Fields of Fire: An Illustrated History of Canadian Petroleum

Duncan McDowall is a professor of history at Carleton University and the
author of Quick to the Frontier: Canada’s Royal Bank.

The “dry hole” is the oil company’s perennial occupational
hazard—a lot of capital and sweat in pursuit of a geological hunch,
yet producing no oil. Each dry hole, however, adds to the knowledge of a
field and enhances the chances of an eventual oil strike in the
vicinity. The 1947 gusher at Leduc, Alberta, and the 1979 Hibernia find
off Newfoundland were each preceded by hundreds of dry holes. The dry
holes are quickly forgotten, remembered only for what they reveal in the
negative. Fields of Fire is best described in these terms—a
disappointment containing some hints of broader potential.

This copiously illustrated coffee-table history of the “oil patch”
in Canada is dedicated to the proposition that the industry is “an
engine of growth,” albeit one that has operated in fits and starts.
Social change, technological advances, global resource endowment, and
diplomacy have all governed its fitful evolution in Canada. The book
covers the main frontiers of Canadian petroleum development: early
discoveries, Alberta’s emergence in the 1920s as the country’s
leading oil producer, the awkward business of transporting oil by
pipeline and train, conquering the oil sands, seeking “black gold”
in the frozen north and under the ocean floor, and where humankind’s
appetite for oil and extractive technology might lead the industry next.
Throughout, there are numerous black-and-white and color illustrations.
Many of these, drawn from Calgary’s Glenbow Archives, capture the
rawness of the energy frontier; the more recent ones, borrowed from
energy companies, have a public relations aura about them.

It is never clear just exactly what audience Fields of Fire is
intended to serve. Despite its attractive length, logical chapter
breakdown, and ample illustrations, it fails to satisfy an educational
market. It seldom gets at the basic questions that constitute a
foundational understanding of the industry. How is oil formed under the
ground? What are the mechanics of an oil pipeline? How does an oil well
work? There is only one map in the entire book. Where is Leduc? What was
the route of the Canol Pipeline? There are no schematic drawings to
depict the nine-step process by which tar sands are processed into
usable oil products. Moreover, readers familiar with the business and
politics of the oil patch will find nothing new here. The deep
ideological fault lines that have so frequently divided oilmen and
Ottawa are only passingly dealt with, as are the continental and global
imperatives that have dominated the industry since the last world war.
One is left with the impression that the book is best suited to display
and to a casual readership in an oil company’s reception lounge.

Whatever its audience, the book’s principal defect is poor writing
and editing. The text is inelegant and often awkward. All too often the
narrative slips into clichés. We are told that oil and gas “takes
people” to succeed—well, so does any industry. Chapters are often
convoluted in structure, leaping backward and forward chronologically.
In many places, crucial dates are not supplied, leaving the reader to
puzzle over exactly when an event took place. Ungainly sentences cry out
for an editor’s pen. A rigorous editing might also have prodded the
authors to move below the surface in so much of their analysis. There
are cursory mentions of crucial issues such as pollution control,
foreign ownership, and financing oil exploration, but no real attempt to
provide an instructive insight into them. The oil patch deserves better.