-
2. Prairie Fire - The New Evangelicalism and the Politics of Oil, Money, and Moral Geography
- University of Wisconsin Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
39 2 Prai rie Fire The New Ev an gel i cal ism and the Pol i tics of Oil, Money, and Moral Geog ra phy dar ren do chuk Ca na dians were in a fes tive mood in 1967 be cause of their country’s cen ten nial, but lo cals cel e brated in Fort McMur ray, Al berta, for rea sons all of their own. This year they heralded the open ing of the Great Ca na dian Oil Sands (GCOS) plant. For three years, three thou sand work ers had la bored round-the-clock, turn ing a $235 mil lion in vest ment into the “world’s first com mer cial ven ture” to pro duce syn thetic crude out of bi tu men. Created to change the world, the GCOS was also a world’s crea tion: over the course of thirty-six months, a multi tude of en gi neers, equip ment op er a tors, weld ers, and rig gers had shaped a mass of sup plies from around the globe into an enor mous com plex able to ex tract one of “the world’s larg est sin gle en ergy re sources.” Spread out over 30,000 square miles from Fort McMur ray, with de pos its up to 150 feet thick, the oil sands, of fi cials boasted, rep re sented more than six hun dred bil lion bar rels of oil. Wait ing to be har nessed, this fron tier beck oned de vel op ment on an epic scale, yet even in its hum ble be gin nings, they em pha sized, the GCOS stood as a “trib ute to man’s in ven tive ness and de ter mi na tion [to over come] the ob sta cles of na ture” and a sig nal that the “dawn of a new age” had ar rived.1 40 E part i: talkin ’bout a revolution? For all of the boil er plate ex ec u tives used to pro mote their prod uct on an inter na tional scale, GCOS’s open ing cer e mo nies pul sated to a pro vin cial beat. In this mo ment of ex traor di nary ad vance ment for Ca na dian pe tro leum, prai rie folk si ness was com bined with Prot es tant rel i gios ity to en cour age a down-home feel. GCOS’s com memora tive lit er a ture stressed that the pro ject was com pleted by hun dreds of or di nary peo ple who had banded to gether in a vi brant com mu nity that would be come a model of multi cul tu ral ism. These em ploy ees “come from com fort able cit ies, mod est farms, rus tic vil lages,” GCOS pamph lets under scored, be fore not ing the pres ence of for mer back woods men and Moun ties on the com pany pay roll.2 GCOS also pro duced a forty-five-minute film called Ath a basca, which as sessed the tar sands pro ject through the lives of two em ploy ees. One was Di mitry Silin, a fur trap per who had em i grated to the Ca na dian North from Si be ria. Film mak ers fol lowed him as he trudged through the Ath a basca River val ley look ing for bea ver pelts. Through stun ning vis u als, the movie drove home the mes sage that Silin en joyed one ness with his en vi ron ment, that he rep re sented a link to a sim pler past now being over taken by GCOS’s in dus trial might. In stead of steer ing into some cri tique of in dus tri al iza tion, though, Athabasca’s crea tors ma nip u lated Silin’s tes ti mony so that it tes tified to their de sired truths: that GCOS was every bit as con cerned with the en vi ron ment (and every bit as “one” with it) as Silin, and that its de sire to de velop Alberta’s North was be nev o lent. Yes, Silin’s idyl lic realm was about to be civ il ized, but civ il iza tion of the kind GCOS prom ised em bod ied the same or ganic ideals this out doors man held dear. The...
