‘The oil and gas industry felt like a toxic ex I couldn’t stay away from’

I dropped out of school for a semester to work on a pipeline in Northern Alberta. I would go back, even if I hated it when I was there.

*Names of certain individuals have been changed to protect their anonymity 

A text from my sister, Sarah*, came in: “Can you pass a drug test?” 

Getting a job in the oil and gas industry was vastly different to any hiring process I’ve experienced before. There was no application form, no cover letter, and no job posting. I emailed Sarah my resume, she forwarded it to her boss in Calgary, and he called me. It was a Friday. The phone call wasn’t even ten minutes. He asked if I was Sarah’s sister, if I could be in Grande Prairie A.S.A.P., and if I had any experience with Microsoft Office. That was it. I was hired. They sent me an email with videos to watch, and forms to fill out. 

That Monday, I dropped my university courses, took my drug test, passed it, and packed all my clothes. I flew out early Tuesday morning from Abbotsford to Calgary, and then took  a small plane to Grande Prairie, Alberta — my new home for the next three months. 

It felt like freedom. I moved away from a crazy roommate, and stayed with my sister and her boyfriend for two weeks while I waited for an Airbnb. 

My first day on the job was long. I woke up at 4 a.m., and didn’t arrive in Grande Prairie until 11 a.m. Sarah picked me up from the airport, we briefly shared a hug in the snow and cold wind. We made a pit stop to drop off my luggage so it wouldn’t freeze in her vehicle. Then we left for the hour-long drive to Hythe, where the site and office were located. It was -18°C, a temperature I had never experienced before in my life. It never gets that cold in the Lower Mainland, ever. It only got colder within my first two weeks in Alberta, reaching -42°C at points. 

As we drove to Hythe, I fought to stay awake while sipping on a Red Bull and eating Wendy’s chicken strips. Sarah ran through some information I needed to know. It was one of the few times I stayed awake the entire drive. 

“Patricia is going to train you. I didn’t want her here, but she’s here. Just smile and nod. Do what she tells you, and after she leaves to go back to Dawson Creek, I’ll show you the faster way to do it.” 

Patricia was in her forties, and worked in the industry for most of her life. It was all she knew, but that didn’t mean she had worked on a project of this scale before. Patricia was a heavy smoker, and vaped in our trailer constantly. The blue raspberry and cotton candy smell lingered after she left. Her brown hair was always in a low ponytail. Her office attire was sweatpants and a baggy hoodie. Business casual was not in anyone’s vocabulary.

The trailer itself was bigger than it looked. There were two offices on either side, and a long desk across the back wall with three sections built in. I sat at the far right desk. There were mats at the entrance so the floors didn’t get covered in dirt, melted snow, or other grime throughout the week. 

In addition to Sarah and I, our trailer housed John’s office. I still don’t know what he did. I just know he was hardly doing his job while in his office. I wore AirPods when he was working to prevent myself from getting irritated by any sounds he made. He would start the coffee machine, but then let it run for an hour before returning to make a cup. He would also play videos loudly from his speakers with his door wide open. His favourite meal was a sort of chicken and rice dish from the Co-op down the road. It smelled so bad when it was heated up, my sister and I would open all the windows and doors, and vacate the trailer, no matter the temperature. Other than the food and an occasional hello, we didn’t interact much. 

Dave was the project engineer, which really meant he didn’t have a real reason to be on the project. My employer had won the bid to be contracted by a larger company, which had their own engineers on the pipeline. We were there to provide welders, labourers, and quality control. I think Dave was only there since he was close with the superintendent, Richard. The only downside to him was that he never looked at his emails, and never did the paperwork side of his job, either. That fell to my sister.

Hythe, Alberta is about an hour drive from Grande Prairie. It can’t be called a town, or even a village. In 2021, the community of about 800 people voted to officially become a hamlet. The change from village to hamlet meant Hythe no longer had a mayor or council. Instead, it was governed by the local county, saving the community from increasing property taxes and other unsustainable costs. I knew none of that until I no longer worked there. I only knew that Hythe was tiny, seemed dead, and truck thefts were exceedingly common; workers would leave their trucks running and unlocked while they ran into the one gas station or Co-op due to the cold. 

