Thoughts on living and working in Fort McMurray.

cul·ture shock:
It hit at moments when I didn’t expect it would, but maybe that’s the whole the point.
During the first few weeks I walked around asking myself, ‘what’s different?’ ‘what’s new?’ Now I know better, now I know: what isn’t?

Life here is fast. A shock to the system in the beginning. You’re up and ready to go anywhere and everywhere at a moment’s notice. It’s led to some of the most remarkable experiences I’ve had here, and for that I remain eternally open to extemporaneous days of tree planting on the fen and taking a nine-seater over to Fort Chipewyan (locally known as ‘Chip’), or whatever else they have un-planned for me.

Chip is one of the most recent highlights in my mind, so it will be, however unfair to the other great stuff, spotlighted here. It sits on the western tip of Lake Athabasca and is the oldest settlement in Alberta with a population of about a thousand people. Chip is a little hamlet with some glorious spots, but the barrenness and hardship is conspicuous. The disparity between Mac and Chip is keenly felt, but in Chip the way of life is simple and I perhaps appreciate that the most. I can say with certainty that what I did not appreciate to any extent was the barrage of mosquitos, June bugs and horse flies. I felt like I was in one of those Tom-Cruise-invasion-of-Earth movies — or is that Brad Pitt — where they think they’re safe in the car but then the enemy invader shows up and assails the car at all entry points. Yes, my time in Chip was that exciting. Constantly concerned that you’ll find a chunk of skin missing and in the mandible of a June bug, or ‘bulldog’, as they call the horse flies, will do that to you.

I have also never felt so flammable in my life. The amount of ‘bug dope’, as they call it, I had on was surely enough to kill a small rodent, yet still I managed to get bitten in places that cause you to stop and wonder how the biters got in there. In Chip no one goes by their given name, your nickname is your name and one particular bite to the cheek earned me the moniker ‘bubbles’. When the bite swelled up to the size of a decently sized nectarine one of my co-workers couldn’t help but exclaim: “Nobody told us we were taking the bubble kid up here with us!” Alas, I tell myself that the nickname comes from a place of love and concern for this girl whose blood seems to scream ‘bite me’. Up North where the biters have bodies the size of your thumb, I’m that table at the grocery store that has everyone clamouring around it, grabbing for a bite because the samples are free.

As for the rest of the experience, I thought that the one month mark would be more significant than it turned out to be. The moments of nostalgia — the uncanny similarity of the public bus but the unfamiliarity of the roads, the well-known smell of a back porch BBQ but the unfamiliarity of the chef when you look up — have passed. It has been one of the easier transitions that I’ve made and I have to say that it is in large part due to the people around me. Meeting friends is not an issue when you live in an apartment complex where above, below and to either side you’ve got other students just like you but also not like you (in the best possible ways). Good peoples is the most accurate way to describe it. Impromptu midnight strolls in pyjama bottoms, ceiling morse code, an, in-a-word, amazing (thank goodness) roommate, and late night conversations in dimly lit rooms after all the icing, beer pong howling and usual shenanigans, is the stuff that makes life here unique. The apartment hallways are a bit of a wonder to me. I’ve learned to walk with a purpose every time I go through them. As I pass each of the sections which are bookended by swinging doors, I’m greeted by a different smell: weed, urine, someone’s dinner, diesel, something unidentifiable but unpleasant, a combination of any of the above. I suppose it’s all part of the charm, though.

Working here is a different world. There are rules I’m not used to following: 3-point contact on the stairs, no USBs in computers, personal protective equipment (long sleeves and pants, hard hat [a ‘lid’], reflective vest [‘stripes’], gloves, protective glasses, ear plugs, steel-toed boots) at certain areas on site. And then there are the people, real characters these people. The sociological me is fascinated. I watch their antics — one snatching a pen out of another’s hand like it’s the last honey cruller at Timmy’s, or one going full out honey badger on another while I sit right beside them — and I absorb it all. It took me a while, but I guess I realized it when my mentor barked at me to get back to work as I walked to the water cooler (all in jest I realized after standing frozen for a split second). Or maybe it was when, after using all sorts of variations of my name, he simply resorted to calling me ‘grasshopper’. Or perhaps it was one of those times the co workers were joshing about me and my west coast sensibilities. That is, it took me a while but I see now that I am being re-raised by this Fort Mac office family, and my greatest hope and fear is that I will return home a tougher, tan, human squeeter-repeller with a potty mouth (hazard of the workplace). They have big plans for me and I can’t help but want to make them proud. It’s my time to shine like a plate of glazed ham hocks in a white wine reduction on an episode of a Food Network show.