The Mac attack
The thing to realize about this far northern clutch of dissimilar yet connected people is that change does come but it does take a good long time and that might be a result of it's global position or maybe it is caused by both the environment, which can go from bad to brutal to mind numbing in hours, and the cultural roots of the two main groups who settled the modern Fort McMurray, The MacAttack, Ft McMisery, Ft. McMuddy or simply
The
Mac.
The two groups being the Native American and the Canadian Newfie, I'm only kidding but you have to wonder if the laid back roots of these two cultures have given the town (city) the lag in development of the open downtown spaces or was it more just a practical reaction to the physical reality that when there is a flood Downtown lives up to its name it is clearly down under the water.
I have been here off and on from the mid 70's to the present day. Ah the Seventies and up here for a young man of 20 something it was a bittersweet time, no females to speak of and the place was so transient. These things all made the experience one of fast friends and short goodbyes, which could lead to being lonely.
There also was a very distinct feeling that I have found in smaller prairie towns that are over run by an influx of "city" people, a xenophobic insular "your not from here so don't comment on the place" sort of feel. The place had Syncrude and at the time GCOS and needed housing for it's workers the mass invasion had started
I was here to start building the development in the top right hand corner of the photo of course when I was here it was some cleared earth and a few houses.
Although the areas I had worked on have grown it struck me coming back in 2004, after being away for almost twenty years, as to how little it had changed.
Sure there were new motels and a Mary browns as you came into town but the rest of the drive in was like going back to the seventies the skyline had changed very little and the smell of pine forest with a top note of Syncrude from miles down the Athabasca river Valley made me mentally trip back in time and the shiver went through me, the one you get when u instinctively feel something is not right.
Part of the biospheric deja vu is due to the way the city is laid out, from the main hiway you see only one sixth of Ft Mcmurray, the rest of it is up on top of the Athabasca valley hidden by whats left of the forest that was there before the tarsands were made infamous.
I have passed through thousands of cities and towns over half of the world and you get
a feeling that a place generates, even in passing through. No details are laid out just generalities of what you see and the faint feel of it's energy or lack of it.
When I arrived in the Mac the second time my inner being was struck by a feeling black as the bitumen's end product.
The combination of seeing very little changed and the energy of this place set me to being anxious.
As I drove "uptown" across the mighty Athabasca and up Confed I saw an expanse of buildings where 30 years previous forest and wetlands had been and with that suburban vista im I thought that the feeling of isolation that was part of the Mac experience in the 70's would be easily handled because the population had exploded with younger working folk.
Well,
living here in the 2000's proved to be as frustrating as the 70's but for different reasons, the number one problem was being away from my kids. But that is not what I was going to write about
.
The pace of change up here had up until 2004 had been more about buildings to house people and business rather than public edifices or new roadways.
Keyano College had added buildings and construction was starting on Mac Island a sport complex with large public spaces and a virtually unused river bank was being developed for public use but these things were just starting in 04 and I was asking myself why? What was taking so long and what the hell was that feeling of foreboding as I arrived?
Ft Mac of 04 had a problem and it was a lack of identity, community, culture. These things were stronger in 04 than 1977 but it still seemed characterless and inside I knew that there must be a reason as nobody wants a city to project the energy of a grey light bulb.
What I am saying is that Fort McMurray is not a bad town but it is a place that bears the strain of being under siege. For decades workers have been attacking the city coming in numbers far greater than the amount of beds available, grumbling about the shitty streets, the gold digging women and the use of crack by
nearly everyone. Alot of it is true but in the 70's as in the 04's the newcomer was viewed by and large as transient. So you had a multitude of problems getting a sense of community to permeate every strata of this,
perhaps the longest running of all time,
Boomtown.
I left the frozen north country for warmer southern breezes in 2006 only to return in
2009.
For most cities this size three years would not have presented as much change as this one did, in that time the road congestion was half way to being lessened by the addition of two major bridges and three overpasses.
I know down south they'd do that between supper and the resultant crap the next morning but up here well look at the picture and imagine something similar for almost 6 months of the year you can see the challenge in constructing anything up here.
Somethings hadn't changed much, the lack of real good restaurants was one of them.. I'm guessing that back in the day Ft McMurray had no use of fancy restaurants you took the wife and little ones to the family restaurant or to the DQ.
The Mac had a lack of food culture and then the rapid growth of the late 90's through 2004-5 as thousands of workers came to town, largely from eastern Canada, brought about a demand for housing which was echoed with a call for finer dining beyond the burgers, pizzas and cod lips.
So the next few posts are going to be on Ft Mac
WTF?.....Why?
As bad a rep the Mac has must be balanced with the good of the place. It can seem to be limited to the raw wilderness and its exploitation to extract raw materials to fuel a World wide fuel feeding frenzy.
