Fuelling Progress: One Hundred Years of the Canadian Gas Association.

Graeme S. Mount is a history professor at Laurentian University and
author of Canada’s Enemies: Spies and Spying in the Peaceable Kingdom.

Fuelling Progress and the accompanying CD are beautiful mementos of the centennial of the Canadian Gas Association (1907–2007). The CD contains such illustrations (all black-and-white) as the completion of the Trans-Canada Pipelines at Kapuskasing and the Centennial Flame in front of the Parliament Buildings at night. The book provides a history of natural gas in Canada.

The story begins in China in the 10th century and Great Britain late in the 18th century. In 1807, London had natural gas, with Paris and New York not far behind. Krywulak even links the expansion of natural gas usage in Montreal to the Lower Canadian Rebellion of 1837. Natural gas service was available in Toronto in 1842, in Medicine Hat in 1904. There was a significant find at Bow Island, Alberta, in 1909. Demand increased during the two world wars, and the author gives a balanced account of the 1956 Trans-Canada Pipeline debate in the House of Commons, which played a significant role in the Liberal defeat the following year. Demand jumped again in the 1970s following the Arab Embargo of 1973 and the fall of the Shah in 1979, developments which increased the price of oil. Omitted, however, are stories of explosions that seemed significant to those on the scene: the middle-of-the-night eruption at North Bay in the autumn of 1958, which awakened the city and—in the absence of overnight broadcasting—led many to believe that World War III had begun and that the Soviets had bombed the air base; and an eruption at the Montreal home of a McGill professor a few years later, which left a gaping hole where his house had been and broke most of the windows on the block. The book emphasizes the positive: the reliability of supply, the cleanliness of natural gas, and its comparatively low cost.

There are some major mistakes. Krywulak dates the German invasion of Belgium to September 1914, not August, and refers to Canada’s largest magazine as MacLean’s with a capital L. Nevertheless, Krywulak illustrates his official history with a rich collection of pictures, maps, cartoons, charts, and documents.