of fibreglas batt. Next come heated doghouses, covered carports and outdoor seating areas. Then as the once-mobile homes settle cautiously into the landscape, there are gardens, strings of outdoor lights, porches and full, if still moveable, additions. On the second morning there, a man stops on his way out and without a single question begins telling me about the different insulation strategies being used. He clearly knows what I am up to, and wants to make sure I understand how best to insulate a trailer, a lesson that seems especially pertinent when it is already twenty below zero in early November. “When you spend all day out on site, windows aren’t much use to you. That’s why most people cover them up. Maybe they’ll leave one open but keeping the heat in is more important. After spending a winter here you learn really quickly how to keep your place warm.”
Another man, spending the day working on an addition, shows me how the space beneath the trailer is heated with two heat bulbs–“just a couple of degrees to stop the floors from getting too cold and the water tank from freezing,” he explains. “I have everything I need here. They bring us water once a week but there is enough to last for three in case they don’t get to it.” This self-sufficient stance seems to be pervasive with residents at the park, nearly everyone mentioning the high cost of housing in Fort McMurray and an unwillingness to engage with the boomtown scenario, preferring instead the flexibility and independence of renting an RV lot and adding to their residences with their own hands. It seems to be both a practical and symbolic move away from the town. For those willing and able to make an investment in an RV, rent becomes more
affordable than even a one-bedroom apartment and with a little re-jigging they often end up with more space. Several residents mention the comfort of having even small patches of outdoor space around their trailers and the joy of being surrounded by the trees. Even those without plumbing hookups and who use the washrooms in the communal services building, say the cold walks during the winter are worth being out here, away from things. It is a solution that allows people to buffer themselves against the changing fortunes that inevitably surround a resource extraction economy. Each change to their homes carefully navigates a fine balance between temporariness and permanence, flexibility and occupation that concedes to the uncertainty of the future. In a way, the homes at the park become ships for navigating flux, just as ready to stay as they are to go. –
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lisa hirmer
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