Maybe you know where the facilities are but always find them crowded? Then again, you may not be into structured activity or like to hike or bike but don’t feel really safe on the trails by yourself.



People living in a oil towns face challenges that can be hard on their health. They work long hours, often in shifts, eat unhealthy food and, generally, have less time for themselves. Staying fit and healthy requires more creative approaches.

Dayna Sinclair is the co-ordinator of the Be Fit for Life Centre at Keyano College in Fort McMurray. Through her job, she sees people who work a lot of shift work, a lot of overtime and a lot of different hours.

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“If you only have one day off out of 12, it’s hard to have a life. You try to jam errands, family events and exercise into one day. Exercise can fall by the wayside,” she says.

“Shifting to Wellness” is one of the programs the centre offers to help shift workers lead healthy lives.

People generally find working shifts harder on the body than they first thought it would be, says Sinclair.

The 12-week program looks at what to eat on night shifts, how to get the sleep needed in the daytime and how to still see friends and family when working a shift schedule.

“You want to eat light and eat less when working at night. You can’t digest carbohydrates as well, so eat more protein to help you feel fuller,” says Sinclair.

“Some people work shift work for 20, 30 years. They need to understand their Circadian rhythms, the stages the body goes into during different phases of sleep. They learn to understand how much sleep they need.”

Laura Hancharuk is the director of the Be Fit for Life program at Grande Prairie Regional College. Several different factors affect people’s activity levels in an oil town, she says.

“One is certainly the climate [she’s in Northern Alberta] or the environment. With it being very cold and with winters being so long, people have difficulty exercising outdoors,” she says. “The other factor is accessibility. There aren’t enough recreation facilities available.”

Hancharuk points to the one indoor 25-metre pool in Grande Prairie, a city of 50,000, as an example. “That just doesn’t cut it for all the swimming activities and swim clubs. G.P. is a little bit of a hockey town, and previously, we didn’t have enough ice surfaces. We are lucky that in the last couple of years, we have seen an increase in the number of ice surfaces.”

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Grande Prairie now has five indoor ice surfaces, having added another twined arena in the last year. However, Hancharuk adds that having only one indoor soccer pitch is presenting a problem for year-round soccer games, both for adult and children’s teams.

For some activities, such as fitness classes, Hancharuk says that the college lacks the facilities to offer classes because there isn’t enough space.

However, staff members have come up with some practical alternatives. In the summer, there are many “Boot Camps” that take advantage of the better weather by offering outdoor activities.

The walking program, which is for everyone in the community, uses the college to walk in because there is no field house or indoor track.

“We have to get a bit more creative and utilize some spaces that perhaps you might not normally use … To one end of the college building and back is 1 km and so you do that a few times,” says Hancharuk.

She points to other practical ideas such as extending the hours on fitness facilities. One privately owned gym in Grande Prairie recently extended their hours from 5 a.m. to midnight, which Hancharuk thinks is helpful.

“It gives workers more of a chance to work out,” she says. “In a boomtown with high oilfield activity, a gym could be open 24 hours a day.”

She adds that in Grande Prairie and Fort McMurray it’s difficult to attract and retain qualified staff for 24-hour fitness centres because it’s hard to attract any type of worker. They have nowhere to live, she says.

Dayna Sinclair thinks that oil and gas companies can help encourage employees to be healthier and more active. She said one camp near Fort McMurray, Suncor Firebag, has its own ice arena.

“A lot of the oilfield camps have onsite gyms, which is good. It’s likely easier for the people who live in the camps to have the time to go to the gym, unlike the people who work a 12-hour shift and commute an hour to get home.”

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Karen Gooden, the director of the Some Other Solutions Society for Crisis Prevention in Fort McMurray, encourages companies to be involved in the health of their employees.

Some Other Solutions runs a wellness program. One of the company’s services is to send out information on wellness issues, such as physical activity, to various oil and gas companies. The companies share the information with their workers at the Toolbox safety meetings held every day.

Gooden says that there are wonderful services available in her city, with one difficulty.

“The only problem is the city is growing faster than the services — medical, fitness, social — can keep up,” she says.

Living and working in an oil town doesn’t have to be a barrier to being active. In fact the better you take care of yourself, the better you’ll be able to perform at work and the better you’ll feel overall.

It may take a bit more effort and creativity to be active in a boomtown, but it’s well worth the investment in your health to do so. A few creative solutions can help everyone reach their fitness goals.

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Learn More:
ARPA Provincial Recreation Links
This website provides information on all sorts of recreation programs in Alberta.

Shifting to Wellness
This website provides information for shift workers on how to stay healthy and cope with shifting work hours.

Overcoming Barriers to Physical Activity
Tips from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for ways to make physical activity a part of your life.

Tips for Being Active: CFLRI
The Canadian Fitness and Lifestyle Research Institute (CFLRI) lists many tips and ideas for ways to be active.