Northern exposure
“One last deep breath, one last look at the trees and sky, heavy with snow and cloud: a place like this could kill or cure a person.”
– Barbara Stewart, Campie
Enjoying a cup of coffee in an artsy Walnut Grove café, 56-year-old Barbara Stewart is the picture of relaxed contentment.
Dressed head to toe in black — her outfit creating a sharp contrast to her blunt, shoulder-length blond hair — Stewart settles into a small leather sofa for a candid chat about the roller coaster that has been her life for the past 15 years or so.
After losing nearly everything in a three-year downward spiral that took her from Victoria homeowner to a homeless recovering alcoholic, Stewart is today in the midst of a slow but steady climb.
It’s been a meandering journey, from being just another face in a crowded city to the wilderness of northern Alberta, where she did her best to avoid being seen.
Along the way, she took plenty of notes, and now the Langley woman has parlayed a talent for writing and an unusual adventure that lasted less than two weeks into a 190-page tome, which paints a compelling picture of what life is like for a single woman working at an isolated oil rig in Canada’s north.
Stewart’s memoir, titled simply Campie, documents the 12 days in January, 2003 that she spent mopping floors, cleaning bathrooms, making beds, emptying overflowing ashtrays and picking up after rig workers at the Trinidad 11 camp south of Grande Prairie.
All the while, she kept her head down and tried to blend into the walls of the four Atco trailers that served as sleeping, eating and recreation quarters for the 20-odd people who lived and worked in the camp.
“The trouble with a memoir is, where does it start and where does it end, because your life isn’t tidy like that,” said Stewart, between sips of coffee.
With the help of her editor, she found the beginning of her story in the middle of the Rocky Mountains, as she drove north in her aging Toyota Tercel.
Negotiating the frozen Pine Pass between Prince George and Chetwynd, on her way to Grande Prairie, Alta., semi trucks were her only traveling companions on the dark, slippery road — charging up from behind and then blowing past her in clouds of snow that enveloped her little car.
•••
During her 12 days at the camp, Stewart kept a journal, detailing not only her daily encounters with the other workers (whose names have all been changed in the book), but her own thoughts and fears about her decision to take a job among these giant strangers in the middle of nowhere.
The day after her adventure in the Pine Pass, Stewart parked her Tercel in a hotel parking lot in Grande Prairie and caught a ride the rest of the way with “Stan” the camp cook, who gave Stewart the rundown during the 90-minute drive — a conversation that did little to ease her concerns.
•••
“Andy will show you the ropes. He’s the campie you’re relieving.” Then, seeing the question on my face, he added, “That’s what we call the camp attendant — campie. Don’t let him put you off. He’s just a little rough,” Stan explained. “But if you’re going to get, you know, friendly with the men, could you just try to be a little discreet about it? The last camp I was at, all hell was breaking out over this woman. What a mess.” He rolled his eyes.
“I’m just here to do a job,” I answered quickly. “I don’t get friendly with people I work with — it’s not a good idea.”
Is friendly part of my job?
•••
Rising at 4:30 a.m. Stewart’s days were strictly regimented, with each task needing to be completed in a particular order by a fixed time. Should a tired roughneck step out of the shower and find no clean towels, there would be hell to pay.
It was one thing to tell the story of her brief life in camp, “But I also wanted to explain to the reader how I got there,” said Stewart.
Using flashbacks throughout the book was the natural solution, she said, because she would reflect on her life while lying in her bed at night, a wedge shoved under her locked door.
And as she dragged bags of trash across crusted snow to the camp’s incinerator, Stewart would often pause to gaze up at the star-filled sky and enjoy a few minutes of quiet contemplation.
Other times, long walks along the deserted narrow roads carved out of the forest, gave her time to reflect.
The threat of getting lost and freezing to death or being struck by a passing truck wasn’t enough to keep her inside the small square of trailers.
“I was so desperate to get away from the camp, even for an hour,” she said. “Everyone is smoking, it’s hot and full of people, it’s noisy, there’s no privacy.
