IN THE SHADOW of the BEAST
Two years after the monster fire, Fort McMurray struggles for a different future. Claudia Cattaneo
Christine Burton moved to Fort McMurray, Alta., from Toronto more than 24 years ago. She built a career in law, a family and a community as both a volunteer and municipal leader. As the oilsands boomed, there was more opportunity than she could handle, and her first employer — Suncor Energy Inc. — grew into one of Canada’s largest companies.
But the past few years have been tough. A prolonged oil price slump hit the oilsands hard just as environmentalists increased their pressure on governments and companies to stop building more facilities and badly needed pipelines. Jobs dried up, the economy crashed.
Burton persevered and grew her private practice. Her family is here, and so are other people she cares about: young women, foreign workers, artists and First Nations.
And then the thing locals call the Beast hit at the start of May 2016.
The Beast was a massive wildfire that eventually ravaged so much of Fort McMurray and the surrounding boreal forest that it became the most costly and damaging disaster on Canadian soil. All told, the fire caused at least $3.6-billion worth of damage, dwarfing the previous worst disaster, the $1.9-billion ice storm in Quebec in 1998.
But the pain felt was more than about the money. The psychological scars left by the Beast on the town’s residents are as deep as the physical ones it left on a blighted landscape. More than 88,000 people were forced from their homes during the first month of the fire, which wasn’t officially put out until Aug. 2, 2017, more than a year later.
Burton, who has been handling scores of insurance claims related to the disaster, said the trauma has been bigger than even a resilient community such as Fort McMurray can entirely handle.
“I have been through a number of downturns in this community,” she said. "By far, this is the deepest and the longest one.”
Thousands of those evacuated have not returned and probably won’t. But Burton did, and so did many others. There are signs of life, albeit a tougher life than the one during the boom times, but life nonetheless.
But two years after the Beast, the town and its residents are still fighting to get their lives back to normal.
On the waterfront of the Snye River, a popular recreation area near Fort McMurray’s core, Carmelo Daprocida, a homebuilder originally from Italy’s Calabria region, and Surekha Kanzig, a former municipal employee whose family came from South Africa, have teamed up to launch a fancy new restaurant: Surekha on the Snye.
The official opening at the beginning of May drew many community leaders, happy to see a new place for people to meet.
Daprocida is confident the restaurant will quickly be a hit, while Kanzig says it was her retirement dream and something for the community to feel good about after so much bleakness.
But returning to the good times won’t be easy for the people of Fort McMurray considering it is almost entirely dependent on the oil industry.
Yes, oil prices are recovering, which in this place is good news, though bad news for drivers here and elsewhere, and there are some new businesses opening. Mayor Don Scott said he even noticed the lineup at the local Tim Hortons is now as long and lively as it was before the downturn.
But the battle over pipelines is making any recovery more challenging by halting new projects, and a campaign against the oilsands continues to wreak havoc on the region’s reputation.
Efforts in British Columbia to block Kinder Morgan Canada Ltd.’s Trans Mountain pipeline expansion, which would carry oil produced in the nearby oilsands plants to the West Coast, are closely watched with mounting frustration.
Its construction would give Fort McMurray the push it needs to return to growth mode by opening new oil markets, said Kim Jenkins, a retired Cape Bretoner who moved here to teach Grade 4 and ended up running the Catholic school board — a progression not unusual in a region where careers quickly advance because skills are in such demand.
On the other hand, “philosophically or emotionally, if that (pipeline) is turned down, and you are sitting up here, it means nobody cares,” Jenkins said. “(Not having) that pipeline is bad for Alberta, but it crushes the spirit of Fort McMurray. And you can’t do things if your spirit is crushed.”
Mayor Scott worries even more about the ongoing mischaracterization of Fort McMurray in anti-pipeline and anti-oilsands campaigns.
“Often, people who criticize the region have never actually been here, and that is a big issue with me,” said Scott, who leads the regional municipality of Wood Buffalo, which includes Fort McMurray. “A lot of people have misconceptions about the region. We are a jewel of Canada and I want them to see it for themselves.”
