Fort Mac

by Thomas Wharton

This was years before the fire they called the Beast burned up half the town and the money hose slowed from a gush to a trickle. Back then I drove one of those mammoth trucks that haul the raw ore out of the excavation pits. We were removing the forest in neat rectangular chunks, like date squares from a pan. Peeling away a soggy carpet of muskeg to scoop out what had been steeping here for a hundred million years, the sour black honey of time.

Everything about the operation was orderly, methodical, streamlined. If you […]