On Feb. 13 Alberta marked a significant, yet unheralded, milestone that passed with little fanfare. In fact, it was barely mentioned at all: the 75th anniversary of the Leduc #1 Discovery Well. .On a cold winter day in a barren field south of Edmonton the fortunes of this province — indeed, all of Canada — were irrevocably altered in ways few could have imagined then and are only coming to grips with now..That’s when Vern “Dry Hole” Hunter — who was born in Nanton — drilled 100 successive dry holes before hitting the Big One on his 101st try. That’s the legend in a nutshell. It’s chronicled on a mural in downtown Calgary, albeit few these days would know. Or notice if they saw it.. It’s a Discovery!The Daily Oil Bulletin announces Leduc to the world. .The reality is that everything that came before, and everything after, is a mere footnote to a 100-metre fireball that shot through the blue prairie sky. Alberta has never been the same since..Leduc was a watershed in many ways, a real feat of engineering. It was the first oilfield in the world to be discovered on seismic, a technology invented by Schlumberger in the First World War to peg down German artillery positions. Somebody in some office decided to drill into the top of a ‘bump’. It turned out to be a pinnacle reef. Coral reefs in Alberta? Continental Drift was still considered quack science. A U of A professor infamously quipped he’d drink all the oil found west of the fourth meridian in Alberta. .Up until that time, oil rigs weren’t capable of drilling more than a few hundred feet below the subsurface. By 1947 they could go 7,000 feet. At Leduc they twisted the substructure trying to get to total depth. And then… FLASH. Zeitgeist..In the preface to his 1991 book — the aptly titled Leduc — oil-patch historian Aubrey Kerr quotes Northrop Frye: “Every human society possesses a mythology which is inherited, transmitted and diversified by literature.”.And then adds, “the Leduc microcosm is no exception; its ethnic mosaic of settlers, to which were added the itinerant roughnecks, provides its own folklore. All this adds up to a narrative that will provide generations to come with an understanding of Alberta’s heritage and how it all started that wintry afternoon.”.Aubrey was no ordinary historian, he was a witness and participant as Imperial’s well-site geologist. He was there. And took upon himself the loving burden of separating the fact from the fiction, all the while perpetuating the myth, never stopping to take credit where he thought it was due. Namely, himself, writing his role in the heady glow of the flare pit dispassionately in the third person. .In a memorable Leduc anecdote he recalls meeting Mr. Hunter at one of those mundane reunions, and asks him — without identifying himself — “Do you remember Kerr, who discovered Leduc?” .“Never heard of the sonuvabitch” was the reply.In other words, he was a bull------- with the best of them. It makes for great reading..I must confess, I knew Aubery, albeit under rather tenuous circumstances. As a young reporter at Nickle’s Daily Oil Bulletin (which typeset his books) he was one of my toughest critics, calling me on the telephone to critique my articles and dispute facts. I always appreciated his call; I knew he was reading. He was a curmudgeonly type: “What do YOU know about oil?” .“Only what I’ve read from your books, Sir.” His tone softened. “You’ve read my books?” He seemed genuinely pleased. I told him I did. My first reporting job was in Redwater, which was also the subject of a separate volume. .I was being completely honest when I told him they both had made an indelible impression on my understanding of exactly what it meant to be a life-long Albertan, even now, all these years later. He said, Shaun, “we have to get it right, or people will forget and believe anything they read.”.That’s because everything we have today — economic prosperity, political power (or lack of it) — stems from Leduc. .I was born in Edmonton and started Grade school in Leduc in 1971 (I’m dating myself) and vividly remember the election that swept Peter Lougheed to power on a wave of oil-driven optimism. He would later become one of my professors at the University of Alberta. . Peter Lougheed and Pierre TrudeauPeter Lougheed and Pierre Trudeau .Even then I recall being swept up a period of profound economic and social change, although I wasn’t able to articulate it. The skylines of Edmonton and Calgary were transformed almost overnight, skyscrapers were popping up like crocuses in spring. I vividly recall a family trip to the Calgary Tower and how it emerged from the landscape on Highway 2, a beacon that could be seen for hundreds of miles around. It stuck..It’s perhaps no coincidence that when Leduc #1 was capped in 1984, it had produced over 240 million barrels of oil. It was also the year the Edmonton Oilers won their first Stanley Cup, on the night I graduated from Paul Kane High School in St. Albert. My aftergrad was a happy (and drunken) riot on Jasper Ave. I was 17..By 1988, it was over. Wayne Gretzky was sold to the LA Kings, oil prices crashed and it ushered in a long dark period that we as Albertans are collectively suffering and trying to recover from to this day. We ALL became ‘Hurtin’ Albertans.’