Pipeline bombs belie a history of drilling in northern British Columbia
Oil and natural gas drilling – and a sometimes uneasy marriage of farming and industry – are older than roads and ambulance services in the vast Peace River region of northeastern B.C.
A saber-toothed tiger fossil, an iron workhorse snowshoe, homesteader artifacts from toys to tools, and mementos of roving artistic, music and literary celebrities – all have places of honor on crowded shelves and walls in the Rolla Pub. So do a portrait of an early drilling derrick and a nameplate off a modern rig signed by its crew.
“A community is like a puzzle. Everyone’s a tiny piece. When it all fits together, it’s beautiful. It doesn’t matter where people come from. The only prerequisite is respect,” says pub owner Patti Martin.
“We have a tendency to lose our history,” she says. “We live in such a transient world. Most people are away from home. I make them feel at home. People have hearts if you let them.” Her decades-long labor of collector’s love has earned her establishment fame as a must-see travel stop and official British Columbia heritage site in scenic country near the Alberta border northeast of Dawson Creek.
Her records confirm that oil and natural gas drilling – and a sometimes uneasy marriage of farming and industry – are older than roads and ambulance services in the vast Peace River region of northeastern B.C. A homesteader, J.B. Pierce, made the first discovery near Rolla at a spot called Braden’s Crossing, named after another pioneer farmer.
Pierce found an oily seep in 1914 and had it analyzed in Edmonton at the University of Alberta. By 1922, he drilled a successful well and built a mini-gas utility that fueled a boiler, blacksmith forge and cookhouse stove. The network sprung an undetectable leak of naturally clean, odorless gas in late 1936, and an explosion and fire incinerated a building. Using horse-drawn sleighs, it took two days to transport burn victims 20 kilometers along frontier trails to the nearest medical aid in Pouce Coupe.
A safer version of the fossil fuels industry than its homemade beginnings – employing homesteaders but run by professionals – gradually spread. A project to build a B.C.- wide gas pipeline network emerged well before the 1947 Leduc gusher launched the modern Alberta industry.
“A lot of people wouldn’t have their farms now if it wasn’t for oil and gas jobs. It’s been a tradition all through Alberta and B.C. These people had to work hard to pay for their quarter-sections and implements. It’s also how lots of the kids paid their way through university,” says the Rolla hostess and historian.
“It’s amazing to see how hard people worked,” recalls her retired brother-in-law, Dick Martin. “You couldn’t be a prima donna coming up to this area. You had to be a worker. No one had special status. It was a community. If you went to the mayor, he’d treat you like a brother.”
So it was no surprise when elected leaders of the region’s local governments, organized as the Peace River Regional District, formed a common front to issue a unanimous summer statement deploring sporadic bomb attacks on gas installations southeast of Dawson Creek and Rolla, near Tomslake. “These bombings are violent criminal acts that threaten and endanger the lives of the people who live and work in our community,” the circular said. “Creating fear in the workplace, in our residents and our communities, is no way to find solutions to perceived problems.”
But the regional character also made it unsurprising that no immediate arrests were made after EnCana Corp. doubled its reward for turning in the bomber to $1 million. Streaks of self-sufficiency and independence inherited from the pioneers of northern B.C. farming and industry run deep. Casting suspicion on neighbors is no more part of the heritage than either terrorism or knuckling under to authority.
Frontier times are still a vivid memory. “It’s not that long ago really,” says Patti Martin. Her pub collection includes a still-fresh photo of a schoolboy setting out on horseback with a rifle in his hands for some small-game hunting.
“They were really strong-willed people. It’s still in the genes of the kids – that will, that strength. A lot came up here because there weren’t any rules. They were escaping civilization to make one of their own.”
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