Let the Eastern Bastards Freeze in the Dark by Mary Janigan

Author:Mary Janigan
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780307400642
Publisher: Knopf Canada
Published: 2012-11-06T05:00:00+00:00

Amid the labour strife and the incessant demands of the war machine, one truth was now clear: Western resources were becoming more valuable with every passing day. Energy companies were homing in on Ottawa. In late July 1917, the Shell Transport Company Ltd. of London sent a brash eight-page proposal to Interior Minister William James Roche. The firm wanted exclusive oil and natural gas rights over an enormous swath of the West for the duration of the war and for five years after Armistice. Shell even dictated its terms. If Ottawa granted rights over the 328,000-square-mile parcel, exploration would start when the weather permitted. The company would not pay taxes for the first fifteen years of exploration, and royalties would only commence on January 1, 1930 at three cents per barrel. Meanwhile, the federal subsidy for crude oil production should continue. Shell also wanted right-of-way over all Crown lands for pipelines, telegraph and telephone lines, railways and highways; not to mention land for factories, storehouses, refineries and reservoirs.

Almost a century later, the letter seems astonishingly patronizing, as company officials assumed that they were making an offer that Ottawa could not refuse. “The tremendous importance of oil as a fuel and as a power producer cannot be exaggerated,” Shell executive R.N. Benjamin wrote through his attorney Adam T. Shillington.47 Because Shell was a company with a good reputation, solid technical skills and enormous capital, there could be “no possible criticism” if the rights were granted. Only “a Government or a great corporation” had the ability to exploit that challenging Western land.48 Roche circulated the letter to his cabinet colleagues, but the federal government prudently did not reply. It also did not consult the Western premiers, who would have instantly resurrected the campaign of their Gang of Three.

Ottawa also concealed the proposal from the embittered Western farmers who would have hit the ceiling if more drill rigs had appeared in their wheat fields. The sight of those contraptions had been so provocative even before the war that the United Farmers of Alberta had warned Borden: farmers were “more important to the community in general than oil lease speculators, or even oil drillers.”49 The farmers had demanded the opportunity to lease the sub-surface rights to their land before speculators could grab them. They had also demanded a share of the royalties along with compensation for any property damage. Now, in wartime, they were even more determined. The right to exploit Western resources had become a very hot potato.

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