Fault Lines: Life and Landscape in Saskatchewan’s Oil Economy

This combination of Eaton’s (Growing Resistance) informative, objective text and Zink’s haunting black-and-white photography—reminiscent of classic Depression-era portraits—strikingly documents a landscape whose transition from grain silos to oil pump-jacks has received scant attention; in studies of the Canadian oil economy, the prairie province of Saskatchewan has long been overshadowed by its petrochemical giant neighbor, Alberta. Eaton and Zink ably chronicle the history of Saskatchewan’s oil development, along with its economic and environmental impacts, through scores of interviews and visuals that illustrate life in a province subject to the boom-bust cycle of an industry dependent on world commodity prices. The stories of those most directly affected—family farmers whose often desperate need for additional cash opens the door to oil leases, First Nations people whose ongoing struggle for land rights recognition is overridden by developers, temporary foreign workers tied to uncertain contracts, women working in a predominantly male environment—come alive in all their nuance and humanity. The bars, hotels, and shops that support the oil economy also come into sharp focus. Zink and Eaton portray a precarious population with little control over an existence driven by unseen and unaccountable global forces. (Sept.)