.Later I moved to Calgary to take a job at the Daily Oil Bulletin. I’d never heard of it until I had a summer job welding rig parts at a fabrication yard in Nisku. I wasn’t cut for it, to be kind. Mac — a transplanted Newfie who was the shop foreman — showed me a copy, and said “you should be writing for the Bulletin. It’s the Bible.” I quit the welding yard, went to the Edmonton public library and applied the next day. To my surprise, I got it.. Walking in step, for a change.Marc Lolonde, Peter Lougheed and Pierre Trudeau in the Energy Wars of the 1970s. .The DOB as it was colloquially known was another revelation. Its founder, Carl O. Nickle was also a witness to that day. A CFCN reporter, his father lost a fortune speculating on the Dingman well in Turner Valley. It was a complete scam, but ‘Carlo’ never lost the faith. In 1937, he started the Oil Bulletin, a hand typed sheet he distributed to the oil offices in downtown Calgary every Saturday at a price of five cents — a Nickle. He was a Believer. A Defender of the Faith..Leduc validated everything he (and we) did. His Extra published on Friday Feb. 14, 1947 was framed on the wall. “Imperial Leduc! It’s an oil discovery!” was the headline. It’s preserved, in the Glenbow. (I was there when our Office Manager Doreen donated it to the archives.).“I watched on Thursday afternoon while IMPERIAL-LEDUC No. 1 kicked itself off and staged a spectacular ‘flare’ scene（which was staged, my words)… In the small hours of this morning I shivered in a raw wind while my hand on the flow pipe recorded the steady pulsating of oil heading for the flare.”.Sheer poetry..Aubrey said Carlo always knew a good story when he saw one. The knock on him, according to the Alberta Report’s Alberta History series (which Derek Fildebrandt was kind enough to lend me for this article) was that you never asked Carl Nickle the time of day, because he’d tell you how to make a watch..After that, the Oil Bulletin became the ‘Daily’. It was essential reading. It still is. Carlo was long gone by the time I got there, but he loomed large in our downtown office. His presence never left the room. I loved it (still do) because it validated everything I was as an Albertan. The first two years was a series of lightbulb moments — FLASH — for what seemed my entire existence, the minutiae of a real sense of purpose. .I learned about land. I learned about regulatory requirements, administering leases and the like. Mineral rights. Stock markets. Mergers and acquisitions. Technology. Global commodities. Money. Politics. The machinery of life in Alberta. I got to meet and interview all the old timers before they inevitably passed away. It all became crystal clear. I’ve never grown tired of it, after all this time. And I still write about it everyday..Even now, as we struggle with money and politics — a new Trudeau is Prime Minister — climate change, budget deficits and royalties… who gets what? I am forever grateful. Because it’s mine. And yours..No Aubery. I won’t forget. Thank you, sir, for telling the story.
On Feb. 13 Alberta marked a significant, yet unheralded, milestone that passed with little fanfare. In fact, it was barely mentioned at all: the 75th anniversary of the Leduc #1 Discovery Well. .On a cold winter day in a barren field south of Edmonton the fortunes of this province — indeed, all of Canada — were irrevocably altered in ways few could have imagined then and are only coming to grips with now..That’s when Vern “Dry Hole” Hunter — who was born in Nanton — drilled 100 successive dry holes before hitting the Big One on his 101st try. That’s the legend in a nutshell. It’s chronicled on a mural in downtown Calgary, albeit few these days would know. Or notice if they saw it.. It’s a Discovery!The Daily Oil Bulletin announces Leduc to the world. .The reality is that everything that came before, and everything after, is a mere footnote to a 100-metre fireball that shot through the blue prairie sky. Alberta has never been the same since..Leduc was a watershed in many ways, a real feat of engineering. It was the first oilfield in the world to be discovered on seismic, a technology invented by Schlumberger in the First World War to peg down German artillery positions. Somebody in some office decided to drill into the top of a ‘bump’. It turned out to be a pinnacle reef. Coral reefs in Alberta? Continental Drift was still considered quack science. A U of A professor infamously quipped he’d drink all the oil found west of the fourth meridian in Alberta. .Up until that time, oil rigs weren’t capable of drilling more than a few hundred feet below the subsurface. By 1947 they could go 7,000 feet. At Leduc they twisted the substructure trying to get to total depth. And then… FLASH. Zeitgeist..In the preface to his 1991 book — the aptly titled Leduc — oil-patch historian Aubrey Kerr quotes Northrop Frye: “Every human society possesses a mythology which is inherited, transmitted and diversified by literature.”.And then adds, “the Leduc microcosm is no exception; its ethnic mosaic of settlers, to which were added the itinerant roughnecks, provides its own folklore. All this adds up to a narrative that will provide generations to come with an understanding of Alberta’s heritage and how it all started that wintry afternoon.”.Aubrey was no ordinary historian, he was a witness and participant as Imperial’s well-site geologist. He was there. And took upon himself the loving burden of separating the fact from the fiction, all the while perpetuating the myth, never stopping to take credit where he thought it was due. Namely, himself, writing his role in the heady glow of the flare pit dispassionately in the third person. .In a memorable Leduc anecdote he recalls meeting Mr. Hunter at one of those mundane reunions, and asks him — without identifying himself — “Do you remember Kerr, who discovered Leduc?” .