed. All the refinery does is distil oil, just like they did a hundred years ago. The operators can make adjustments to valves and tanks for a couple of days, but without that coker, this whole refinery will come to a shuddering, constipated stop. So when the company says they’ll start up on at midnight on the fifteenth of March, they will start up at midnight on the fifteenth of March.

  Jason looked at his clipboard.

  “The mechanics, Too-Tall, Shaky, and Roy will be cutting out the places and pieces that need to be repaired. The engineers have marked them with spray paint. However, call before you cut. Talk to your foreman, get his okay.

  “You welders? Scotch, Double Scotch, Lobotomy, and Pops. You will be working with, and help setting up, the mechanics. You welders and mechanics, get together.”

  There was a general scraping of chairs as the welders and the mechanics moved together.

  “You riggers?” Several men raised their hands. “You riggers—that includes you, Stash, Mongo—will be hoisting the scrap out of the coker that the mechanics are cutting off, and then you will be lowering it to the ground. You’ll stack it on those pallets provided. After all the worn-out metal is removed, you’ll be raising the new pieces back in. It’s a dirty and dangerous job, so watch your fingers.” Jason held up his hand, the one with the missing finger.

  “Before we break into teams, everybody helps everyone else. This is too small a shutdown for guys to coast. When you don’t have anything to do, the mechanics will help the riggers, the welders will help the mechanics and so on. Everybody pitches in. If anybody wants to play prima donna and stand around saying that helping out is not your job... well then, Slick, I’ll make damned sure it won’t be. All it takes is a couple of ‘Do Not Rehire’s to the union and your days of making the big money will stop real quick.

  “We got a job to do. We got less than twenty-two days to go. So let’s get her
done.”

  Day Three

  ( Starting Over )

  Nobody starts a fight in the Tamarack Bar. You are out of your mind if you get into a beef there, and more likely, you’ll be out of a job. If you get fired for fighting in the Tamarack, it’ll cost you a half a million dollars in lost wages because you’ll get banned from every refinery in Fort McMurray. The Tamarack contains some of the hardest characters you’ll ever find, but the Tamarack is the safest bar in Fort McMurray.

  The oil company, in an uncommon display of common sense, allowed that it was better to allow their workers to enjoy a drink within staggering distance of their construction camp beds than to have a bunch of drunks rocketing up and down Highway 63. The solution was to build a bar adjacent to the construction camp right beside the refinery: the Tamarack.

  Originally a double-wide trailer, the Tamarack has a small stage at one end, dartboards at the other, and a standup bar in the middle. But it’s not how the Tamarack is set up on the inside that dictates every action that goes on within its walls; it’s where the pub itself is located.

  Drunk or sober, nobody ever forgets where they are when they’re at the Tamarack. Even inside the bar, every once in a while, you can smell that refinery. Everyone knows you can drink at the Tamarack—just don’t get slobbering drunk. You can drink at the Tamarack—just don’t do it too often. You can drink at the Tamarack—you just better be a happy drunk.

  My companion and I had been in the Tamarack for a couple of hours now, sipping beer and staying in that sweet spot between euphoric and drunk. Only the two of us talking, end of the shift quiet.

  I’ll call him Slim. He was dark and rough-complexioned. His coworkers said he carried moods around with him like an old toolbox. As I remember it, he was a sheet metal worker. We had been on the same job sites, met the same characters, worked for the same companies, but we had never met until now. Beers, loneliness, and meeting someone from home in a strange bar loosened our tongues.

  We laughed about the sheet metal worker who we both knew, who once took a dump out on the frozen land without noticing that he’d shit into the hood of his parka—not until he stood and put his hood up.