Scott, a New Brunswicker who chose to build a law and political career in this Northern Alberta community after studying at the University of Cambridge in the U.K., even made a suggestion to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Alberta Premier Rachel Notley when they visited in April: hold a pipeline summit in Fort McMurray with people on all sides of the pipeline debate, to show everyone what the oilsands industry is really about.
Both leaders, he said, are considering the idea, but there’s no doubt the outside perception of the oilsands doesn’t match the way the community sees them or itself. Most residents come from somewhere else, are gogetters eager to build a better life, have a strong connection to the local Indigenous population and to the environment.
Bryan Rabik, managing director for the Fort McMurray region at ATB Financial, said he became painfully aware of the city’s image problem during the fire.
“One of the things that really broke my heart, when 80,000 of us were hurtling down the highway, was the social media (commentary) that Fort McMurray deserved it, because we are at the epicentre of an environmental debate,” he said. “All of us were trying to make our way through life.”
Before the fire, many of them were doing just that, even through the oil industry’s downturn.
Three million barrels of oil are produced around Fort McMurray every day, putting it in the same league as some of the world’s top producing countries. Less appreciated is that the town is also a leader in land reclamation and environmental technologies that reduce the impacts of oil extraction.
Indeed, the local view is that the oilsands’ industry is cleaning up Mother Nature’s oil spill, not harming the environment, by producing oil from the oil-soaked sand deposits it sits on.
Mayor Don Scott is worried about the coming year, particularly for the young. The oil industry’s many setbacks mean trauma remains widespread. Typically, when disaster strikes, he said, it’s the third year that is the toughest for mental health.
The aftershocks include divorces, domestic violence, alcoholism, bankruptcies and home foreclosures.
Some 2,579 homes were destroyed, many more were damaged by heat, smoke and fire retardant. Real estate prices have collapsed, derailing many retirement plans, including the one made by Steve Auty.
After a 39-year career at Syncrude Canada Ltd., Auty, originally from Mississauga, Ont., was planning to travel, maybe even have a second home in Canmore, an idyllic mountain town near Banff.
Instead, the disaster tanked both the value of his real estate investments and his retirement plan.
While waiting for a rebound, Auty has become involved with the reconstruction effort and a variety of community causes, including being president of the local riding’s United Conservative Party, which he hopes will win the next provincial election to give Fort McMurray the oil-friendly policies he feels it needs to fully recover.
Auty believes a lot is riding on the Trans Mountain pipeline, the controversy over which he doesn’t really understand. In Fort McMurray, he said, people literally live with pipelines in their backyards and oil naturally seeps into rivers.
“We are at a point in history (where) our little community is at the centre of that debate,” Auty said. “It’s amazing that it is part of it, it’s tragic that we are here, and it’s going to be interesting where we go.”
In the meantime, lawyer Christine Burton said the insurance industry’s poor response has also made things harder than they needed to be. Some claims were quickly wrapped up and people were able to get on with rebuilding their homes. Others are still in progress, forcing people to live in rentals while waiting for their insurance funds to show up. In many cases, families are stuck with both rent and mortgage payments, she said.
“I have a client whose house was damaged primarily by heat, so while all their neighbours had their roofs and siding replaced, the insurance company refuses to do work on this house,” she said. “It’s the inequity of the treatment that has made it incredibly difficult for people.”
Some people who did get insurance cash, simply left town, since the cost of rebuilding would have exceeded the value of their homes.
The result is that plenty of burned-out lots interrupt communities where reconstruction is well under way. Many of those lots are for sale.
The municipality estimates more than 1,000 families will be living in their rebuilt homes by the end of 2018, 2,044 development permits have been issued and 1,458 foundations have been or will be soon inspected.
Jeff Peddle, a Wood Buffalo councillor who works in the housing industry and also owns a restaurant, reckons single-family homes lost about 30 per cent of their value since the 2014 peak. Condominiums lost about 50 per cent.
