If a reader opens Ducks expecting historically quirky canapès, they won’t find them. Reading her other books, by comparison, is like snacking at an hors d’oeuvre table, perhaps at a clown conference, while devouring Ducks is a full multicourse dining experience, the long French kind that last for hours. I loved both books and was eager for whatever came next.Īt first glance, everything about this new title indicated it promised to be a completely new kind of book: the somber cover art, the heft of it at 432 pages, and, most importantly the fact that it is a graphic memoir rather than a collection of comic strips. Those huge eyes! Step Aside, Pops (2015), the follow up to Hark a Vagrant offered the same wonderful view into human history that is uniquely Beaton’s, drawn with similar spare lines. The loose lines and facial expressions so full of comedic voice. It’s no surprise, given this book’s genius, that Kate Beaton has become a New York Times #1 Best-selling author. But a winter storm had delayed deployment of the system, a Syncrude spokesman said.When I discovered Hark a Vagrant (2011), the printed book, having missed the early web comic postings of Kate Beaton, I laughed with utter delight from start to finish as she made history both hilarious and current. Migrating waterfowl are supposed to be kept from the poisonous waste-water ponds at the mines, where massive shovels pull tons of oil-laden sand from the ground, by sound-cannons that simulate gunfire.

“I’m deeply disappointed and I know the Syncrude leadership team shares that disappointment.” “Without question, I think it was not only an unfortunate event but a really tragic one,” Imperial CEO Bruce March told reporters following the company’s annual meeting. Imperial has a 25 percent stake in oil sand producer Syncrude Canada Ltd, owner of the tailings pond in northern Alberta, where the ducks died earlier this week because a warning system meant to keep them off wasn’t operating. The death of about 500 ducks that landed in a pond of oily, toxic sludge operated by Canada's biggest oil sands producer was tragic, the chief executive of Imperial Oil Ltd said on Thursday. A truck drives down a street at Syncrude's oil tar sands operation near Fort McMurray, Alberta in this file photo.

Ducks oil sands