While we worked in Hythe, we lived in Grande Prairie, a thriving city with a population of almost 70 000. The local economy came from oil and gas, agriculture, and forestry. In the 1950s, oil and natural gas were discovered in the nearby areas. In the late 1970s, a gas field was discovered, causing rapid growth during the oil boom. Another large boom happened in the 1990s, due to an international demand for oil, natural gas, and forest products. Nowadays, the focus is on building pipelines, developing new energy, and natural gas. 

Grande Prairie exists in stark contrast to Fort McMurray, one of the most well-known oil towns in Canada due to the 2016 fire. Fort McMurray is located in the middle of the Athabasca oil sands, east of Grande Prairie, and the money comes from mining the oil sands to produce bitumen, also known as crude oil. 

The schedule was simple, I was being paid from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m., which included the two hours of travel. We had to be onsite from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. My alarms were set for 5 a.m., so I would be ready by 5:30 a.m. I am not a morning person. I would stay up until midnight, only to be awake five hours later. The lack of sleep was something I was used to, but the long hours only drained me more. Sundays were the only day I had off and even then, that wasn’t guaranteed. At one point, we worked 13 days in a row to get caught up on paperwork. 

First, we’d turn on the computers. We responded to any vendors and contractors that had sent inquiries, invoices, or estimates, saving the files and printing them to put aside for later. The foremen trickled in typically between 7:10–7:30 a.m. to drop off time sheets and sometimes to update us on the latest gossip, drama, or changes in the project. 

The night shift foremen would email in their time sheets: only one knew how to operate excel on his phone, and the other two would send grainy photos. One of the night foremen, Joe, was old. He was in his late sixties or early seventies, and always left notes on his time sheets to make us smile. One note said, “The sun did our jobs for us during the day” with a sketch of a sun with a smiley face. His crew was supposed to be shoveling snow, but thanks to the sun, they had less work that night. 

Joe would send Sarah photos of his time sheet. They were so grainy, and his phone was cracked from dropping it countless times. He had to have his second-in-command demonstrate how to take photos and send them through WhatsApp and iMessage. Luckily, he would also drop off his time sheets every few days as well, so we could have the physical copies to make life easier.

Once we printed off the few that were emailed in, I organized all the time sheets to ensure we weren’t missing any once we printed off the few emailed in. The timesheets were compared to the previous day to check for glaring differences, and then inputted. 400 names dwindled down over the course of three months to 10 by the end, as crews got laid off. 

The data had to be double- and triple-checked before it could be sent to payroll, where it was checked again for any errors before they were finally approved, and the company contracting us could be billed. I got to see how much everyone and everything was being billed for. We were charging them $1000 a day just for me, meanwhile I saw just half of that. 

The project was costing them over $500 000 a day when I arrived. It cost $430 million total for us to build it. By the end, it was costing maybe $30 000 a day.

Invoices and estimates from vendors would be double-checked and entered. Fresh time sheets would be printed, and placed in the foremen’s mail boxes so they could grab them. It was mundane, routine, even easy once I got the hang of it. Soon, I was down to maybe five hours of work a day, forcing myself to slow down everything. I was typing as slow as I could, double-checking, triple-checking, and rereading everything just to make tasks last longer. I’d have a movie or Formula One race playing on my phone, hidden behind the keyboard in case anyone opened the door behind me.

I barely saw the sun. Having to go outside the trailer and walk across the empty lot to the bathroom was the only bit of sun that I saw. 

Having lived surrounded by mountains and forests my whole life, northern Alberta was completely different. The skies were wide open, nothing to block the view for miles. It was almost a culture shock to hear the people calling foothills “mountains”. They were barely hills. There were no snow-capped peaks until we drove to Dawson Creek.

The sunrises and sunsets were spectacular. The skies danced with colour. Though, most mornings and evenings, we only saw darkness, arriving and leaving long after the sun had done its duty for the day. 

It’s strange how nature can affect emotions. Having grown up in the Fraser Valley, I was used to mountains surrounding me, hiding me, holding me close. Moving to Victoria, I saw mountains across the ocean, but also within and just outside the city. They were still there, keeping watch. Here, with no tall peaks rising to the sky, I felt exposed, on guard, tense. I could feel myself being worn down, exhausted at the end of each day. Emotions were bubbling just beneath the surface and it was all I could do to not cry some days.

