By Scott Jeffrey
When I was a teenager growing up in Saskatchewan, I never heard the joke.
It was only when I moved to Calgary in 1972 that I hear the joke, and many more besides. I didn’t even know there were Saskatchewan jokes until I moved away. I then discovered that people from Saskatchewan were more or less substituted for any ethnic minority that might otherwise be the butt of an off-colour remark. And like many ethnic jokes, I attributed them to ignorance and jealousy.
The joke I refer to is a simple one. It simply states “The best thing to come out of Saskatchewan in 40 years is an empty bus.” Yuk, yuk!
I can’t speak for everyone, but many of my Saskatchewan friends then living in Calgary were kind of proud of our new status. At least we were being noticed! It was only when I had spent a few years in Calgary, and started in the oil and gas industry, that I learned the true extent of our infiltration into the mainstream of Calgary and Alberta society.
When I started working in Alberta, I kicked around quite a bit, working in construction, on rigs, and even a stint in a gas plant outside Medicine Hat. I worked beside a lot of fine Alberta boys, but there was a general steadiness about guys from Saskatchewan that was tacitly acknowledged by co-workers, and appreciated by bosses.
As I “graduated” from rig pig and gas plant labourer to ink-stained wretch, I had a better opportunity to at least read about, and in some cases meet, those quiet individuals from Saskatchewan who actually ran the industry. Again, lots of fine Alberta talent, but if not the backbone, then at least a number of vertebrae in the industry were made up of home-grown Saskatchewan boys.
From the very beginning of the modern era of oil and gas, starting with Leduc No. I in 1947, there has been a steady stream of hard working and qualified individuals that left the farm to work in the patch. Most of them started in the field, and many saw opportunities that only higher education could make available to them. Many left to take degrees, but almost all of them ended back in Alberta, the centre of our oil and gas world.
As they worked their way up the chain, with jobs of increasing responsibility, they never forgot their roots, and many of the companies they eventually ran made their mark on the Saskatchewan patch. Trends were observed, plays mapped out, wells were spudded, and in not too many years Saskatchewan had its own home-grown oil and gas industry. If they couldn’t actually move home, they at least could make a difference in their home province, and they were able to make a lot of money for the province and their companies into the bargain.
Anyone with more than 20 years of industry experience would recognize almost all of the inductees into the Saskatchewan Oil Patch Hall of Fame. But what might surprise them is where they were born. They came from hamlets, villages, small towns, and small cities, but they were never more than one relative away from the farm, and the hard work that it takes to make a living on the land.
This is barely scratching the surface, but do you know Bill Mooney, John Stoik, the Seaman brothers, Bud McCaig, Don Barkwell, Gerry Maier, Dean Perkins, Ron Kuchinka, Hank Swartout, Murray Edwards, Bill McCaffery? The list goes on and on, and it’s a pleasure see how they are honoured by their province, and to see how they honour their province with good works in many fields.
And so, let’s get back to that joke about the empty bus. If you were to fill an average Greyhound with the above individuals, and so many more, it’s a fair bet that no one in the industry would cast a jaundiced eye at the passengers as it crossed the line at Alsask. They may not have started big, but they started good, and are a credit wherever they end up.
Chances are, if they somehow got diverted south of the border and ended up in Texas, even the Donald would expedite their speedy transition in the mainstream of American life. Of course, there might be some sour grapes among the local oil types, because a lot of jobs would go to those upstarts from a place they can’t even pronounce, let alone spell.
#Saskatchewan #Rig #Riglife #RigPig #OilandGas #GasPlant #Canada #Energy
