Last Day!

To everyone else at work yesterday, it was just another normal day. It was a busy day, the crushers were moving, the pit was swarming with equipment, loaders moving conveyors, rock trucks lined up right out of the pit, waiting to be loaded with gravel...and in the midst of all the bustling, my head was also swarming with activity, last minute tasks and loose ends that needed tying were lined up in my head further than the trucks in the pit.

It was 567 days ago I started working for TBG. I never thought that number would get so high, looking back now it's a pretty significant chunk of my mature life gone by. With the long hours and the busy schedule I've had in Fort McMurray the time has gone by fast, especially of course this last couple weeks. And as I had expected, it was actually quite difficult finally saying goodbye to the people I've come to know as much more than co-workers. My work family out at CNRL spends far more time together than most actual families do at home, and they're a really great bunch of guys and gals.

One friend I will sure miss is Trevor King. Trevor is from Red Harbour, Newfoundland. He's an equipment operator, been with TBG for 3.5 yrs, now owns a home in the Fort, has a wife and son, and works his heart out every day. Well, he did anyway before he sprained his ankle. So now our new Newfie of the week will be helping last week's winner Hazel in the office while he's on light duty.

See ya round, Trevor buy.


It's strange to be so melancholy on one's birthday, but I find myself today somewhat aimless as I still struggle to let go of this last chapter of my life and prepare to take on the next. You may be very surprised to hear that I find it hard to leave, but it's true. Every day I've worked at the same place with the same people, my mind has been saturated with the concerns of TBG engineering for a long, long time.

Throughout the day yesterday I kept catching myself thinking "ok, tomorrow I have to do this, oh wait, I won't be here" or "I think the generator is going to need fuel tomorrow". It's just so difficult to extricate yourself from an environment that you allow yourself to be consumed by for so long, especially when it's a positive one. I can't even imagine what it would be like to leave after working somewhere for 5 or 10 years!!

One neat thing I was able to do at work on my last couple days is I brought in a flight navigational chart of Newfoundland which I will be using to fly by in a few months, and a couple of my favourite co-workers showed me where their home towns are so that I can fly over, take some pictures, maybe find a free place to stay the night. After all, what people say about Fort McMurray is true, it is the second biggest city in Newfoundland. I've already learned the lingo, so I'll have no trouble understanding the locals.

Until then, it's time to get ready, time to pack and clean and finish removing myself from the life I've had here. Physically I didn't accumulate very much, so there's really not that much to pack, but in terms of the experiences, the lessons and relationships, I really am leaving with a lot more than I arrived with.

Camp

Below are a couple pictures of the Coker stands being built. These were taken last fall long before the actual cokers were constructed in Edmonton and hauled up Hwy 63 to the CNRL site where the second largest crane in the world has now lifted them onto the stands.





This is the first camp of 3 being constructed at the CNRL Horizon Project site, about 100km north of Fort McMurray. This photo was taken last fall when construction of the site was just starting to accelerate. The camp now houses over a thousand men and women!

Most of the mine sites surrounding Fort McMurray are such a long drive from town that companies provide housing right at their work site. They have to build camps big enough to house often thousands of workers. To many people, the idea of working in a place so remote that it's beyond the distance of a tolerable commute, may seem out of this world. Well, if you saw what an open pit mine looks like, you might think that it does look like the surface of another planet.

The truth is, this town of 60 thousand or so people, could not possibly provide enough housing for the thousands of workers that are pouring into the mines every day to work. Even with camps on all the major work sites, there is still such an inflated demand for housing right in town that it's almost impossible to find an apartment to rent, or even a hotel room! Housing developments are going up, but with limited availability of labour and materials, it's impossible to keep up with the demand of such rapid growth. The result? Houses that would sell for $250,000 in Edmonton are selling for almost double that here, a town only one tenth the size!