24 hours a day in the same house, office, and vehicle as my sister was starting to affect me. We had no breaks from each other, she was my boss at work and my older sibling at home. I didn’t have a space that was mine. 

I felt relaxation I hadn’t felt in months once my Airbnb was available. My shoulders weren’t tense when I walked through the front door. I had no one to update on my every day; no one who would get upset if I decided I wanted to go out on my one free night to the pub-turned-nightclub. I only went out twice; it was too crowded, too cold, and too full of people that have known each other their whole lives. But it was my choice, no one else’s. That was what mattered. 

It was a break from the beige walls to see the dark green walls every night. I always told myself I would read when I got home, but then would inevitably curl up in my bed to watch Netflix. I barely read, despite buying a new book every other week at the closest bookstore in town — a Coles at the mall.

After a few weeks, I saw why these men that complained about their jobs and hated almost everything about them kept coming back.

The majority of them weren’t from Grande Prairie, or even Alberta. They came from the West and East Coasts. They came to make money, the kind of money they wouldn’t make anywhere else. One foreman was a single dad who spent his falls and winters working, to spend his springs and summers collecting EI so he could spend time with his son. Another foreman worked winters to pay for his company on Vancouver Island: taking tourists boating and scuba diving in the summers.

It was like a drug, seeing the paycheques every two weeks. I obsessively checked my email on the day pay stubs were sent out and the money was deposited into my account. It was an adrenaline rush to see just how much I was making in a warm office, doing maybe seven hours of actual work in a 12-hour day. It was addicting, drawing me in more and more. 

The oil and gas industry felt like a toxic ex I couldn’t stay away from. It keeps you trapped, always coming back for more. It really had all those boys and men trapped too. They had mortgages, trucks, families, drinking problems, and drug addictions to fund. Sure, you had to take a drug test to get hired, but if you passed, you didn’t have to take one again while working at that company unless you caused too much trouble. All you had to do was stay sober for roughly thirty days and you were golden, even then, sometimes you didn’t have to be sober or clean; night shifts always needed workers, and not a lot of crews were willing to do it. 

Dave, the project manager, was taking steroids — a drug that wasn’t tested for. He would go through “roid rages”, but since he was in a different trailer, I thought I would be lucky and never experience one. I was wrong. He came into the trailer one day, slipped off his shoes, and walked to the printer. 

I was on the other side of the trailer, as far away as I could be from the printer without going into the office. Sarah was at the middle desk, a body between Dave and me. I was grateful for that when he started to slam his fists into the printer, over and over.

“Fucking stupid printer!” He got louder. “Must be broken. Why aren’t you working!” 

Sarah and I made eye contact. We both stopped typing and made no sudden movements. We didn’t want to call any attention to ourselves. I curled into my chair, trying to become one with it. He kept slamming his fists into the printer, one that wasn’t even owned by our company; it was a rental. 

The door opened behind me. Chris, the head Quality Control guy, popped his head in with a stack of papers in his hand, “Does this belong to any of you? I think someone selected the wrong printer.”

Dave immediately stopped hitting the printer, turned towards us, and let out a laugh, “Ah, that’s my bad. Technology, ya know?” 

He walked across the trailer to Chris, not even sparing a glance in our direction. Once he grabbed the papers, I turned back to my computer to continue entering more data, or at least looking like I was. Sarah and I didn’t talk about what had just happened. We ignored it and acted like it never happened. 

The industry knows what will get your interest. She’ll keep coming after you. When she has you again, everyday is a fight, and you remember why you left her in the first place. Once you decide you’re done again, you swear this is it and you won’t go back. You tell everyone you’re done, but then that late night text comes. You up? And you go crawling back, unable to resist the temptation of just one more night. I would go back, even if I hated it when I was there.

Money can be a great motivator. I was willing to drop everything and move somewhere I’d never been just for the chance to earn some. I needed it. The chance to earn almost double an hour was enticing, no matter who my coworkers were. I might even tolerate John for a month, just for another large paycheque. I would do just enough hours to qualify for EI again, two or three months of guaranteed money was just a quick questionnaire away. It was worth it.

