I want to start my story with a disclaimer: for every man who treated me poorly in Fort McMurray, there were ten who were supportive or neutral. Most men I met were kind to me. My intention is not to bash men but rather to speak about my experiences of harassment, bullying, and psychologically unsafe workplaces.
You might be thinking, “What did you expect? You went to Fort McMurray to work in the oil field as a woman.” And I did get that question when I complained about how I was being treated. I expected some level of harassment but never to that degree. This wasn’t my first rodeo in the trades. I had been working in construction for two years in Ontario before moving to Alberta. I was a strong, independent woman, and I thought I could handle it.
To set the stage, I was sheltered and naïve when I arrived in Fort McMurray. I come from a progressive family and was raised in a typical privileged white middle-class suburb in Southern Ontario. This upbringing obviously shaped my worldview, and my experience in Alberta made me realize that.
I remember thinking in university, “Why would I study women’s studies? We have equality; we don’t need to study that anymore.” I was naïve and ignorant, and my next two years working in construction in Alberta opened my eyes to many harsh realities.
When I arrived in Fort McMurray, I was lucky to get a camp job through a friend on a construction site 30 minutes outside the city. I had a room in camp, accommodations, and food paid for, and they offered me $18 an hour. They apologized for the low wage, but I thought it was great compared to the $12 an hour roles in Ontario. I later found out that everyone else started at $20 an hour.
The job wasn’t in electrical, where I had training and experience. It was in sheet metal, building HVAC systems, and installing ductwork. Tin Bashers, as they are affectionately called, are known for losing their hearing and wrecking their shoulders from hammering metal into HVAC systems. This was 2015, a low point in oil, and jobs were scarce. The construction project was a commercial office and warehouse building for an oil company. It was a lower-risk site, which I liked, so I accepted the job.
The next six months are a time I’ll never forget but would rather not remember. What happened to me can be described by the analogy of the frog boiling in water. If a frog is suddenly put into boiling water, it will jump out, but if it’s put in cold water and the temperature is slowly raised, it will die in the pot. This reflects the slow and increasing discrimination and harassment I experienced. I rationalized and brushed it off until it became too big to ignore, resulting in a drastic decline in my health and the end of my career in the trades.
I was willing to accept some level of harassment as a woman in a male-dominated space. But the level it escalated to was unbelievable. When I walked down the lunchroom walkways and every head turned to look at me, I thought that was what I signed up for. When my foreman started touching me regularly, I wondered if that was normal. I called friends and family, trying to make sense of it. I wanted this job to work out and wanted to be valued for my work.
Maybe I should have known when applying for jobs and handing out my resume, receiving comments on my appearance, age, and hair color instead.
I could tell you horror stories from Fort McMurray, but that’s not the part of my story I want to emphasize. The good part comes after, when I stood up for myself and rebuilt my career. I am now grateful for my experience in Alberta because it showed me what some people endure and that equality isn’t universal. It made me question my worldview and realize my privileges as a heterosexual, Canadian-born, able-bodied, relatively neuro-normative, straight white woman. Witnessing what others without these privileges faced was humbling.
This post is just the beginning of a series where I’ll share more about my experiences and insights. Stay tuned for more as I dive deeper into the journey and lessons learned in the world of psychological safety in the workplace.