He worries already high vacancy rates will further increase as rebuilds are completed, depressing the housing market even more.
“You take any smaller community, and you take 8,000 or 10,000 people out of it, and you are going to devastate that community, every aspect of business,” said Peddle, who moved to Fort McMurray from Newfoundland seven years ago at the height of the oil boom.
“As well as a financial burden, (the fire) certainly was a mental burden to a lot of people,” he said. “It put people back 10 years. There is not a person … who hasn’t thought about it or had issues. It affected every one of us.”
One of the big attractions of the Northern Alberta bush is how close people are to nature. But the fire has scorched many favourite trails and a large band of trees has been levelled to create an ugly buffer zone to avert future ones.
What drove me here is the opportunity. What takes you 10 years in a different municipality, you are going to achieve here in three to four years. Jeff Peddle, councillor
British Columbians don’t understand. They think we are killing the planet. I invited them here. Please come to my house. Let’s go see this and let me explain what we do. They just don’t get it. Yes, we are misunderstood. Steve Auty, retired Syncrude worker, landlord
Oil is in great demand. It’s time for the community and us to say, ‘This is an investment opportunity’ and position us for when it happens. Wesley Holodniuk, H. Wilson Industries (2010)
The burnt forest, so ubiquitous, is hard on people’s psyche. “The sense of loss is quite significant,” said Garry Berteig, who came to Fort McMurray in 1990 from Saskatchewan to teach at Keyano College. His next job will be teaching drawing at Fort Chipewyan, a nearby Indigenous community.
“We had a house right against the greenbelt so that I could walk in the forest every day,” he said. “And you start to be able to read the book of the forest and you love the forest.”
Berteig came back after the fire because he loves the people, the acceleration of experience that comes when so much is going on, and the unique connection the community has with First Nations and Métis people.
“We have crossed the trust threshold into those communities,” he said. “It takes a long time to do that, and I don’t want to leave it behind.”
Others certainly have. The population decline has resurfaced concerns about the growing practice by the oilsands industry to fly workers in and out of their operations from communities across Canada, instead of helping them set up in Fort McMurray.
After all, the town grew up as a support centre to the oilsands industry. In the early days, when Suncor and Syncrude were the dominant employers, both workers and executives alike resided locally and led community-building initiatives.
But the restructuring and consolidation caused by oil’s price downturn, as well as increasing automation, the growing distance of new operations from the town, the previously inflated real estate market and an infrastructure deficit have all contributed to the construction of aerodromes at oilsands sites that allow people to fly in and out more easily.
Fort McMurray, as a result, is becoming more disconnected from the very industry that created it.
A recent report by the Oil Sands Community Alliance said 15 projects have fly-in, fly-out-based operations, 11 use seven private aerodromes and four use Fort McMurray International airport. Other projects use both the airport and private aerodromes. All told, the projects employ some 15,000 out-of-town workers, and produce 60 per cent of the oilsands production.
According to the last census, taken in 2015 before the fire, Wood Buffalo had 125,032 residents, including 38,264 people living in oilsands project accommodations, known locally as the shadow population. The out-of-town workforce puts a lot of stress on the local fabric because it makes it more challenging to grow businesses and support infrastructure, said Bryce Kumka, president of the Fort McMurray Chamber of Commerce.
In his day job, Kumka, originally from Winnipeg, is an insurance broker. He has dealt with 9,000 claims related to the fire, the vast majority involving costs related to the evacuation.
Because so many workers just fly over or drive through the town, “the customers just aren’t there,” he said, which is a new problem for local businesses to deal with.
During the boom, there simply were not enough places for people to stay in town. The solution was a temporary camp system. Ten years later, Kumka believes Fort McMurray is at a crossroads, and “if we continue down this same road, then the sustainability of this community is in question.”
Kumka said oilsands companies have made it so convenient for workers to get on a plane, stay in a comfortable camp, and quickly get to work on company transportation that there is less incentive for anyone to find permanent living quarters in town.
