William Stewart Herron (1870–1939)

William Stewart Herron’s working life began at age fourteen, and from the beginning was characterized by both entrepreneurial initiative and resource extraction. Dwindling opportunities in Ontario convinced Herron to join the pioneer exodus west, where he settled his family on a ranch near Okotoks, south of Calgary, Alberta. There his opportunity-seeking instincts found ample exercise managing a neighbor’s timber lease, breaking wild range horses, and operating a cartage business.

To supplement his agricultural income, Herron hauled coal to the electric plant in Okotoks. It was on one such trip in the spring of 1911 that he decided to explore the rumored gas seeps along the Sheep River. Herron recognized the petroleum promise of the terrain in the area of the Sheep River seepage and sought confirmation of his hunch that the gas was petroleum in origin by sending samples to the Universities of

Pennsylvania and California. On the strength of their analyses, he embarked upon a quest to purchase land and mineral rights in the area. His foresight resulted in his eventual accumulation of the leases for 7,000 acres that became the center of the Turner Valley petroleum field, which itself was the center of the petroleum industry in Alberta for three decades.

Herron’s greater challenge was to find funding for exploration and drilling. One legend claims he cooked eggs over the seep in order to convince potential investors. Herron always disputed the truth of this story, but whatever the actual nature of his persuasive techniques, Herron enticed a group of Calgary lawyers and businessmen, including not only future Prime Minister R. B. Bennet, but also Senator Sir James A. Lougheed and Archibald W. Dingman, to join him in forming Calgary Petroleum Products Company.

Herron’s relationship with these as well as with future financiers was never smooth. For years his financial standing was rocky given the expense of holding on to his leases while funding the exploration that would make those leases productive. His conviction that valuable petroleum lay beneath the field was not necessarily shared, especially as the days and years (at that point it could take two years to drill deeply enough to find success!) of drilling dragged on. Although the events of May 14, 1914, did vindicate his efforts and set off a frenzy of speculation, the wet gas that gushed from what came to be known as Dingman No. 1 was not the object of his quest. While he owned the rights to several

thousands of acres in the area of the well, world events, the high cost of exploration and drilling, contentious relations with investors, and unsympathetic federal petroleum polices all hampered his efforts to develop the field now recognized as the foundation of today’s rich energy industry in Alberta. Nonetheless, Herron persevered and through multiple incorporations, extensions, and credit arrangements, hung on until he finally had a successful company of his very own, Okalta Oils Ltd. The perseverance Herron demonstrated throughout the boom and bust cycles of Turner Valley is now recognized in his designation as the “Father of Alberta’s Petroleum Industry.”