“Never heard of the sonuvabitch” was the reply.In other words, he was a bull------- with the best of them. It makes for great reading..I must confess, I knew Aubery, albeit under rather tenuous circumstances. As a young reporter at Nickle’s Daily Oil Bulletin (which typeset his books) he was one of my toughest critics, calling me on the telephone to critique my articles and dispute facts. I always appreciated his call; I knew he was reading. He was a curmudgeonly type: “What do YOU know about oil?” .“Only what I’ve read from your books, Sir.” His tone softened. “You’ve read my books?” He seemed genuinely pleased. I told him I did. My first reporting job was in Redwater, which was also the subject of a separate volume. .I was being completely honest when I told him they both had made an indelible impression on my understanding of exactly what it meant to be a life-long Albertan, even now, all these years later. He said, Shaun, “we have to get it right, or people will forget and believe anything they read.”.That’s because everything we have today — economic prosperity, political power (or lack of it) — stems from Leduc. .I was born in Edmonton and started Grade school in Leduc in 1971 (I’m dating myself) and vividly remember the election that swept Peter Lougheed to power on a wave of oil-driven optimism. He would later become one of my professors at the University of Alberta. . Peter Lougheed and Pierre TrudeauPeter Lougheed and Pierre Trudeau .Even then I recall being swept up a period of profound economic and social change, although I wasn’t able to articulate it. The skylines of Edmonton and Calgary were transformed almost overnight, skyscrapers were popping up like crocuses in spring. I vividly recall a family trip to the Calgary Tower and how it emerged from the landscape on Highway 2, a beacon that could be seen for hundreds of miles around. It stuck..It’s perhaps no coincidence that when Leduc #1 was capped in 1984, it had produced over 240 million barrels of oil. It was also the year the Edmonton Oilers won their first Stanley Cup, on the night I graduated from Paul Kane High School in St. Albert. My aftergrad was a happy (and drunken) riot on Jasper Ave. I was 17..By 1988, it was over. Wayne Gretzky was sold to the LA Kings, oil prices crashed and it ushered in a long dark period that we as Albertans are collectively suffering and trying to recover from to this day. We ALL became ‘Hurtin’ Albertans.’.Later I moved to Calgary to take a job at the Daily Oil Bulletin. I’d never heard of it until I had a summer job welding rig parts at a fabrication yard in Nisku. I wasn’t cut for it, to be kind. Mac — a transplanted Newfie who was the shop foreman — showed me a copy, and said “you should be writing for the Bulletin. It’s the Bible.” I quit the welding yard, went to the Edmonton public library and applied the next day. To my surprise, I got it.. Walking in step, for a change.Marc Lolonde, Peter Lougheed and Pierre Trudeau in the Energy Wars of the 1970s. .The DOB as it was colloquially known was another revelation. Its founder, Carl O. Nickle was also a witness to that day. A CFCN reporter, his father lost a fortune speculating on the Dingman well in Turner Valley. It was a complete scam, but ‘Carlo’ never lost the faith. In 1937, he started the Oil Bulletin, a hand typed sheet he distributed to the oil offices in downtown Calgary every Saturday at a price of five cents — a Nickle. He was a Believer. A Defender of the Faith..Leduc validated everything he (and we) did. His Extra published on Friday Feb. 14, 1947 was framed on the wall. “Imperial Leduc! It’s an oil discovery!” was the headline. It’s preserved, in the Glenbow. (I was there when our Office Manager Doreen donated it to the archives.).“I watched on Thursday afternoon while IMPERIAL-LEDUC No. 1 kicked itself off and staged a spectacular ‘flare’ scene（which was staged, my words)… In the small hours of this morning I shivered in a raw wind while my hand on the flow pipe recorded the steady pulsating of oil heading for the flare.”.Sheer poetry..Aubrey said Carlo always knew a good story when he saw one. The knock on him, according to the Alberta Report’s Alberta History series (which Derek Fildebrandt was kind enough to lend me for this article) was that you never asked Carl Nickle the time of day, because he’d tell you how to make a watch..After that, the Oil Bulletin became the ‘Daily’. It was essential reading. It still is. Carlo was long gone by the time I got there, but he loomed large in our downtown office. His presence never left the room. I loved it (still do) because it validated everything I was as an Albertan. The first two years was a series of lightbulb moments — FLASH — for what seemed my entire existence, the minutiae of a real sense of purpose. .I learned about land. I learned about regulatory requirements, administering leases and the like. Mineral rights. Stock markets. Mergers and acquisitions. Technology. Global commodities. Money. Politics. The machinery of life in Alberta. I got to meet and interview all the old timers before they inevitably passed away. It all became crystal clear. I’ve never grown tired of it, after all this time. And I still write about it everyday..Even now, as we struggle with money and politics — a new Trudeau is Prime Minister — climate change, budget deficits and royalties… who gets what? I am forever grateful. Because it’s mine. And yours..No Aubery. I won’t forget. Thank you, sir, for telling the story.
