My boss yelled “Come on! Dig!” Then, he took out his SLR camera and started taking pictures. By now, I had been stuck for at least half an hour and the mud was past my waist. I was exhausted and had no more strength or leverage to move the narrow shovel in the heavy, sticky slop. I couldn’t feel a bottom with my boots and kept sinking. I wasn’t afraid because I didn’t understand the extent of the danger—after all, my boss seemed to think it was funny and was taking pictures. After encouraging me to dig myself out for another ten minutes, my boss finally decided to get the excavator to pull me out. He told me that he would dig behind me to “relieve the pressure,” but the muskeg pushed towards me, forcing me to lean backwards and twisting my legs below. I shouted for him to stop, so he moved the bucket ahead of me and started to scoop the mud in front of me. Once the levels had dropped down to my knees, he placed the bucket up against my torso so that I could pull myself out of the pit and jump in. When I got to dry land, he said, “You’re sexy when you struggle.” I pretended not to hear him, and I went to see the medic to ask her if she had anything in her truck that I could use to clean myself the best I could—I had muskeg where I didn’t want muskeg. She didn’t have anything, but when I told her what happened, she was furious.

She exclaimed, “Do you realize how dangerous that was?”

“It’s just a little mud; I’ll be fine!”

“Last week, in the States, an operator was working on a lease, and it was all ‘skeg. There was an air pocket, and his machine went under. They could hear him over the 2-way, but they didn’t have time. They never found him.”

“I didn’t know that could happen…I just did what I was told.”

“He knows better.”

When I got back to camp, I had rashes all over my legs from the muskeg. Apparently it’s OK that I could have died, since at least I would have looked sexy doing it. I could have reported the incident, and now I feel I should have. But at the time, I was thinking of the “no rats in the patch” rule and the mocking Hurt Feelings Report that had been handed out by the head of safety. I knew that they would find a reason to fire me and could easily falsify incident reports to protect themselves. They had done it many time before.

What matters is that this kind of incident doesn’t just happen “up north”; these guys eventually get their days off and go home or to nearby cities such as Edmonton. My spread boss doesn’t save his comments for the patch. He doesn’t just turn off his misogyny when he goes out to the restaurant or the grocery store; this is how he treats the waitress, the cashier, and his wife. I had had the displeasure of experiencing this for myself when the guys invited me to dinner at Sharks, where they berated and harassed the waitress the entire time. I wasn’t invited again and I was told that it was because I don’t “put out.” Obviously, I know that this doesn’t apply to every guy in the oilfield (after all, my boyfriend works in the same industry), but in my three years of experience, I have met less than a handful of men who do not live by these unwritten rules. In 2014 more than 130,000 people were employed in the energy sector, which translates to a whole lot of people living with those principles. Oilfield dads raise their sons and daughters in an environment that values this toxic masculinity, and these ideologies become the norm. The oil companies perpetuate a culture that dictates that manhood is measured in lengths of pipe and the speed at which it was put in the ground, leaving men with no choice but to conform if they want a job. Websites sell oil-patch swag reinforcing it as a lifestyle, and identity. The men have to “fit in or…” find other (less manly) lower-paying jobs. Not long ago, I witnessed a woman hitting and pushing a man at a bar, calling him a “pussy” and not a “real man” because he didn’t want to fight. The responsibility and power to make a change lie in the hands of the industry leaders and policymakers. Once oil companies are forced to value the wellbeing of their men and women, Alberta can start to detox.

In the meantime here’s a quick scene from the Canadian comedy Fubar. It’s closer to reality than you might think.