The subject who is truly loyal to the Chief Magistrate will neither advise nor submit to arbitrary measures.
This article was published more than 4 years ago. Some information in it may no longer be current. Some of the regulars are drinking themselves into oblivion. Who knows? Maybe they just lost their jobs. The economy is tanking, after all.
But what good is sitting alone in your room? Welcome to Fort McMurray, the version. The night club in question is the infamous but fictional Kit Kat, and its louche decadence — once the trademark of this northern oil boom town — exists only on stage in an amateur production of the musical, Cabaret.
At the intermission, the audience of sips white wine in the lobby. After the final curtain, they get in their SUVs and pickups and go home to liberate the babysitter and walk the dog. Maybe home is one of the new detached houses in Thickwood and Timberlea, the quiet suburbs north of the Athabasca River. The truth is, the lurid version of Fort McMurray embedded in the Canadian imagination — the wild-west town where transient oil workers with pockets full of cash abuse drugs and alcohol, and prostitutes solicit clients outside the 7-Eleven on Franklin Avenue — is gone.
Less than 10 years after being swallowed whole by the social disruptions inherent to boom towns, this city has pulled itself together. Today, Fort McMurray is a family town. Indie coffee joints and hipster eateries compete with the usual food franchises and family-run ethnic restaurants. There are shiny new schools as well as elaborate recreational and arts facilities, almost all sponsored by industry.
