Literature Matters: Place and People in Kate Beaton’s Graphic Oil Sands Memoir Ducks
A public talk by English PhD student Jenna Miller
Date: Wednesday, Feb. 25
Time: 7:30 pm
Location: Grace-Westminster United Church Social Hall, 505-10th St. E., Saskatoon
Free and open to the public
About this event
Kate Beaton’s graphic memoir Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands (2022) reveals how the industrialized setting of Alberta’s oil sands affects not only the land and local wildlife—most notably the hundreds of ducks that died in a tailings pond—but also the people who live and work there. This talk explores how space and place shape human identity, and how the graphic medium allows Beaton to convey the connection between environment and self in ways that text alone could not. Ducks reveals a truth we too often ignore: we are not separate from the world we inhabit, and the world we create inevitably shapes who we become.
Literature Matters: Literature in the Community is a free public lecture series sponsored by the University of Saskatchewan Department of English.
Info: 306-966-1268 | english.department@usask.ca
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Literature Matters: Place and People in Kate Beaton’s Graphic Oil Sands Memoir Ducks
Feb 25, 2026
A public talk by English PhD student Jenna Miller