Feeling Weird in Fort Mac
The piece Soul Stock by Patrick Martinez hangs in the Kenneth C. Griffin Hall at the Whitney Museum of Art in New York.
As part of my research for “I Don’t Want Your Millions (Billions), Mister,” I visited the training center for the United Brotherhood of Carpenters in northern Alberta. Hundreds of miles from large population centers, this area is the center of Canadian oil production. Members of the Carpenters Union who are trained there mainly work in scaffolding, the temporary skeleton-like structures that are erected around industrial facilities to allow other workers to safely perform maintenance activities.
Surreal is the word that first came to mind when visiting the area, physically, psychologically. The landscape is unique; the social and political structures are as well. Weird is another way to describe it, especially for first time visitors, like me.
Coming from the US, where things are definitely weird, the area seems like an extension of global weirdness. In response, I wrote this short essay.