"A sudden gush of oil shot up through the crippled rig like a monstrous fountain."
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Oilman by Robert Stuart Mclean Trafford Publishing
book review by Peter M. Fitzparick
It is 1948 and 17-year-old farm boy Billy Cochrane doesn't like his little rural school in Nanton, Province of Alberta. The romance of working on the oil fields in the northern city of Leduc is too much to resist. He rides a bus there and soon finds a job as a "weevil," or young, inexperienced helper on one of the rigs. He throws himself into the rhythms of life on a rig site, befriending the workers and getting to know the methods and madness of oil exploration. He shares the hardscrabble life of boozing and whoring and fighting that punctuate the long hours operating the drill. But when oil is struck, his life is changed in even more ways. His dedication earns the respect of power players in the oil business and he finds himself the owner of several rigs and a thriving oil business himself. His rise to the top is not without its cost, however.
Mclean has illuminated the people and culture living over Alberta's massive oil, gas, and oil sands reserves, reported to be the second largest in the world, after Saudi Arabia. He has an authentic voice, having worked on the fields himself. One feels he knew some of the colorful characters he describes. The plot is deceptively simple, capturing in so many ways the expansion of big business that took place in the post WWII era. He does not miss that culture's power to corrupt, its cutthroat competitiveness. or the disconnect the counterculture children of the sixties intuitively felt towards it. The theme that emerges is one of values. His are human.