Jennifer Dance - Hawk

Copyright Jennifer Dance, 2016

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise (except for brief passages for purpose of review) without the prior permission of Dundurn Press. Permission to photocopy should be requested from Access Copyright.

All characters in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. Energyse is a fictional oil sands company.

Project editor: Allison Hirst

Editor: Allister Thompson

Design: Jennifer Gallinger

Cover design: Laura Boyle

Epub Design: Carmen Giraudy

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Dance, Jennifer, author

Hawk / Jennifer Dance.

Issued in print and electronic formats.

ISBN 978-1-4597-3184-4 (paperback).--ISBN 978-1-4597-3185-1 (pdf).-

ISBN 978-1-4597-3186-8 (epub)

I. Title.

PS8607.A548H39 2016 jC813.6 C2015-907905-5

C2015-907906-3

We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for our publishing program. We also acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund and Livres Canada Books, and the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Book Publishing Tax Credit and the Ontario Media Development Corporation.

Care has been taken to trace the ownership of copyright material used in this book. The author and the publisher welcome any information enabling them to rectify any references or credits in subsequent editions.

J. Kirk Howard, President

The publisher is not responsible for websites or their content unless they are owned by the publisher.

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Dear Reader

Hawk is a story about the Alberta Oil Sands. It shows the conflict within a family whose livelihood depends on the oil sands industry but whose health is also affected by it. I travelled to Northern Alberta to research this story, hoping to find a balance between opposing views of the industry, seeing first-hand the scale of the environmental and human impact.

My hope is that Hawk will raise awareness and promote thought and discussion among young Canadians, motivating them to help safeguard our people, our animals, our land, and our water.

Jennifer Dance

To Joanna, James, Erin, Kate, Tarik,
Matthew, and Kim for simply being!

Men and nature must work hand in hand. The throwing out of balance of the resources of nature throws out of balance also the lives of men.

Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1935

CHAPTER ONE

Fort McMurray, Alberta, Canada

Less than an hour ago, I was Adam, the long-distance runner. Now Im Adam, the boy who ...

I cant even bring myself to say it.

The car engine dies, and I realize that we are in the garage, yet I have no recollection of the drive home from Dr. Millers office.

I stare through the windshield. The walls of the garage swim around me. My thoughts wont move past this cant be happening.

Angela walks around the car and opens my door. Shes my mother, but I never call her that. I figure she hasnt earned the title. She didnt raise me. Neither did my father. Most of the time, I dont call him anything, but when I have to use a name, I call him Frank. I enjoy rubbing both their noses in the fact that although they are my biological parents, thats as far as it goes. They never were and never will be Mom and Dad. They left me up in Fort Chipewyan when I was a baby, and they didnt reclaim me until I was eight! Like I was a piece of lost luggage.

It will be okay, Angela says. It will be okay.

I climb out of the car and follow her into the house like a zombie. Shes like a zombie too, stuck on a repeat cycle of it will be okay .

I kick off my shoes and leave them where they lie. Angela puts them on the mat alongside hers. A question hits me like an arrow in the heart: how much longer will Angela have to deal with my mess? How much longer will she have to deal with me ?

I feel strange, like Im floating, not walking. Angela hands me the mail, and I put it on the kitchen counter. Its the same routine as before, but nothing is the same as before. Everything is different. An hour ago, I would have pounced on the McDonalds flyer, stuffing the coupons in my pocket, but now I couldnt care less.

Life as I know it is over.

CHAPTER TWO

The female fish hawk is returning from the heavy humidity of the Texas marshes to the cool, crisp air of Northern Alberta where she was born, to the place where memory tells her that lakes and rivers are filled with fish, and men are few and far between. She has never made the migration in this direction, yet she knows the way.

She is here to find a mate.

With a roar, the plane races down the runway. The wheels leave the ground, and we rise into the air, the nose pointing steeply toward the bright blue sky. My stomach gets left behind, but thats normal for me these days. I often feel as if Im in several different pieces, all of them trying to stay together.

In seconds, Fort McMurray becomes a toy town, with Highway 63 stretched out like a piece of knotted string. I recognize the downtown core and then the miniature houses of Thickwood where I live. It should be exciting. Its not. Im numb.

Briefly, before the plane turns, I see the oil sands to the north, a strange, dull emptiness merging with the distant horizon. No forest. Nothing green. Just hazy brown sky and a landscape the colour of mud. In some strange way I feel as if Im looking at myself used up, depleted, empty.

The plane levels out, and we start our journey south. I look down on the river meandering in S-shaped loops through spruce-green wilderness. I know that Im flying in the opposite direction of the flow. Its going north, up to Lake Athabasca, where I grew up. A distant memory comes to me: water lapping gently against sand, and a little boat tipped upside down under the trees. For a second my heart feels like it might burst out of my chest. I cant believe that I miss the old place. Its been over six years since I left there and came south to live with Frank and Angela in Fort McMurray. I knew that McMurray was the oil-boom town, so Id thought it would be dirty and oily and smoky. But its not! The sky is usually bright blue, and trees are everywhere. In summer, its like living in a green bowl with a river flowing right through the middle. In winter not so much.