BUILDING ON THE PAST Brad Anderson Alberta Chamber of Resources 2/19/2016
Alberta Chamber of Resources Script for 80 th Annual General Meeting Shaw Conference Centre, Edmonton, Albert February 19, 2016 Building on the Past Brad Anderson Thank you, Leon, and good morning everyone. It’s my job, this morning, to look back on the ACR’s first 80 years of operations. I won’t keep you too long. For one thing, you’ll have lots of other opportunities to learn about our history, today. And for another, as a geologist, I’m not too bad a histo rian about the Cretaceous Period , but I’m not so hot at much faster-paced human history. And the history of the ACR is nothing if not a history of people. In going over the historical record, it all made me feel that I was a part of something bigger than just me, my times and my priorities. It instilled in me a huge sense of responsibility to live up to my predecessors. This is a very old organization that has intersected and affected the lives of hundreds of thousands, maybe even millions, of people over eighty years. We owe our livelihoods to the past. 1
A couple of things had to happen the way they did for us to be together in this room. The first is the transfer of jurisdiction over resources from the federal to the provincial government in 1930, as depi cted here with the signing of the agreement. That’s Prime Minister McKenzie King with Alberta Premier Brownlee to his left. I won’t go too much into the history of this. But just note, for now, that it was one of the key events in the history of our provi nce, and that if it hadn’t happened we would exist, if at all, as a regional office of a national organization. As it was, about six years after this photo was taken, the Alberta Chamber of Resources was founded. And, sequentially, that’s the other thing t hat had to happen. Someone had to recognize the need for and establish an organization like this one. One of those people was Hubert Somerville. As described in this article, which we wrote a few years ago, he played a key role in the transfer, and a persuasive subsequent role in the formation of the Chamber. For decades afterwards, as Deputy Minister of Alberta Mines and Minerals, he was a special representative on our Board. And, as I’ll show you in a moment, he was our President in 1976. 2
Incidentally , by the time of our incorporation Mr. Brownlee’s government had yielded to that of Premier William Aberhart’s. Brownlee was of the United Farmers Party, Mr. Arberhart of the Social Credit. And, as you can see from this table, we’ve worked with quite a var iety of provincial governments over the many years of our operations. We’ve spoken a lot about change, lately. But it’s not like we haven’t seen it before. We were formed, not as the ACR, but as the Edmonton Chamber of Mines, and about a month later as the Alberta and Northwest Chamber of Mines, concerned mostly with the supply of southern labour, goods and services to the hard-rock mines of the northern Territories. And, then, during the war 3
years, we broadened the scope to include a broader suite of resources — energy products, for one. Again to get a bit ahead of myself, we reincorporated as the Alberta Chamber of Resources in 1977. Name Affiliation Start of Term Robert C. Marshall Crown Paving and Construction Co. Limited 1936 John Michaels Provincial News Limited 1941 Gorman’s Limited Charles E. Garnett 1942 Walter A. Macdonald Edmonton Journal 1943 Lt. Col H.E. Pearson Taylor, Pearson & Carson (Edmonton) Limited 1944 Clarence D. Jacox Great Western Garment Co. Ltd. 1946 John A. Allan University of Alberta 1947 William J. Dick Unknown 1948 Alex M. MacDonald Gainers Limited 1950 Julian Garrett Northwestern Utilities Ltd. 1951 Dennis Kestell Yorath Northwestern Utilities Ltd. 1952 MacCosham ’ s Storage and Distributing R.V. MacCosham 1953 A.M. Berry (Matt) Ad Astra Minerals Limited 1953 D.J. Avison Imperial Oil Limited 1954 Thomas P. Fox Associated Airways Ltd. 1955 J.C. Dale Canadian Utilities Limited 1956 E.O. Lilge University of Alberta 1957 William V. Wilkin Wilkin Insurance 1958 Edgar Andrews Cawker Morgan Nicholson Limited 1959 Carlton (Carl) W. Clement Clement, Parlee, Wittaker, Irving, Mustard & Rodney 1960 Lew W. White Imperial Oil Ltd. 1961 George Gray Canadian Industries Limited 1962 Geoffrey C. Hamilton City of Edmonton 1963 Hayward’s Lumber Co. Limited Vernon B. Hayward 1964 Harold E. Lake Eldorado Mining and Refining Limited 1965 Lloyd Evans Wilson Futurity Oils Ltd. 1966 C.H. Pardee Pardee Equipment Limited 1967 David Ritter Jacox Northern Division, Pacific Western Airlines 1968 Egerton Warren King Canadian Utilities Limited 1969 Edward (Ted) Eversley Bishop Bishop & McKenzie 1970 W.B. (Bruce) Hunter Northern Transportation Company Ltd. 1971 Hugh J.S. (Sandy) Pearson Century Sales & Service 1972 Stanley A. Milner Chieftain Development Co. Ltd. 1973 Lawrence O. Olsen (Buck) Hamilton & Olsen Surveys 1974 Norman A. Lawrence Associated Engineering Services Ltd. 1975 Hubert H. Somerville Alberta Department of Mines and Minerals, Deputy Minister (retired) 1976 4
