WELCOME!!
to this week's meeting of
The Rotary E-Club of Canada One
For the week beginning March 11, 2024
Scroll down to enjoy the content!
Complete the form for a make-up!
Please leave a donation to assist our club to do Rotary's good works!
to this week's meeting of
The Rotary E-Club of Canada One
For the week beginning March 11, 2024
Scroll down to enjoy the content!
Complete the form for a make-up!
Please leave a donation to assist our club to do Rotary's good works!
Greeter this week
Rotarian Keith
Rotarian Keith
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Canadiana
Alberta Canadiana - Leduc Alberta
Preparation for the Leduc Discovery
In 1946, Imperial Oil ran a major seismic survey across central Alberta. The results suggested a large, potentially oil-bearing geological anomaly similar to the Devonian formation previously found around Norman Wells, Northwest Territories. Imperial Oil selected a site on the farmstead of Mike Turta near the hamlet of Leduc and drilled an exploratory well.
Legacy of the Leduc Era
The discovery of Leduc No. 1 touched off a period of rapid change for both the oil industry and the province of Alberta. For the oil industry, it demonstrated that oil could be found in the deep strata Devonian reef structures in addition to the shallower Cretaceous formations. This realization greatly expanded the exploratory area for oil.
The discovery of the Leduc field in combination with subsequent oil finds marked the birth of the modern Canadian oil industry and led Canada from being an oil-poor nation dependent on energy resource imports to being an oil-rich exporter of energy resources.
The Leduc exploratory well was to be Imperial Oil’s last attempt to find oil in Alberta. There had been no major oil discoveries in the previous twenty-five years, and Imperial Oil had drilled 133 consecutive dry wells. The company had decided to concentrate only on Alberta’s natural gas reserves, but on April 9, 1946, the company’s technical personnel reluctantly decided to drill hole No. 134.
Leduc Discovery Day
February 13, 1947, nearly proved to be anticlimactic. About 500 spectators, including local farmers, residents of Edmonton, journalists, executives, government officials and politicians gathered in bitter cold and waited, and waited. Equipment froze, and one piece failed, causing a long delay.
Finally, at 3:55 p.m., Nathan E. Tanner, Alberta’s Minister of Lands and Mines, turned a valve, and the flare line was set alight in an impressive column of flame and smoke as oil began to flow from Leduc No. 1. Vern Hunter later recalled the events of the day:
It was about five o’clock when I got there. It was dark and cold. Well, it took us until about two o’clock that afternoon, working frantically. We got the other crews there too, you know. There were three shifts there. … Walker Taylor, my boss, was very good. There was people swarming around the rig. They had started coming at ten o’clock in the morning. Walker Taylor took all the dignitaries and the press into the boiler house. He was feeding them coffee and donuts, getting them out of my hair.
About two o’clock in the afternoon, we got everything all rigged up and ready to go again, then started swabbing, and of course there was nothing but mud coming at first and everybody was quite disappointed. “Look at what’s coming out nothing but mud.” But pretty soon the mud started to have some gas mixed with it and it really started to blow about three or four in the afternoon. It didn’t go up the derrick. W [sic] had it under control, we had it piped out the flare line and up the pipe. It flared hundreds of feet.
Gas and oil and mud all mixed together. It threw a mushroom cloud just like an atomic bomb and then smoke rings. There were two or three very big smoke rings floating across the sky. That was about three o’clock in the afternoon. We only let it blow for fifteen, twenty minutes. It was coming in, blowing, like, whoo! You could hear it all right. What gas came out with the oil was lit - one of the roughnecks went out with a burning rag to light it - and there was a clear flare.
For Alberta, the Leduc era dramatically transformed the provincial economy. By the end of 1957, Alberta could boast that it possessed 85% of Canada’s crude oil reserves and had delivered a total production of 137 million barrels.
It was about five o’clock when I got there. It was dark and cold. Well, it took us until about two o’clock that afternoon, working frantically. We got the other crews there too, you know. There were three shifts there. … Walker Taylor, my boss, was very good. There was people swarming around the rig. They had started coming at ten o’clock in the morning. Walker Taylor took all the dignitaries and the press into the boiler house. He was feeding them coffee and donuts, getting them out of my hair.
About two o’clock in the afternoon, we got everything all rigged up and ready to go again, then started swabbing, and of course there was nothing but mud coming at first and everybody was quite disappointed. “Look at what’s coming out nothing but mud.” But pretty soon the mud started to have some gas mixed with it and it really started to blow about three or four in the afternoon. It didn’t go up the derrick. W [sic] had it under control, we had it piped out the flare line and up the pipe. It flared hundreds of feet.
Gas and oil and mud all mixed together. It threw a mushroom cloud just like an atomic bomb and then smoke rings. There were two or three very big smoke rings floating across the sky. That was about three o’clock in the afternoon. We only let it blow for fifteen, twenty minutes. It was coming in, blowing, like, whoo! You could hear it all right. What gas came out with the oil was lit - one of the roughnecks went out with a burning rag to light it - and there was a clear flare.
For Alberta, the Leduc era dramatically transformed the provincial economy. By the end of 1957, Alberta could boast that it possessed 85% of Canada’s crude oil reserves and had delivered a total production of 137 million barrels.
The oil industry directly employed about 16,000 people. Furthermore, since 1947, the Government of Alberta had taken in about $625 million in revenue from petroleum royalties. Towns and cities were transformed. Edmonton became an energy hub, with many refineries being built along the city’s eastern fringe.
