‘Demons’ at Hell’s Half Acre caught Winston Churchill’s eye during oilfields tour in 1929
Two local events this week celebrate Winston Churchill, which prompted historian David Finch to take a look back at Churchill’s visit to Alberta in 1929.
Cigars for Churchill were front page news in the Calgary Herald in August 1929.
Winston was woefully short of his favourite cheroots. He smoked them. Chewed on them. Offered them up as presents on his tour of North America.
When asked if he smoked too much he replied, “If I had not smoked so much I might have been bad tempered at the wrong time.”
On Sunday, 25 August 1929 Churchill and his entourage motored off to the oilfields southwest of Calgary at Turner Valley.
Many of Calgary’s oilmen joined the tour.
Pat Burns chauffeured Winston in an open topped car — his son Randolph, brother Jack and nephew Johnny also visited the Commonwealth’s most important oilfield.
Mighty czar of the cattle industry, Burns has helped underwrite the first Calgary Stampede, and by the late 1920s was also heavily invested in oil.
A Who’s Who of the Canadian oilpatch accompanied the tour; W. Stewart Herron of the 1914 discovery oil well fame and John McLeod of Imperial Oil. They visited recently producing wells and lunched at the Turner Valley Gas Plant.
Winston visited the “pillars of flame” at Hell’s Half Acre where flares consumed “waste” or excess natural gas for which there was no ready market. Winston noted, “far more demons have been loosed than can be harnessed.”
The waste prompted the provincial government to create a conservation agency in 1938, today called the Alberta Energy Regulator, to oversee responsible development of Alberta’s petroleum birthright.
Winston’s son Randolph derided the “satanic” valley. Wealthy oil men were “pigging up a beautiful valley to make their fortunes and then being quite incapable of spending their money.”
And he denounced their “lack of culture.”
Winston retorted. “Cultured people are merely the glittering scum which floats upon the deep river of production!”
The Canadian petroleum industry in 2017, dealing with a low world oil price, can take some solace from a timely Churchill quote.
“Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm.”
David Finch is a Calgary historian. On May 27 he presents the inaugural Turner Valley Oilfield Society Speaker Series presentation: Winston Churchill’s Amazing Adventures in the Turner Valley Oilfield at 2 p.m. at the Valley Neighbours Club in Turner Valley.
Also this week, the Sir Winston Churchill Society of Calgary hosts its annual black tie dinner on May 25, at The Ranchmen’s Club, addressing the topic of “Winston Churchill’s Indirect Approach.”