Fort McMurray, Canada--Sky-high salaries once attracted thousands of workers to this small city in the heart of Canada's oil sands.
But after crude prices plunged, Fort McMurray is lamenting a brief golden age.
From June 2014 to January, the price of a barrel of oil shed half its value.
Several drilling projects were deemed no longer viable and put on hold. Some 20,000 oil sands workers were laid off.
On the outskirts of this small city, campsites that were once filled with an overflow of homeless workers are no longer jam-packed.
Sites used to rent for Can$1,500 (US$1,227) monthly, but many packed up their trailers or wooden shacks and left after losing their job.
Left behind are a handful of oilmen and the unemployed drifters who scavenge for cans and bottles they can turn in for a cash deposit.
But not everyone sees the turnaround as a bad one. It has put an end to rampant real estate speculation, for example.
"Maybe I'll finally be able to afford an apartment in town," said Bob, a plumber. "Every cloud has a sliver lining."
Since the start of the fall in oil prices mid-2014, job layoffs have come in waves.
Each one drives another nail into the fortunes of local businesses that once relied on big-spending oil workers.
More and more rely on a local food bank, which has seen a 74-percent year-on-year increase in the number of people it feeds.
AFP