Calgary became the petroleum sector’s headquarters, with oil companies and their new, sleek high-rise office buildings transforming the city skyline. Alberta began a shift from being a largely rural, agrarian society to being an urbanized one.
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Comments from our guests and members
Members and guests attending our weekly meetings are very important to us. Based on your comments we are able to produce many more educational, inspiring, and entertaining weekly meetings.
Following are some of the comments we have received. Would you please send us your comments?
January 8. The video on permafrost was very informative. Having travelled in Yukon an Alaska I can understand how the disappearance of permafrost will make a tremendous difference to life in there.
January 15. Interesting Canadiana story about the tomb in High Park, Toronto, with the iron railing fence from St Paul's Cathedral in London.
January 28. Always fun to watch Victor Borge perform, just good fun without any innuendos or insulting of members of the audience to get a laugh.
-- David Werrett, E-Club of Canada One, District 5370
The Secret of Driving Electric. It's enjoyable seeing a female automotive engineer expounding on the virtues of EV vehicles (in a field long dominated by males).
-- Velma Noble, Rotary Club of Calgary Heritage Park, District 5360
January 29. The orange peeling video is cool. Who knew?
-- Conrad Hall, E-Club of Canada One, District 5370
Peace by Chocolate. As usual, I enjoyed the variety of topics presented. The information presented on the Hadhad family from Syria was so refreshing - it is amazing to see this refugee family take root in Canada and offer so much!
-- Gary McLelan, Rotary Club of Campbell River (Noon), District 5020
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Archived Meetings
- For meetings prior to February 2024, please click here.
- All meetings are archived.
- For meetings starting February 2024, please scroll to the very bottom of this page.
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Announcements
Rotary's theme for March is
Clean water and Sanitation
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Material Suggestions and Greeter Messages Always Needed!
Please feel free to forward an approx. 150 - 200 word message or any material suggestions in an e-mail, or in a Word document, along with a JPeg picture or two, to E-Club Administration Chair, Kitty Bucsko.
We'd love to hear from you!
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Real-time meetings
Each 3rd Tuesday of the month is our Fellowship Assembly, and we often invite interesting speakers or Rotary Leaders for this entertaining, educational fun event. Plan to join us.
Everyone is welcome to attend and we encourage your participation.
Please click our Event Calendar for details and access Link.
For further inquiries or suggestions please contact: info@rotaryeclubcanada.ca
All our videos can be viewed on our YouTube channel.
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How do you support our club?
- The Paypal button on our ClubRunner Home Page
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The Rotary E-Club of Canada One
10430 135 Street NW
Edmonton, AB
Canada T5N 2C6
(780) 267 4547
Environment
And here's another video (if you have interest) that shows a range of products that can be and are produced from the coconut.
Coconut oil, coir, peat blocks, charcoal.
Click here to view the second coconut video.
Humour
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New members' corner
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Rotary Minute
Schools get help with clean water and hygiene
An estimated 2.5 billion people lack access to improved sanitation facilities that hygienically separate human excreta from human contact. Rotarian Alfredo Pérez knows the schools in Guatemala and neighboring countries can use all the help available in this area.
So, when Carlos Flores, then governor of District 4250 (Belize, Guatemala, and Honduras), asked Pérez in 2016 to get involved with the Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene (WASH) in Schools Target Challenge, he quickly accepted. As the name suggests, the pilot program focuses on providing clean water and sanitation systems, and equipping teachers to educate students on better hygiene practices.
“The objective of the project is to develop good hygiene habits in children,” Pérez says. “By reducing absenteeism due to diseases that are acquired due to lack of water, sanitation, and hygiene in schools, we can increase their academic development. Training teachers to help children develop good hygiene habits is key.”
Indeed, more than a year after the effort began, the Rotary Club of Valle de Guatemala, where Pérez is a member, has improved conditions for as many as 1,793 children from 10 schools in the town of Escuintla, about 40 miles south of Guatemala City, the capital.
Corporación Energías de Guatemala, an energy company, backed the project with a $62,000 grant. Pérez’s club and the Rotary Club of Escuintla worked with local public health officials and urban and rural planners. The project provided toilets, washing stations, and water tanks, and also supported training for teachers so that the facilities would be put to good use.
This year, members of Pérez’s club have a budget of $30,000 for work at five more schools.
Pérez is giving talks around his country in hopes of recruiting more clubs to take up the challenge in their communities, and he’s seeking international partners to help expand the program.
Educators tell Rotarians that fewer students now miss school because of gastrointestinal and respiratory illnesses, which sometimes spread by poor hand washing or lack of safe water.
–Jenny Espino
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Food for thought
Rotary Jukebox
For a small donation, your favorite musician will be featured on one of our next e-meetings for everyone to enjoy.
Every week we'll have a draw and the lucky person will see their song featured!
THIS WEEK - Tight, Samara Joy
Samara Joy has been called the new voice of jazz, a vocal phenom, a savior of the genre. This young lady is “joy” personified and today’s reason to smile, from her stunning jazz singing to her megawatt smile. The 24-year-old jazz sensation from the Bronx surprised a lot of people at last year’s Grammy Awards when she won not only Best Jazz Vocal Album but also Best New Artist, an award given only three times to a jazz artist.
She returned to the Grammys on Sunday, February 4, as a presenter and again as a nominee. Take a listen to her incredible improvisation on the Grammy-nominated song “Tight.” (credit Dan Rather)
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The Four-way Test
To close the meeting, Rotarian Judy recites the Four-Way Test of the things that Rotarians think, say, or do.
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