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When Canadians from Eastern Canada move to Western Canada these days to seek better prospects they are merely following in the footsteps of William Stewart Herron, who packed up his bags in Ontario’s Haliburton county and ended up in Okotoks south of Calgary.
Except that Herron’s migration spawned an industry that transformed Alberta’s fortunes. Herron has been credited for discovering and laying the ground for the development of Alberta’s first well that gushed oil nearly a 100 years ago on May 14, 1914. Herron didn’t accomplish his feat alone, of course. There were other major actors including a future prime minister, a senator and one Archibald Dingman.
Born in Peterborough, Ont., Herron began modestly as a cook’s helper, but soon honed his entrepreneurial skills building a logging and road-building business in Northern Ontario. As work waned in the region, he caught the oil bug after visiting an oilfield in Pennsylvania while on holiday, and in the hope of deploying his equipment in the south.
“While Herron did not find work south of the border, the trip did establish what would become a consuming interest in petroleum geology,” wrote R.C. Macleod in his 1984 book ‘William Stewart Herron, Father of the Petroleum Industry in Alberta.’
Herron’s operations continued to deteriorate in Ontario and the restless entrepreneur finally sold his business and house in Halliburton and headed West with his second wife and three daughters in 1905.
He bought a 960-acre farm in Okotoks near Calgary where he sought to expand his farming business by “breaking” horses and securing a deal to transport coal to an electric plant in the area around 1911.
“When he was out west of Okotoks with his two horses and wagon getting coal, he stopped at a spot where natural gas was bubbling up from the ground,” according to oil historian David Finch.
Trapping the gas in jars he sent the samples for tests to U.S. universities, which confirmed what he suspected: he had stumbled on petroleum.
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