Alberta and Me

The day after 2,400 homes in Fort McMurray burned down in a forest fire, I was at a wine and cheese reception in New York City. A fellow graduate student, from Toronto, brought up the news. “It seems like karma for climate change, doesn’t it?” I wanted to slap her.

I’ve never been to Fort McMurray, the city of 68,000 people in the largest of Alberta’s oil sands regions. For someone born and raised in Edmonton, this is a neutral fact. My inability to drive is far stranger, and my lifelong habit of voting NDP is more common. (The capital city, nicknamed “Redmonton” for its tendency to swing left at the ballot box, was swept by Rachel Notley in May’s provincial election.) Still, the petroleum industry has loomed large in my family, as the place where men — almost always men — turned for work when jobs ­disappeared or debts piled up. Chief among them was my father, Randy.