the northeastern Alberta city of Fort McMurray. Technically referred to as the sprawling municipality’s “urban service area” — they do love their limp labels — but more colloquially (and colourfully) called Fort Mac, the city at the junction of the Clearwater and Athabasca rivers is the administrative centre of the 63,780-square-kilometre RMWB and the sticky heart of Canada’s oilsands empire. It’s also in need of a big hug. Still smarting from devastating wildfires in 2016, the collapse of oil prices in 2014 and the recession of 2008, Fort Mac is now confronting a stubborn pandemic, the clobbering effects of a carbon-tax future and the relentless onslaught of “tarsands” smear campaigns.