It can be a pretty sweet deal living right on the site where you work, no long drives every day, meals all prepared, room cleaning service, tv, etc. But, it's not always such a sweet deal for the nearby town almost buckling under the pressures of Fort McMurray's own population alone. If people wonder why there's a 30min line up at Tim Hortons, or why it's hard to get service at Canadian Tire, you don't have to look much further than the steady stream of pickup trucks coming into town from the mine sites every weekend and evening. The workers who are out there for 10, 14, even 24 days straight living in camp, eventually need to come into town for banking, entertainment, medical needs, shopping, everything. It would be hard enough for any normal town to meet its own needs during a period of rapid growth, but add to that the demands of a ghost population in the tens of thousands, and you've got serious problems. Even worse is the fact that places like McDonalds and Safeway can't possibly compete with the wages of oil sands mining companies, so they simply aren't retaining employees! Everywhere you go in town there are help wanted signs and long lineups. But, you can't blame the transient workers either. Can you really knock a guy for sluggin his guts out day after day in the mud, snow, rain, the darkness of endless nightshifts, so that he can send money back to his family, put his kids through school, get out of debt? Whatever the motivation, everyone has to make a living, and there is certainly money to be made up here, lots of it, but the opportunities haven't come without a price being paid, by the town, by the young victims of highway accidents marked by white crosses and hard hats along that long highway snaking its way to the plant sites, by the wives and children of men working so hard that they barely get to see them... There's definitely a human side to the boom town phenomenon, it's not just big machines, oil exports and shiny SUVs.

The human story of Fort McMurray is not purely doom and gloom either, don't get me wrong. There is also a lot of good that comes out of and goes into this place. People may tell you about the out of control drug and alcohol abuse, the rampant levels of homelessness and prostitution in this town, and those social issues are present, but let me tell you what I've experienced. In the last year I have not locked my house door once, nor have I ever felt in danger walking anywhere alone, day or night. I have never met so many friendly Newfies in my life! However, I dare say that I would likely not meet such a proliferation of them even if I were to travel to the Rock itself. But it's not just the number of them. There are a lot of people here who have moved west for work or higher wages, from struggling communities in the maritimes or elsewhere, and the resulting multi-cultural blend has created a place where I think almost anyone can feel welcome, not like an outsider stealing a piece of the pie that rightfully belongs to one group or another. I've met people from all over Canada, and immigrants from all over the world. Doctors and cab drivers from Africa, engineers from Russia, you name it. But still, my favourite people are definitely the Newfies.

I hereby declare my favourite Newfie of the week:

Hazel Reid

And then there's this really strange character I've worked a lot with at TBG:
After making a stellar first impression by keeping the project manager and director of the company waiting at a restaurant, missing his first interview, he was eventually hired in the capacity of a quality control technician, and then moved his way into other positions, such as surveyor, "techy", and "enginerd". He is most famous for his ability to sleep through the bumpy ride to work, along with his tolerance of short people jokes and his incredible knowledge of potatoes.



In closing, I hope that my tales of the Fort do not depict only the bad and the ugly, but also some of the good. It's a different kind of place for sure, full of challenges and opportunities, but like any place in the world, I guess you get out what you put in, and there's always lots to learn. I'd say I've probably learned more and grown more in the last year here than I have in any other year of my life anywhere. I've grown closer to God, I've learned valuable skills that will stay with me for the rest of my life, and I've solidified a clearer vision of what I want for my future, not to mention securing myself a financial position with which to pursue it. What more can a guy ask?

Exit Strategy

The last month has been an insane frenzy of fix up jobs around the house, painting, cleaning, packing, ever slowly picking away at the mile long To-Do list while maintaining the usual 60hr+ work weeks. Tomorrow the FOR SALE sign will go up in the front yard and then I think it will hit me that it's all actually happening.

It's been a good ride though, I have to say. Thinking back to the day I first drove into the Fort, I never could have possibly imagined things turning out the way they did.

Working Nights

Two nights down, two to go. Tonight I am operating the truck scale at work, a job that I have never really done before. Ah yes, the night shift, some people prefer it even, those who get used to the darkness, never seeing the sun for months, sleeping during the day with blanket covered windows, ear plugs to block out the noise of traffic and children playing. Yes the night shift is different, but almost everyone working on site in this town has experienced it to some degree. Take Dave for example, one of our tennants at the Rosslyn Inn. He never worked a single day shift the entire 8 months or so he lived with us, and sometimes I'd go 2 or 3 weeks without even seeing him. When I'd leave for work in the morning he'd be on the bus coming home, and vise versa in the evening. It's a strange environment, this place of shift work and 24/7 construction. The plant sites, where all the tarsand is mined and processed into crude oil, never fully shut down. They're running 24/7 for 365 days a year! The plant site I'm on right now, CNRL, which is just under construction, is expected to produce oil for the next 75 years!! For the construction phase of this site alone they expect 4,000 workers by this summer, that's a lot of night shifts!