Cape Breton used to export fish, coal, and steel; but in 2005, it’s main export is people.

[…] The only message we got about a better future was that we had to leave home to have one.

We did not question it, because this is the have-not region of a have-not province, and it has not boomed here in generations.

— Kate Beaton, Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands, 2022, Drawn & Quarterly, p. 10