No Oil In Alberta, Eh?

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By this time, Ray Walters was pushing to get the Redwater wildcat drilled and, according to Imperial geologist Bill Hancock, Walters took the initiative to work up the final shooting in Jack Webb's absence, stating "If Imperial doesn't want this, I'll take it." (A similar statement had been attributed to Wes Rabey much earlier.) Redwater No. 1 was located on Crown Reservation #443 (1-32-57-21 W4M). The drilling recommendation was signed by Webb on May 17,1948, approved by Mike Haider on June 3rd, and the wellsite surveyed by Jim Carpenter on June 11th with Don Lougheed as rod-man.

One of the first pre-drilling tasks for Bill Smith, Imperial's landman, was to negotiate right of entry, including wellsite, with Hilton Cook, surface owner of SE/32. Kitty (Libbey) Wilkins, a long¬tine resident of Redwater, referred to Smith as "...a company man. He wasn't out for you, he was out for Imperial." As for Cook, "Gibby" Gibson, District Petroleum Engineer, said he was one of the best leaseholders Imperial had. Gibby found him easy to deal with - Hilton was more concerned with obtaining employment for his three sons, Jud, Jack, and Maurice, than pushing for the highest possible surface rentals. All three were hired! Jud said he was the first to work for Imperial, and that one day he was threshing and pitching bundles when "Fin Lineham came out to the field and took the fork away from me and offered me $1.20 an hour ... I had no idea what the oil business was all about." Jud Cook and his sister, Rita Astle, remember their father visiting the wellsite daily to observe the activity.

Conditions were primitive in those days. Moving the Wilson No. l rig from Eyot Lake, an abandoned wildcat, had been a horrendous task. Fin Lineham, toolpush, recalls lending a hand along the way: "...I did go out and help them re-timber the bridge where we crossed Redwater Creek ... I brought two or three of the guys ... so the damn drawworks wouldn't fall through..." There were no mud tanks at the wellsite in those days, simply a cellar and suction pits that were filled in. These were considered to be quite solid until one summer's day when Cook was driving a tractor over his land and it sank, leaving only the exhaust pipe showing.

One has to admire the tenacity of the field-workers, many of whom had seen a succession of dry holes and were required to move every two months or so. Rod Morris, the wellsite geologist, had seen his share of abandonments in both Saskatchewan and Alberta and had every reason to believe that Redwater would be just another bust. He hired the Lonsdale brothers and George Kiyooka, among others, as sample catchers. Morris moved into a draughty two-storey house in Opal with his wife, Jean, and worked out of Imperial's chicken coop office in Redwater, formerly occupied by the Royer family's feathered tenants, and rented from Emile Royer, local egg and poultry operator: "...I think I'll rent the chicken house for the Imperial people ... rather than I have chickens in there. They need it bad..."

Fin Lineham had a portable shack and was accompanied by his wife, Carrie, and their children. One of the drillers, Alex Kenyon, and his family moved in alongside.

Lineham recalls Mike Woodhead, geologist, arriving from the UK and having to go to the train station to pick up Mike's trunk, "It was so heavy, I had to get the railway agent to help me." (Mike collected model trains as a hobby.) Jean Morris remembers Mike's Daimler, a rare vehicle even in the big cities.

Doug Gamble, driller, said Wilbur Anderson was sent ahead to lease enough land to set up camp, including single-men bunkhouses, wash house, tool-push office, and married-men shacks. Anderson was shown acreage at the northeast corner of Redwater, which he could have bought for $50, but laughed at it. "What in the hell would I want with this patch of quack grass?" Not long after, the patch was divided into ten lots, at $450 per lot. Again, Wilbur laughed, "Missed the boat."

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