It is of course a lot more than that and it is becoming a more intricate community as it has become a melting pot maybe in someways a cauldron for dozens of different ethnic backgrounds.
So the next few posts about Ft. Mac is going to be Un-Pollyanna I want to give a positive view but it has to be realized that sometimes the only positive is the room for change and the ability to make the same.
The
Mac.
 |
| This photo is probably from the late 70's early 80's. I now live about a block from the red towers. |
I have been here off and on from the mid 70's to the present day. Ah the Seventies and up here for a young man of 20 something it was a bittersweet time, no females to speak of and the place was so transient. These things all made the experience one of fast friends and short goodbyes, which could lead to being lonely.
There also was a very distinct feeling that I have found in smaller prairie towns that are over run by an influx of "city" people, a xenophobic insular "your not from here so don't comment on the place" sort of feel. The place had Syncrude and at the time GCOS and needed housing for it's workers the mass invasion had started
I was here to start building the development in the top right hand corner of the photo of course when I was here it was some cleared earth and a few houses.
Although the areas I had worked on have grown it struck me coming back in 2004, after being away for almost twenty years, as to how little it had changed.
Sure there were new motels and a Mary browns as you came into town but the rest of the drive in was like going back to the seventies the skyline had changed very little and the smell of pine forest with a top note of Syncrude from miles down the Athabasca river Valley made me mentally trip back in time and the shiver went through me, the one you get when u instinctively feel something is not right.
Part of the biospheric deja vu is due to the way the city is laid out, from the main hiway you see only one sixth of Ft Mcmurray, the rest of it is up on top of the Athabasca valley hidden by whats left of the forest that was there before the tarsands were made infamous.
I have passed through thousands of cities and towns over half of the world and you get
a feeling that a place generates, even in passing through. No details are laid out just generalities of what you see and the faint feel of it's energy or lack of it.
When I arrived in the Mac the second time my inner being was struck by a feeling black as the bitumen's end product.
The combination of seeing very little changed and the energy of this place set me to being anxious.
As I drove "uptown" across the mighty Athabasca and up Confed I saw an expanse of buildings where 30 years previous forest and wetlands had been and with that suburban vista im I thought that the feeling of isolation that was part of the Mac experience in the 70's would be easily handled because the population had exploded with younger working folk.
Well,
living here in the 2000's proved to be as frustrating as the 70's but for different reasons, the number one problem was being away from my kids. But that is not what I was going to write about
.
The pace of change up here had up until 2004 had been more about buildings to house people and business rather than public edifices or new roadways.
Keyano College had added buildings and construction was starting on Mac Island a sport complex with large public spaces and a virtually unused river bank was being developed for public use but these things were just starting in 04 and I was asking myself why? What was taking so long and what the hell was that feeling of foreboding as I arrived?
Ft Mac of 04 had a problem and it was a lack of identity, community, culture. These things were stronger in 04 than 1977 but it still seemed characterless and inside I knew that there must be a reason as nobody wants a city to project the energy of a grey light bulb.
What I am saying is that Fort McMurray is not a bad town but it is a place that bears the strain of being under siege. For decades workers have been attacking the city coming in numbers far greater than the amount of beds available, grumbling about the shitty streets, the gold digging women and the use of crack by
nearly everyone. Alot of it is true but in the 70's as in the 04's the newcomer was viewed by and large as transient. So you had a multitude of problems getting a sense of community to permeate every strata of this,
perhaps the longest running of all time,
Boomtown.
 |
| My frozen truck in the frozen north. |
I left the frozen north country for warmer southern breezes in 2006 only to return in
2009.
For most cities this size three years would not have presented as much change as this one did, in that time the road congestion was half way to being lessened by the addition of two major bridges and three overpasses.
I know down south they'd do that between supper and the resultant crap the next morning but up here well look at the picture and imagine something similar for almost 6 months of the year you can see the challenge in constructing anything up here.
Somethings hadn't changed much, the lack of real good restaurants was one of them.. I'm guessing that back in the day Ft McMurray had no use of fancy restaurants you took the wife and little ones to the family restaurant or to the DQ.
The Mac had a lack of food culture and then the rapid growth of the late 90's through 2004-5 as thousands of workers came to town, largely from eastern Canada, brought about a demand for housing which was echoed with a call for finer dining beyond the burgers, pizzas and cod lips.
So the next few posts are going to be on Ft Mac
WTF?.....Why?
As bad a rep the Mac has must be balanced with the good of the place. It can seem to be limited to the raw wilderness and its exploitation to extract raw materials to fuel a World wide fuel feeding frenzy.
It is of course a lot more than that and it is becoming a more intricate community as it has become a melting pot maybe in someways a cauldron for dozens of different ethnic backgrounds.
So the next few posts about Ft. Mac is going to be Un-Pollyanna I want to give a positive view but it has to be realized that sometimes the only positive is the room for change and the ability to make the same.
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