As crews, then people on site started to get laid off, Sarah and I lost our mutually disliked coworkers. I was so relieved when John was finally gone. There was peace for a moment. Sarah quickly rose to the occasion to get under my skin: from the way she typed on a keyboard to loudly chewing on food, though it never stank as bad as that Co-op chicken and rice. Any loud noise had me rolling my eyes, glaring, and turning up my music. I was miserable, and I was determined to make anyone I could, miserable too. Mostly that just meant Sarah. I would snap at any comment, get pissed if she made any stops on the way home, and ignored her whenever possible. 

The project was coming to a close. The rented office trailers were being sent back to cut down on expenses. Sarah and I were sent to work in Dawson Creek. As we both rented, and neither of us could move for the few weeks we would be there, so we drove the hour and a half there and back, six days a week, for two weeks instead. 

New investors came on, and the founder of the company left. The new owners were clearing house. At the Dawson office, we got almost daily updates on who was let go, most of them had been with the company for years and were high up in the ranks.

Closing out the project meant tracking down all the vendors and contractors that were hired by us. We had to ensure that we had all the invoices, that they were approved, and all payments had been made. We also had to ensure that the numbers all lined up, and that no vendor was trying to overcharge and change the agreed upon rates. There was pressure to close out as soon as possible, but many vendors weren’t cooperating.

We were placed into a conference room to work. I just wanted to sleep and go home. I stopped caring about the job. Sarah was stressed that they no longer wanted to pay us Living Out Allowance (LOA) as we were no longer in the field, but we weren’t based in Dawson Creek either, and we weren’t at home. It took threatening to quit and a higher-up employee to plead our case. 

We had to watch what we said and how loud we spoke, since the other administrative workers viewed us as girls who didn’t know what we were doing. Patricia was there working on her own projects, unaffected by any of the recent firings, still insisting her way was the only way. She would routinely talk about us as girls who “weren’t able to do anything on their own.” 

We just had to make it two or three weeks, and then it’d be the end of March, and I’d be done. I figured Sarah would be able to handle the last bit of work on her own.

“Fuck you. Fuck this. I’m done!” I pulled over into a side road. Sarah had hit me, not once but twice, while I was driving her car. 

I had hit my limit of being stuck with her for 12 hours a day. It was longer if we drove to Sexsmith for free gas from a company lot. It was one of those days. I was itching to get home.

The commute, one day off, and constant changes in the company structure had gotten to me. I was barely sleeping, barely eating, just trying to get through each work day with my head down. The snack that she opened to eat once she got back in the vehicle, stank. It was some all-natural peanut butter homemade bar. I couldn’t handle it. 

I snapped. I refused to drive until she put it away. She kept telling me to behave, that there were cameras, and they could see us. We were still on company property.

We started getting louder, yelling at each other until I started driving. That was when she hit me hard in the side. I was in shock that she did that while I was driving her car. 

I tried to hit her back. She hit me again and called me a bitch. I pulled over. 

I put the car in park and got out, “I fucking quit! I’m done. I never want to see you again, and I don’t care what you tell them tomorrow, but I’m not going. I’m done.”

Sarah tried to backpedal. She didn’t want me standing on a side road in the middle of nowhere, where girls sometimes just go missing. I didn’t care.

I called our dad. He tried to calm me down. I was too angry. He hung up and called her to say I would stay on the phone with him until a taxi came, that I wouldn’t call one until she left. 

I didn’t realize until after that I hadn’t grabbed my winter coat. It was zero degrees, officially, but with the wind, it felt so much colder. I was facing the consequences of my actions. I had moved to another province, dropped out of university for the semester, and quit my job. It was time to go home again. I wanted warmth back in my body. I wanted to see the sun on a daily basis. I wanted to read, and I wanted to spend all the money that I had just made.

The money went fast. Tuition, rent, and groceries have taken almost all of it by now. Books took a decent chunk too — hardcovers aren’t cheap. The bit I have left is being saved to make payments after I finally graduate. My money isn’t my money. 

A year after having come back, I miss the money. I miss it being solely mine, though I don’t believe it ever was. The student loans were always breathing down my neck. Now, I’ve just put a little bit of space between us. 

I dream of getting that call saying there’s work, for that late night text to come in. I wouldn’t go crawling back, though. I’d go with a smile. 

Life isn’t cheap, but northern Alberta was.