Tyler Pubben was making as much as $1,000 a day working in the oilpatch when he was fresh out of university in the early 2010s. The pay was enormous for a man in his 20s, but he worked hard. As a trained geologist, he was also a hot commodity in a rapidly growing industry, putting in 12-hour days and bouncing from one project to the next.

A big, black gold rush had taken hold in Alberta. Many of the world’s biggest oil companies — hailing from Beijing to Houston — converged on a remote patch of Canadian hinterland to strike it rich.

Workers such as Pubben got in on the action. Anyone with “a pulse and a degree or any experience” was getting hired to work on an oilsands mine or a construction site, he said, and making buckets of money.

“We were always desperate for people,” he said.

Oil

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