We hustle to the foyer as Sarah Spenser glides along beside us, buoyed by the swirls of pride-polluted navy blue victory I can see all around her. As Char and I start down the walkway, Sarah Spenser breaks her smug silence, “You were right about one thing, though. Spenser Mining is ready for change. That change is coming. And it is closer than you think.” She takes a minute to grumble at the rhododendrons, waves goodbye or good riddance, and shoves the door shut.

My arse isn’t in the car for more than a minute when my phone starts to sing. It’s Peggy, huffing and puffing like she just ran the four-metre dash.

“Get home,” she says. “There’s trucks and gear goin’ up the road. Spenser Mining trucks, taking the Crown access road to out behind your place.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“Didn’t read the paper this morning, did you?”

“I never read the paper.”

“What, you think auras or whatever ya call them are ­gonna tell you everything? Don’t be so stunned. Read the frig­gin’ paper.”

“Are you gonna tell me or what?”

Newspaper pages rustle as Peggy clears her throat. “Spenser Mining Inc. Partners with Alberta Firm to Explore Coal Bed Methane. Drilling expected to begin this summer,” she reads. “What did I tell you? The stench of sulphur and pork fat. Dirty money. The bastards are planning to frack. For a puff of coal gas, of all things.”

Turns out there is a shallow coal seam that runs through the woods on the Middle Rear Road, and while there’s not enough coal to mine outright, there’s enough to frack in order to extract methane gas. The biggest cache starts on the Crown land nestled right beside mine, and runs under my property in the direction the little fracking tunnel would need to go. My little deed of ownership only applies to what’s on the surface, not to what’s buried in the ground, and it won’t be worth the paper it’s written on if they find enough of what they are looking for. Because Spenser Mining Inc. has friends in high places. Friends who will be quick to bypass any pesky policies that hinder progress, and drown out any peeps of protest with a rousing chorus of that old, soothing refrain that lulls and lures people into a nervous state of grudging co-operation. We all know the words to that song, here: jobs, jobs jobs.

But instead of a mine, this time they’ll pound the ground, shoot the earth up with chemicals, and eke out a few wafts of trapped gas from inside an otherwise useless patch of coal. And if our well water becomes undrinkable, they’ll say they don’t know why. If the trees and the grass and the birds start dying around the tailing ponds, well, that’s just nature for you. If people start getting sick, clearly it’s because of our poor choices and bad habits. But they’ll be quick to remind us how lucky we are, and how grateful we ought to be that this industry came here, out of the goodness of its heart, to build a future for the next generation. Never mind if that future looks like a scene out of a Mad Max movie. And when the gas is gone, they’ll leave, taking their money and their magical song about jobs jobs jobs with them. But we’ll still be here. Sick and starved and broken all over again.