So far, there hasn’t been a lot of interest by the large oilsands companies — Suncor and Canadian Natural Resources Ltd. are the new dominant companies — to discuss the impacts of fly-in, fly-out on the community, he said.
As a result, retailers are struggling with both the aftermath of the fire and the way some oilsands companies now conduct their business, said Mike Allan, a former MLA and owner of a musical instrument store. Although some stores are very busy, some are waiting for people to return, and his is one of the latter.
The growing out-of-town workforce does not help, he said, nor does the uncertain employment situation and reduced wages, which mean people don’t have the same money to spend. Yet he refuses to be pessimistic.
“We are invested in this community and in our businesses and we are going to do everything we can to adjust and make it viable,” Allan said.
Others are less invested in the community. Millwrights Myles Lambert, 33, and David Diamond, 30, both Newfoundlanders, are among those who don’t want to permanently relocate to the area. Unlike the previous generation of Newfoundlanders, who built a large expat community, both flew in for a big maintenance job at a Suncor plant, will live in a camp for a few weeks, then return home to their families.
“I am a Newfoundlander, born and raised, and that is where I am going to stay as long as I can,” said Diamond, who was in town on a break from his Suncor job to socialize at Newfoundlanders Bar and Restaurant.
But there are also people such as Hanna Fridhed who believe the town has a future. She’s a young woman from Sweden who moved here five years ago because of a man. The relationship didn’t last, but her love for Fort McMurray did and has blossomed. She took up acting in the local theatre and became a leader in the thriving arts community, including serving as vice-chair of the Arts Council of Wood Buffalo.
“I found moving here very similar to where I came from, but with a lot of opportunity,” she said. “I got to do things that I wouldn’t have done anywhere else.”
Despite the uncertainty about the future of its main industry and the scars left by the Beast, economic activity is slowly rebounding, both from the reconstruction effort and the maintenance work at the oilsands plants.
After all, there aren’t many places in Canada that have billion-dollar industries in their backyards and decades of oil production still to come, Mayor Scott said.
Indeed, the unemployment rate in the Wood Buffalo-Cold Lake region has declined to 5.7% from 9.1% at this time last year. The average annual household income has remained strong, at $230,077, though the cost of living is estimated to be double the national average.
New ideas are even surfacing to reduce the region’s exposure to oil and its price volatility. There’s a big push to set up an economic development authority to attract new business and diversify the economy.
Rabik, the ATB executive, is one of the leaders of that push. “Are we going to be a support centre for oilsands, or are we going to be a vibrant, all-in community for Northern Alberta?” he rhetorically asks. “The community has to decide that and understand what roads are available and which ones we are going to take.”
Rabik suggests the area could start by leveraging its highly regarded education system, become a centre for environmental remediation research and boost tourism.
“It’s a challenging place to do business, but in a good way,” he said. “There is a lot of risk, a lot of courage, and a lot of reward as a result of that courage.”
Another resident, Wesley Holodniuk also sees opportunities for new businesses, because Fort McMurray finally offers what it couldn’t during previous years of runaway growth: an infrastructure that has caught up to the town’s needs. There are other good signs as well: a young population that earns high wages, plenty of accessible housing, and immense oil reserves and production the world needs.
“We have to put that story out there,” said Holodniuk, who moved from a Saskatchewan farm 27 years ago and is now the general manager of H. Wilson Industries (2010) Ltd., a 150-employee construction company busy with the town’s rebuild. “This is an opportunity. If you are young, if you work at it and make it home, it’s good.”
There are a lot of emotional impacts that are much more significant than the property that was destroyed. Bryce Kumka, president, Fort McMurray Chamber of Commerce
The only sustained positive information I heard about Fort McMurray was during the fire. Otherwise we have radicalized environmentalists who will paint us as the scourge of the earth, Mordor. Kim Jenkins, former superintendent, Fort McMurray Catholic School District, teacher
The historical moment we are at is to find a way out of the culture of conflict into something that is more unity through diversity, rather than conflict. Garry Berteig, teacher, filmmaker