Catskinner: Dana McMurray works at Kearl Lake alongside hundreds of men

This is the second in a series of five profiles, each focused on a woman who works in the upstream oil and gas industry.

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When Dana McMurray arrived at Imperial Oil's Kearl Lake oilsands project, many of her male co-workers wondered how the 26-year-old catskinner and excavator operator landed her job. K2 Mining, under contract to Imperial, has well over 200 heavy equipment operators at work on the future mine site, but only four women are on McMurray's crew (one of three crews on the site). "Guys just seem to naturally suspect that a woman in my situation might have a family member or boyfriend in management," she says. "Once the guys see you actually have a clue and can run the equipment, you're fine. If you're a woman up here, respect definitely has to be earned."

She's a third-generation oilpatcher from Blackfalds, Alta., near Red Deer. Her grandfather was a drilling consultant, her father runs a petroleum-focused construction firm, and an uncle owns a flock of low-volume oil and gas wells. "We're an oil family. My sister Hannah, who's only three years old, likes to go through industrial auction catalogues and magazines naming the different types of equipment in the photographs," McMurray says. "I was 14, maybe even younger, when I started mowing weeds and doing manual labour on lease sites with my brother. We also did things around the shop."

Trained on highly maneuverable skid loaders (commonly called bobcats) by her father, the high school graduate naturally moved on to excavators, whose controls are similar. McMurray got an important break when Pidherney's, a construction and trucking outfit based in Rocky Mountain House, Alta., hired her for a camp-based job near Hinton, Alta. Laid off due to the downturn in natural gas-focused activity, the operator then headed for Kearl Lake, an $8-billion open-pit mining project located 80 kilometres northeast of Fort McMurray.McMurray now lives in a camp about a 15-minute drive from the mine. Each worker has his or her own room, with one bathroom shared between two people. "Actually, the guys here act like a big bunch of girls would behave without men around-they bitch and bicker with each other, especially getting near the end of our days in. We work 20 days, then get 10 days off, so people miss their families. In fact, it's impressive how many of the older men manage to maintain stable families despite being forced to spend so much time away from home. Unlike some of the younger guys, you don't see them negotiating 'extra services' from the female camp attendants."

K2 Mining began draining muskeg with ditching and is now stripping overburden and finishing the future plant site. The site for the dike's foundation has been prepped and after spring breakup construction will begin on the dike itself. "The dike is going to take about 18 months. Altogether, this is projected to be around a three-year project," McMurray says.

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How does she feel about the international notoriety generated by the oilsands, in particular the tailings ponds? "At Kearl Lake, we've hit bitumen as close as one metre from the surface," the heavy equipment operator replies. "If that oil came from a well, the environmentalists would be freaking out about an oil spill. I agree with my grandfather, who says we're just cleaning up the world's biggest oil spill." Kearl's total recoverable bitumen is estimated to be 4.6 billion barrels. McMurray spent most of her time in excavators prior to Kearl Lake but appreciates the opportunity to acquire more experience on bulldozers. Far from considering herself macho-brave, she refuses to drive the huge heavy haulers that haul up to 240 tonnes. "They threw me in one of those big trucks [a Caterpillar 777] and gave me a ride-along. I knew right away that it wasn't for me," the operator says. "Too many blind spots, they move fast, and there's lot of traffic. I prefer crawlers, not rubber tires."

In November, a 41-year-old woman driver was killed when two heavy haulers collided at Syncrude Canada's Mildred Lake North oilsands mine. "One of the drivers wasn't wearing a seat belt and we sure got the seat belt lecture big-time about that," McMurray says. Kearl Lake's safety record is reassuringly strong, in her view. "This project had more than two million work-hours without a serious incident before someone flipped a gravel truck. Now we're back to about 500,000 hours."

How can a woman (or man, for that matter) get started in driving heavy equipment? "Generally, you have to begin as a labourer. When you work your way up to operator, you'd normally work first on something slow and easy like a packer," McMurray says. In her experience, bias isn't a decisive barrier to getting ahead. In fact, at Kearl Lake, there's a diverse range of people: Aboriginals, French Canadians, and Newfies, to name a few. "No matter who you are, you'll get skidded out if you screw up. If you're good, you'll be treated fine. Honestly, this would be a great job if it was an hour from home."