Hawk
Dedication
Dear Reader
Hawk is a story about the Alberta Oil Sands. It shows the conflict within a family whose livelihood depends on the oil sands industry but whose health is also affected by it. I travelled to Northern Alberta to research this story, hoping to find a balance between opposing views of the industry, seeing first-hand the scale of the environmental and human impact.
My hope is that Hawk will raise awareness and promote thought and discussion among young Canadians, motivating them to help safeguard our people, our animals, our land, and our water.
— Jennifer Dance
To Joanna, James, Erin, Kate, Tarik,
Matthew, and Kim — for simply being!
“Men and nature must work hand in hand. The throwing out of balance of the resources of nature throws out of balance also the lives of men.”
— Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1935
CHAPTER ONE
Fort McMurray, Alberta, Canada
Less than an hour ago, I was Adam, the long-distance runner. Now I’m Adam, the boy who ...
I can’t even bring myself to say it.
The car engine dies, and I realize that we are in the garage, yet I have no recollection of the drive home from Dr. Miller’s office.
I stare through the windshield. The walls of the garage swim around me. My thoughts won’t move past this can’t be happening.
Angela walks around the car and opens my door. She’s my mother, but I never call her that. I figure she hasn’t earned the title. She didn’t raise me. Neither did my father. Most of the time, I don’t call him anything, but when I have to use a name, I call him Frank. I enjoy rubbing both their noses in the fact that although they are my biological parents, that’s as far as it goes. They never were and never will be Mom and Dad. They left me up in Fort Chipewyan when I was a baby, and they didn’t reclaim me until I was eight! Like I was a piece of lost luggage.
“It will be okay,” Angela says. “It will be okay.”
I climb out of the car and follow her into the house like a zombie. She’s like a zombie too, stuck on a repeat cycle of it will be okay.
I kick off my shoes and leave them where they lie. Angela puts them on the mat alongside hers. A question hits me like an arrow in the heart: how much longer will Angela have to deal with my mess? How much longer will she have to deal with me?
I feel strange, like I’m floating, not walking. Angela hands me the mail, and I put it on the kitchen counter. It’s the same routine as before, but nothing is the same as before. Everything is different. An hour ago, I would have pounced on the McDonald’s flyer, stuffing the coupons in my pocket, but now I couldn’t care less.
Life as I know it is over.
CHAPTER TWO
The female fish hawk is returning from the heavy humidity of the Texas marshes to the cool, crisp air of Northern Alberta where she was born, to the place where memory tells her that lakes and rivers are filled with fish, and men are few and far between. She has never made the migration in this direction, yet she knows the way.
She is here to find a mate.
With a roar, the plane races down the runway. The wheels leave the ground, and we rise into the air, the nose pointing steeply toward the bright blue sky. My stomach gets left behind, but that’s normal for me these days. I often feel as if I’m in several different pieces, all of them trying to stay together.
In seconds, Fort McMurray becomes a toy town, with Highway 63 stretched out like a piece of knotted string. I recognize the downtown core and then the miniature houses of Thickwood where I live. It should be exciting. It’s not. I’m numb.
Briefly, before the plane turns, I see the oil sands to the north, a strange, dull emptiness merging with the distant horizon. No forest. Nothing green. Just hazy brown sky and a landscape the colour of mud. In some strange way I feel as if I’m looking at myself … used up, depleted, empty.
The plane levels out, and we start our journey south. I look down on the river meandering in S-shaped loops through spruce-green wilderness. I know that I’m flying in the opposite direction of the flow. It’s going north, up to Lake Athabasca, where I grew up. A distant memory comes to me: water lapping gently against sand, and a little boat tipped upside down under the trees. For a second my heart feels like it might burst out of my chest. I can’t believe that I miss the old place. It’s been over six years since I left there and came south to live with Frank and Angela in Fort McMurray. I knew that McMurray was the oil-boom town, so I’d thought it would be dirty and oily and smoky. But it’s not! The sky is usually bright blue, and trees are everywhere. In summer, it’s like living in a green bowl with a river flowing right through the middle. In winter … not so much.
When I first arrived, I thought the coolest thing was the fast food. You could get anything — burgers, fries, pizza. Definitely better than eating fish all the time. Whether it was baked, stewed, fried, or made into soup, it was all still fish. The next best thing was the TV. My grandfather had an ancient box with rabbit ears that was right out of prehistoric times, so Frank’s flat-screen with countless channels kept me spellbound for hours. Even so, it wasn’t good enough for him. He soon replaced it with a thinner one, and now we have an awesome seventy-inch model. It’s almost like going to the movies.
At the beginning, Frank and Angela showered me with clothes and toys and video games. They were trying to buy me, but I didn’t care. I took it as payback for the years they gave me nothing. And I never gave an inch of affection in return. They still give me things, but the toys have morphed into the latest iPhone, iPad, and Wii, and the clothes include the best running gear on the market. So why is the old place on the shore of Lake Athabasca tugging at my heart? It doesn’t even have a McDonald’s. It doesn’t make sense. McMurray is my home. There’s fun stuff to do here, and people to do it with, and more girls to see in a minute than I would see all year up in Chip. My stomach lurches. I’m flying toward a very different future, one that I’m sure doesn’t involve fun, fast food, or girls. My heart sinks even lower at the thought of Chrissie, the only girl I’ve thought about for months, or did before all this hijacked my life. What are my chances with her now? Zip.
For the briefest moment, I see a bird flying north. I wish I was going with it. Instead I’m heading south, to Edmonton, to the Stollery Children’s Hospital. And I’m scared.
There’s nothing I can do.
I’m powerless.
I wipe my clammy palms on my jeans and force myself to breathe deeply, the way my running coach has taught me. It doesn’t help.
Angela is in the seat next to me, her fingers working the rosary beads in her lap. She’s praying under her breath. But when I listen hard, I hear the same phrase that she’s been mumbling all week. “It will be okay. It will be okay.”
I don’t believe her. I don’t think that she believes herself, either.
We fly through cloud. It hangs against the window, thick and damp and grey. I can’t see outside, any more than I can see my own future. I’m flying blind. It’s daunting.
There’s a jolt as the plane touches down. We’ve landed, yet I have little recollection of the last part of the flight. I’ve been reliving