Name Affiliation Start of Term Charles Murray Trigg Trigg, Woollett, Olsen Consulting 1977 Fred R. Dorward Dorward Enterprises Ltd. 1978 C.R.S. Montgomery Numac Oil & Gas Co. 1979 Don L. Flock University of Alberta 1980 Richard H. Ostrosser Westmin Resources Limited 1981 Elmer W. Brooker EBA Engineering Consultants Ltd. 1982 Don M. Murray Atcor Resources Ltd. 1983 Neil Colvin Sherritt Gordon Mines 1984 Dennis Love Syncrude Canada Ltd. 1986 Gordon Willmon Imperial Oil Ltd. 1988 Mike Supple Suncor Oil Sands Group 1990 Erdal YILDIRIM Canadian Occidental Petroleum 1992 Eric Newell Syncrude Canada Ltd. 1994 Jim Popowich Fording Coal 1996 Pat Daniel Enbridge Pipelines 1998 Ron Laing Inland Cement 1999 Bill Hunter Alberta-Pacific Forest Industries 2000 Art Meyer Enbridge Pipelines Inc. 2002 John Zahary Harvest Operations Corp. 2004 Roger Thomas Nexen Inc. 2006 Tim Ryan Ainsworth Engineered Canada LP 2008 Gord Ball Syncrude Canada Ltd. 2010 Leon Zupan Enbridge Pipelines 2012 David Middleton Penn West Exploration 2012 David Corriveau Shell Canada Energy 2013 Leon Zupan Enbridge Pipelines 2013 Ron Kruhlak McLennan Ross 2016 Here’s a list of our presidents from 1936… you’ll find a copy in your program. I’ll make just a few, quick observations from this list. One obvious one is that we’ve had a lot of presidents. By this list I count Leon as our 62 nd … and our 59 th . Ron, welcome as our 63 rd ! We don’t have eighty because, for one thing, the term changed from one year to two in the mid-1980s. As today, a lot of these people were among the brightest lights of their times: We had the publisher of the Edmonton Journal during one of the war years John Allan was a luminary in my field, the founder of the Geology Department at the U. of A. Matt Berry was one of Canada’s “most famous airmen” 5
And, as I mentioned, Hubert Somerville was a former Deputy Minister of Alberta Mines and Minerals Murray Trigg was president during our 1977 transition year. And, for now, I won’t go any further down the list, because I still know many of those who follow and could sing their praises all day… The other list I’ll show you is a shorter one: my predecessors and I. There are just six of us, which yields an average of just over 13 years of service each. I’ve been here for 16 years so you might say I’m three years past due. Mike Finland was a famous flyer and mining engineer credited with the discovery of the Con Mine. Bud Chesney, a mining engineer, helped out as Assistant Manager in the late sixties before taking over in 1971. He yielded to Harold Page in 1977. Harold was a chemical engineer, Suncor Executive, and the perfect choice to usher the Chamber into a new age. And Don is my immediate predecessor and long-time hero. Don’ s here today. I’ve left Leonard Drummond for last because I’d like to focus there for just a moment or two. I’d like to try to gauge how far we’ve come over the last eighty years, by imagining what would happen if we could bring someone, like Leonard Drummond, forward in time. To do that, I need to tell you just a little about him and the ACR’s earliest days. 6
Here he is, on the left, in 1948, with former President Robert Marshall, I assume at the AGM for that year. He was born in Winnipeg in 1880. That makes him a contemporary of people like Helen Keller who, faced with the severest kind of adversity, conquered it. “ Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement ,” she said . “ Nothing can be done without hope and confidenc e.” I know these words to inspire one of our new directors, Corey Goul et of TransCanada. And I don’t see why Mr. Drummond might not have been the champion of optimism, faith and achievement as well. He went to the School of Mines at Kingston and also Queen’s University, where he graduated with a B.Sc. in 1903. He worked in the coal industry in Nova Scotia, and later ended up in Alberta working in the mining department of CP Rail. In 1920 he entered into private practice as a consulting engineer. Leonard helped form the Chamber to create opportunities for local businesses and countless unemployed persons in the midst of the Great Depression. And it was a very courageous and optimistic path to take… especially for him, since he was the only one staking his salary on it— and, closing in on sixty, he would not have been a young man at that point. 7
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