“I knew it wasn’t a place I could stay.”
The decision was made for her, however, when she woke up one morning to learn she’d been turfed, because “Frankie,” the cook’s helper, had complained to the tool push (the rig boss) that Stan and Stewart had been mean to her.
•••
Of course, Stewart’s journey began years before that white-knuckle drive through the mountains.
She grew up in Surrey, endured and then left a violent marriage — during which she drank to cope — and raised two children on her own, taking a variety of jobs to pay the bills.
For a while, she worked as a loans officer at a bank, but her aspirations leaned more toward creative pursuits.
“I worked in banking but I always wanted to be writer,” said Stewart.
Dreaming of penning a book about spas, Stewart refinanced her house and then fell into a pattern of reckless spending and aimless “personal interludes” aided by a prescription for anti-depressants.
“The funny thing is, the book I was trying to write when I mortgaged my house was a book on spiritual retreats. Instead, I went bankrupt and it led to this experience,” said Stewart.
“I wanted to sip tea and think soulful thoughts, but nobody was buying. When I got my ass kicked out in the snow, that’s when I had a book,” she laughed.
Along with her financial woes, the deaths of her father, a close friend, her cat and her dog combined to create a tipping point for Stewart.
“I thought grief was you sit and cry, then you pull up your socks and get on with it. I didn’t realize that it could be like a temporary insanity,” she said.
Stewart stopped caring about the things that had mattered to her. She was left with no job, no book deal and no energy to do anything about it.
“I can remember standing in my house and looking around. It was like the whole house was on my shoulders — how was I going to carry it?”
She sold the home for less than she’d paid for it and never looked back.
As her life unravelled around her, she found low income housing and a job at a B&B that paid $900 per month.
“Month by month (it was a question of) will I pay rent or will I eat?”
“When it came to the month that I had to disconnect my phone, I called my uncle in Quesnel,” she said.
Waking up in December in a trailer on her uncle’s property, with her hair frozen to her pillowcase, Stewart knew it was time to get her act together.
Searching job listings online she found and applied for the campie position.
“I had absolutely no idea what camp life would be like.
“I’d heard it was hard work but you made good money,” said Stewart.
As it turned out, the job paid $100 a day — the lowest wage in the camp. But the part about working hard was accurate.
Things were moving along according to schedule until the morning Stewart noticed the tool push’s dog laying outside Frankie’s bedroom door.
Hours later, after getting her walking papers, Stewart encountered an inconsolable Frankie in the camp’s rec room.
The cook’s helper’s tearful apology wasn’t enough; the damage was done.
•••
“For a moment I couldn’t move, hating the dark, but unable yet to face the light. Frankie’s trauma held me. How do we survive what we do to survive? . . . . The date was Sunday, January 26, 2003, and the time was just after 1:00 p.m. We were somewhere in the wilderness southwest of Grande Prairie, Alberta, at an oil rig camp called Trinidad 11.
We were both fired.”
•••
When it was over, Stewart moved back to Victoria, re-entered subsidized housing and returned to her old job at the Heart House, a B&B for heart patients waiting for surgery. This time, she was earning $1,500/month.
“Caring for other people helped me,” she said.
She stayed in the job for five years.
But the lessons Stewart took from her experiences were the kind that tend to stick with a person for life.
“I’ve learned, when you’re not sure what to do, don’t do anything,” she said, her coffee sitting forgotten on the table in front of her.
Having regained her footing, Stewart is once again moving forward, her focus firmly on her writing.
Now living with family in Walnut Grove, she is touring with her book, doing freelance work and waiting to hear whether she’s been accepted to a masters program at UBC.
If all goes to plan, she will one day become a writing instructor at a college or university.
“It’s not the Hollywood comeback,” Stewart smiled.
“It was a long way down and it’s a long way back.”
Campie, (Heritage House Publishing) is available for $17.95 at Chapters and online at amazon.ca.
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