Historian Joyce Hunt on her upcoming book detailing the overlooked and foundation-laying years between 1905-1930

Lawsuits, drownings, corporate takeovers, mysterious subsidiaries, attempts at covert deals, secret codes, and industry-changing regulations—these are not necessarily the stories one thinks of when considering the oilsands industry’s early history, if one considers it at all. Most of the published tales of Alberta’s bitumen pioneers begin in the 1930s around the time of Karl Clark, the famed scientist who invented the hot water extraction process that began development in earnest. But make no mistake, there was plenty going on in the preceding decades. Historian Joyce Hunt is on a mission to tell these tales, the stories of the many people drawn by the lures of plentiful oil in northern Alberta between 1905 and 1930.

She continues that the period “laid the foundation. Even though [people] met with relatively little success, it proved to people that [the oilsands] was very unconventional. They were going to have to find a special way to extract the oil. They were going up, taking their chances shipping their equipment up the Athabasca River. They weren’t failures because they were experimenting.

“There is much more to the story. I want to write about the people who are unknown and obscure and have been hiding there,” Hunt explains. “Nobody else has been weird enough to do this.”

Background of a decades-long research project

Hunt’s introduction to petroleum was at an early age in her home province of New Brunswick. Her father would take the family for drives in Albert County, stopping to visit the historic Albert Mines, site of the Albertite oil shales. She also recalls the “horrible smell” of her grandparents’ gas-lighted home.

“That was my introduction to natural gas and oil.”

In 1973, Hunt and her husband travelled to Alberta, and from Edmonton flew in a propeller cargo plane to Fort McMurray, where he had secured work with Great Canadian Oil Sands (GCOS—now Suncor). She says they were immediately smitten with the community.

“The people were so wonderful and enthusiastic about the community and the work they were doing in the tar sands that we never looked back,” Hunt notes. “The pioneering spirit was there.”

A long-time teacher and schooled historian, she says that wherever she has travelled—including to Fort McMurray, Alberta—she has always been interested in learning about the local history.

“I would just pick up anything I could find. [In Fort McMurray], not a lot was written.”

The fascination with the 1905–1930 time period was inspired by an advertisement from 1915 that appeared in a 1969 GCOS newsletter encouraging investors to “forget that silly talk about Calgary oil fields,” and “get your ten dollars in the mail today and back up the pioneer oil company of Alberta, which will drill this spring in the real oil fields of the great north where the oil actually is.”

The flame was lit—Hunt was intrigued, and travelled by GCOS plane to the City of Edmonton Archives to find the original newspaper that contained the ad in hopes to find out more about the company it publicized.

“[My research] just exploded,” she says. “I discovered names that had never, ever been published…. I thought it was some pretty unique material.”

The couple stayed in Fort McMurray for 20 years—all the while with Hunt gathering information—but then left in the early 1990s first to Pennsylvania and Philadelphia, then to South Africa, and back to Alabama—where Hunt returned to her research.

“Realizing I was missing significant information required to complete the history I had begun years earlier, my husband decided to accept a position in Calgary [in 2006] so that I could complete my project.”

In addition to the Edmonton archives, Hunt’s research has spanned corporate records, the University of Alberta Archives, Glenbow Library and Archives, Alberta Provincial Archives, Hudson’s Bay Company Archives, and Library and Archives Canada. In September 2008, some 20 binders and countless files later, Hunt decided the research was over, and it was time to write.

The structure of the story

Hunt’s book will be divided chronologically. In the pre-1900 period, she will look at the region and its topography, accessibility to and control of the region, the creation of Fort McMurray, the role of the Geological Survey of Canada, surveys and land ownership, early world oil discoveries, and the growing global demand for crude oil and its products.

The 1900 to 1910 period takes Hunt to Alberta’s achievement of provincial status, government regulations relating to resources, transportation challenges, the first oilsands companies, the role of Fort McMurray, expanded uses for crude oil, and increasing consumption.

Moving into 1910 to 1914 will take the reader into the impact of pre-war British Navy developments, changes in government regulations, growing interest in the region, experimental pavement efforts, railway development, homesteading, and commencement of a systematic study of the oilsands.

In the 1914 to 1920 period, Hunt looks at the impact of World War I on development, including an intriguing proposition by Shell to essentially take control over the northern half of Alberta to secure petroleum for British war ships, relations between the United States, Britain, and Canada, railway construction, topographical surveys, a world oil crisis, and the first attempts at steam extraction.

In the last decade that the book covers, 1920 to 1930, she will examine major changes in government regulations, the era of the extraction processes, the creation of government reserves, the first commercial enterprises, growing consumption and production of crude oil, attempts at conservation, western initiatives for control of resources, railway completion, and a look at Fort McMurray’s population growth and business initiatives.

Finally, the book will conclude with obstacles overcome, commercial successes, experiments in alternate sources of energy, the transfer of resource ownership, foundations laid for present-day development, and current industry ties to the early days.

“1930 was a very significant period in Alberta,” Hunt notes. “Up to that time, the Canadian government controlled minerals and natural resources. In 1930 Alberta and Saskatchewan got control.”

The relationship between governments and industry during this time period is what ties the whole story together, she says. “[Without that] it is just a chronological story…. As people began to realize there was oil up there, the regulations shifted.”

The goal of the book: to “provide a reason [companies] went up there to begin with.”