Airport Lounge Observations
I was coming back from Fort McMurray and had a stopover in Edmonton. One of the perks of frequent air travel is gaining access to private lounges, and knowing I had a two-hour layover, I found my way to the Air Canada Lounge and poured a glass of wine.
Airport lounges are mostly filled with men in suits making phone calls and talking at a volume that requires everyone to listen their conversations. This makes them a breeding ground for observation; the time former Canadian Alliance leader and Conservative MP Stockwell Day made a call to his rental car agency being a personal highlight.
However, on this rainy Wednesday night in Edmonton, my quiet corner of the lounge quickly filled up with a stream of roughshod men who sat in all the vacant seats around me. Burlap bags, steel toed boots, sweatpants and hardhats, these men quickly set in for a rewarding night of drinking the lounge’s liquor supply clean. Their conversation was wide ranging, alternating between talks about girls to talks about drinking with girls, and then back to just talking about girls.
Another stream of tough guys arrived a short while later. CNRL jackets, Suncor bags, Imperial hats, they dropped their gear and rearranged the lounge’s furniture to create something that resembled story time at a daycare. The only difference being it was fifteen grown men sitting around tables rammed full of beer and cocktails glasses.
One of the guys had the wisdom to suggest they keep down the noise so they wouldn’t draw attention to themselves. It was a little late for that, of course, with a smattering of men in suits casting over their disapproving eyes as they lowered their newspapers to inspect the disturbance to their business-induced Zen states.
The blue-collar guys in the lounge, like thousands of others in the Oilsands, are shift workers, regularly flying in and out every couple of weeks. The majority of the group were on their way back to the east coast, to Toronto, to Halifax, to Saint John, to St. John’s. Because of frequent travel, they accumulate the miles and segments required to earn frequent flier status, and therefore access to executive lounges.
“Ray, let me tell you ‘bout the bar here,” said a guy with an Acadian accent. “You gotta be careful how many drinks you get of the same kind. If you go up and order your tenth beer, they gonna be, like, ‘that’s ten beers, no more for you.’ What you gotta do is mix it up. Get a rum and coke, then go back to the beer, maybe after that, get a gin an tonic. They won’t be able to remember how many you’ve had.”
The comment seemed to ruffle the feathers of one of the suits nearby and he quickly got up, grabbed his tumbler of scotch, and headed to the lounge’s business hovel to continue his bout of silence.
Later on two guys returned from a smoke break and got into a scuffle because their seats were taken. The group settled it quickly, but I was more surprised about the smoking. Where do you smoke in an airport? Well, it turns out you don’t, as one of the workers detailed to another. They go out through security and smoke on the curb, then come back through. They would lather-rinse-repeat this routine several times over the course the evening.
As I was about to get up and leave, one of the men remarked there was only three hours left until their flight. From the tone in his voice, I couldn’t tell whether he thought this was a good thing or not. Was he looking forward to getting on a plane and going home? Or was he sad to be leaving liquor town?
The truth is that the Oilsands are an escape for many. Reality exists back home, another world away, but leaving hard times and failing economies for work hasn’t made these men different people. Despite their perceived roughness, there wasn’t any faking who they were. The Oilsands worker’s reckless familiarity and comfort with the places they pass through on the way might turn some heads, but in the end they’re still just true to themselves.
-Bill Farrant