Katie graduates university with an arts degree and student loan debt, with no job prospects in her Cape Breton hometown.

Katie gets her first oil sands tool crib job and rides the early morning bus to the plant for the first time.

Katie begins work at Syncrude's Mildred Lake, where male employees outnumber women roughly fifty to one.

During a frustrating night shift at Mildred Lake, Katie encounters a three-legged fox and chases it away in anger.

Katie receives a job offer from Long Lake and prepares to leave the Aurora plant.

Katie arrives at Long Lake work camp, discovers she is one of very few women in her housing block, and starts locking her door.

When Katie reports harassment at Long Lake, her supervisor tells her to tolerate it because she is in a man's world.

At a birthday party, Katie is lured away from the crowd and raped by a man who is leaving camp soon.

Katie's male friends dismiss her account of being raped, claiming that because she was drunk it was just regret.

After caving to peer pressure to attend another party, Katie is raped a second time by a different man.

Becky confronts Katie, realizes she was raped, reveals her own past assault, and urges her to leave Long Lake.

Katie moves to Victoria, works at a maritime museum she loves, and launches her comics website.

Unable to make student loan payments in Victoria, Katie returns to the oil sands for an administration job at Albian Sands.

Hundreds of ducks die in the oil sands tailing pools, prompting management to install ineffective scarecrows and recorded gunshot sounds.

Katie pays off her student loans entirely, puts in her resignation, and leaves the oil sands to return to Cape Breton.

Katie Beaton graduates university with student loan debt and no local job prospects, leaving her beloved Cape Breton home to work in the Alberta oil sands. She moves through several oil sands plants, navigating the brutal gender imbalance and pervasive male chauvinism as a young woman far from home. At the most isolated plant, Long Lake, the danger escalates and Katie is raped at two separate parties, then dismissed by male friends who refuse to take her seriously. Her sister Becky finally helps her face the truth and escape, and Katie briefly rebuilds her life in Victoria before financial pressure forces her back to the oil sands. On her second tour, she witnesses an environmental catastrophe as hundreds of birds die in tailing pools, while First Nations communities and environmentalists speak out. She eventually pays off her debt, fights management for the compensation she is owed, and returns home to Cape Breton permanently changed by everything she has survived.

The headline story of Katie's two years in the oil sands.

Before Katie leaves home, her uncle advises her to start in an oil sands tool crib to get a foothold.

A family friend in Alberta invites Katie to Canadian Thanksgiving, helping ease her early homesickness.

Staying in Alberta over Christmas, Katie exchanges a festive bauble from her family for homemade cookies with a fellow Cape Bretoner.

At her waitress job, Katie meets an East Coaster from Long Lake and gives him her contact information hoping for better-paying work.

When Katie misses her work bus, a man in town mistakes her for a sex worker.

Katie's Indonesian coworker describes being steered toward a party for mail-order brides solely because of her ethnicity.

After finding her tools left outside in the winter cold, Katie calms her frustration by watching the Northern Lights.

A Somali taxi driver warns Katie that the dangerous men in oil camps are the ones who don't consider the place home.

Katie briefly reunites with her cousin Angus at Long Lake before he is transferred to another site.

Becky and Lindsay arrive at Long Lake to work in administration, giving Katie closer support from people she trusts.

Katie bonds with a female coworker named Trish over beers, relieved to finally have a female friend at Long Lake.

During a beach outing, Becky notices that Katie seems emotionally distant and is not really present.

Upper management celebrates three million man-hours without a lost-time incident, while workers know the numbers are falsified.

A worker suffers a fatal heart attack on the job and throws himself from his crane to avoid crushing his colleagues.

After Becky and Lindsay leave for graduate school, Ryan goes through a divorce, suffers a mental health crisis, and disappears.

Before Katie even arrives in Alberta, her uncle's advice and a family friend's hospitality soften the shock of leaving home. At Mildred Lake and Aurora, smaller moments — a Christmas cookie exchange, a missed bus, a warning from a taxi driver — reveal the texture of daily life in the oil sands and the ways workers look out for each other. At Long Lake, the arrival of Becky and Lindsay brings Katie closer support, but subtle signs of her trauma begin to surface even in ordinary outings. Back at Albian Sands, institutional cynicism becomes clearest in management's falsified safety data and its indifference to a worker's fatal heart attack. The pool closes with the gradual unraveling of Ryan, whose disappearance after a divorce and mental health crisis stands as a quiet testament to the oil sands' long-term toll on the people who work there.

The supporting moments and relationships woven through Katie's oil sands years.

Facing a lack of opportunity at home, Katie declares she cannot have both opportunity and home and chooses to leave.

While dragged on an unwanted date, Katie unexpectedly sees bison grazing on reclaimed oil sands land.

As Katie prepares to leave Aurora, Ambrose warns her that people fool themselves thinking their only real life is somewhere else.

Katie learns from her friend Mike that cocaine use is widespread and openly practiced among Long Lake workers.

A coworker named Damian spreads Katie's personal phone number around Long Lake camp as a prank.

Leon rebukes Katie for criticizing absent fathers, reminding her that infrequent visits home are genuinely hard on men and their families.

While still at Long Lake, Katie secretly begins applying for museum jobs to plan her escape from camp.

Katie accidentally crosses paths with her second rapist at Long Lake and is triggered by the unexpected encounter.

On her last day at the Victoria museum, Katie learns a folktale historian censored stories deemed inappropriate and wonders what of her own story gets suppressed.

During a management visit to Albian Sands, Katie is photographed without her consent as the company's token female worker.

First Nations activists publicly condemn the oil industry for poisoning their land, disrupting cultural traditions, and driving up cancer rates.

Lindsay writes an article about her oil sands experiences and receives unexpected and deeply discouraging negative backlash.

While comforting Katie after a distressing encounter at Albian Sands, Lindsay reveals she was also sexually assaulted during university.

Katie discovers her replacement — a manager's daughter with no relevant experience — is being paid far more than Katie ever was.

Back home, a man from the oil sands behaves rudely toward Katie and Becky, shocking their friends but leaving the sisters without response.

Katie's story is shaped as much by what she realizes as by what she endures, beginning with the painful clarity that she cannot have both opportunity and home. Early on, small encounters — bison on a reclaimed oil sands field, a departing coworker's parting wisdom — quietly signal that this world will cost her something. At Long Lake, a series of revelations about cocaine use, institutional dismissal, and the identity of her attackers accumulate into a breaking point that forces her to plan her escape in secret. Her time in Victoria ends with an unsettling question about whose stories get told and whose get suppressed. Back at Albian Sands, she witnesses the oil sands' harm extend outward — to First Nations communities, to migratory birds, to trusted colleagues like Lindsay and Ryan — while also learning that her own suffering was shared by women closest to her. By the time she confronts management and returns home, she understands that the oil sands have permanently redefined what home and normal mean to her.

The key decisions, discoveries, and emotional shifts that define Katie's journey.