Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
TWO
THE GREAT BLACK NORTH
On April 28, 2008, a group of some sixteen hundred ducks landed on a lake near Fort
McMurray, Canada. It was a warm day for early spring in northern Alberta, the temperature
reaching into the mid-sixties. The ice on the water was still melting after the long winter. The
ducks were heading for nesting grounds in the green expanse of Canada's boreal forest—a
vast band of coniferous trees and wetlands that stretches clear across Canada and that
provides a summer home for half the birds in all North America.
Around these parts, though, a duck can't safely assume that a lake is in fact a lake.
This lake, for instance, was actually a huge tailings pond owned by the Syncrude corpora-
tion—“tailings pond” being a term of art in the mining industry for “waste reservoir.” As
the birds touched down, they became coated with oily bitumen residue. Most of them sank.
Others languished on the surface, waiting to be saved by human beings or videotaped by
journalists. Of the sixteen hundred birds, fewer than half a dozen survived. Ducks of the
world, beware of Alberta.
Syncrude had presumably hoped to keep its little duck holocaust private, but an anonym-
ous tipster reported the incident and, before the day was out, the company had a full-blown
public relations disaster on its hands. “Hundreds of Ducks Dead or Dying after Landing on
Syncrude Tailings Pond,” reported the
Western Star,
while the
Spectator
ran the cheeky “Tar
Pond Dooms Ducks to Death.” Within days, the scandal grew from mere corporate misfor-
