TWO TALES OF ONE CITY

Fort McMurray: Boom Town With Jobs, Big Bucks And Drugs,
Or A Great Place To Raise A Family

FORT McMURRAY, Alta. - Watching the trucks come south down the highway
from the oilsands at suppertime, you can understand why the people in
this town party so hard.

They're big, white, heavy-duty company trucks - all four-by-fours -
with extended cabs: Ford F-250 XL Super Duty V-10. Dodge Ram 2500 V-8
Magnum. GMC Sierra 2500 HD.

The trucks are coated with brown dust. All have what the locals call
buggy whips sticking up behind the cabs - tall, white, flexible
flagpoles topped with orange flags. That's to cut down on the risk of
them getting run over by the enormous dump trucks on the mine site
that occasionally crush a pickup under an enormous tire as easily as
one of the pickups could crush an empty beer can.

The men in these white pickups - in coveralls and ball caps - work
12-hour shifts at the Syncrude and Suncor oilsands facilities north of
town. They work in the vast pit mines where dozens of dump trucks the
size of two-storey houses carry sticky black oilsands dirt to the
processor - 24-7, 365 - and the air is so thick with dust that it
coats the back of your throat.

Or they work at the upgrader - a vast complex of high-tech refinery
facilities where thousands of smokestacks fill the air with strange
chemical smells.

You can imagine that some of these men are thirsty at the end of a
shift. Most are young and single and they've got lots of money.
Tradesmen working in the oilsands make $30 to $40 an hour.

They'll tell you, too.

At the Fort McMurray Newfoundlanders Bar + Restaurant, a private club
in a strip mall across the road from a dilapidated trailer park, you
hear it every few minutes, in voices thick with outport accents.

"Twenty dollars an hour."

"Fifteen bucks an hour."

"Thirty-two bucks an hour."

The bar is so jammed on Saturday night that the three waitresses
behind the bar can't keep up. The place is full of young
Newfoundlanders from rural communities where the collapse of the
fishery has sent the young people packing. There are five men for
every woman. The CD player plays new country and favourites from home
like The Newfie Stomp.

Fort McMurray, they say, is the third-largest city in Newfoundland,
although a 1999 census found that only 16 per cent of the population
is from Newfoundland. It seems like a lot more. And that percentage
wouldn't include the children of Newfoundlanders, whose accents are
almost as thick as their parents'.

Many of the ex-Newfoundlanders hate it here and they don't mind
telling you, and pining for the day when they can go home.

They call it Fort McMisery, Fort McNowhere - and, chillingly, Fort
Crack.

The locals bitterly resent this kind of talk but Fort McMurray has a
booming cocaine trade.

The MLA, Guy Boutilier, who's originally from Cape Breton, won't even
discuss the issue.

"The cocaine, the blah, the blah?" he says. "I'm not even going to
talk about it because you know what? I can go to Halifax, I can go to
Ottawa, I can go to any one of those cities (and find it). I'm
certain. I find the media, truly, have used it."

Locals like Mr. Boutilier point to a pretty, growing riverside
community with many young families, good minor sports programs, golf
courses and churches, all in a beautiful natural environment. The
downtown has a gritty, slapped-together look, but a pleasant suburb on
the other side of the river looks a lot like the new Clayton Park in
Halifax. Locals point out, rightly, that you can live in Fort McMurray
for years and never see any sign of the drug problem.

RCMP Cpl. Ann Brinnan grew up here and she resents the town's image as
a place rampant with drug abuse.

"It's a bum rap," she says. "You can quote me on that because I'm
proud of this place."

But she acknowledges that it's a boom town with a large population of
transients, pockets bulging with cash.

"We have a lot of people here of a young age and little responsibility
who are making good money," she says. "So there are a lot of people
with disposable income, and some of those people are not making very
good choices as to what they spend it on. And yes, it's being spent on
gambling and addiction and illegal activity. But then there's a lot of
really good people who have taken the opportunity and got some
excellence in their lives based on what they're making."

Locals say Fort McMurray's problems are no different from those in any
other community, but then they'll tell you about the crack houses and
point out obvious crackheads on the streets.

According to the Alberta Alcohol and Drug Abuse Commission, Fort
McMurray has more than five times the provincial rate of drug
offences. Fredericton, a slightly larger community, reported 44 drug
offences in 2004. There were 506 in Fort McMurray.

It's a trade controlled by Asian gangs, native gangs and bikers,
police say.

"Cocaine is the drug of choice in Fort McMurray," Cpl. Brinnan says.
"It used to be marijuana but because of the high level of income,
people can afford much more."

At the Newfoundland club, a rugged middle-aged man who has lived here
for years tells me in urgent tones that he wishes he could afford to
move away because of the drugs and crime.

"I got two teenage daughters and I'm scared to death," he says. "You
can't let them walk down the street."

Julie, 22, a university student from Ontario working in a bar for the
summer, says she hates the way men are constantly hounding her.

"I feel like meat in the lion's den," she says. "I'd never raise my
kids here."

And she sees the drug money changing hands.

"Drug dealers come into the other bar and just throw money around,"
she says. "One guy gave me $50 for a shot and told me to keep the change."

Tammilyn, 25, tells me she's "half-Newfie, half-Indian, a true Fort
McMurryan."

She says the city is full of crackheads. You got to be strong to
survive in this town," she says. "'Cause if you're not, you will go
down."