Stanley Pearson INTERVIEWER
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PETROLEUM INDUSTRY ORAL HISTORY PROJECT TRANSCRIPT INTERVIEWEE: Stanley Pearson INTERVIEWER: Betty Cooper DATE: June ??? BC: . .and I’m interviewing Mr. Stan Pearson, it’s June 22nd and we’re in the Glenbow Alberta Museum. I’d like to start Stan, by getting some of your own background, where you were born, when and a bit about your family. So if perhaps we could start there, when and where were you born? SP: Okay Betty. I was born and raised in the little town of Pincher Creek in the southwestern part of Alberta, about 30-35 miles northwest of the U.S. border. My mother was an eastern Canadian girl. My father was an immigrant from Lancashire, England, who came over in 1905. I was born in 1917 and educated in Pincher Creek elementary and high school. Then I think it was during my early high school years that probably influenced me in what I finally did in my career. At that time, as a youngster, wandering the canyon west of Pincher Creek I saw rock outcroppings and fossils in the rock outcrops. They were Cretaceous rocks. That sort of intrigued me. BC: You were finding these fossils from millions of years ago. SP: Yes, they were Cretaceous fossils. One of them I particularly recall was Lynechia Oblicata???, which was a gastropod shell or as people call them, snail shells. And this was one of the first things, I was about 13 or 14 at the time and this intrigued me to occur in the rocks above the swimming hole. So I started delving into that by reading the books of knowledge, which was the only encyclopaedia that we had in our little home at that time, my father was a plumber. From there on, during high school, I read all the scientific books I could find on geology and went on to the University of Alberta and studied geology. BC: Before we get you into university, could I just go back to your family for a moment. You weren’t an only child? SP: No, I was the eldest of 4 children. I had 2 brothers and a sister younger than me. BC: And their names? SP: The one next to me in age was Robert Charles and he was killed abroad during the war, he was a bomber pilot. My younger brother was Donald Henry and he was killed over Pervesa???, Greece, he was on loan to the RAF and killed on a return mission. He was a fighter bomber pilot. The youngest child in the family was my sister Gwyneth Beatrice, who’s married to Bill Sloman today, he works for the Alberta Telephones. BC: And we just have Stan, we haven’t got your full name, perhaps we should just get that on. SP: My full name is a long John Henry, Stanley Gordon Breckenridge Pearson. Gordon from my uncle and Breckenridge from my mother’s maiden name. BC: Let’s move then on quickly back into your university. You went to University of Alberta the year of. .? 2 Stan Pearson Tape 1 Side 1 SP: I went in as a freshman in 1938 and graduated in 1941 and took one year post graduate study. #034 BC: Did you have problems going into university at that time? ‘38 was still in Alberta, Depression years. How did you finance it? SP: As I explained earlier, my father was a plumber. In order to stay out of debt he had to sell the family car so there was little or no money to send young Stanley to the university when I graduated out of high school in ‘37, so I had to work a year to save up some money in order to get started in university. BC: Where did you work, with your father? SP: I worked part of the time for my father, digging out cess pools in the Peigan Indian Reserve and that satisfied me for a plumbing career. Then I worked, most of the time I worked on highway construction, in various jobs, mostly on the survey party as a chainman. BC: When you went into geology, did you work during the summer? SP: Yes. Again, since I’d got started in this highway construction, I worked 4 summers in highway construction, counting the one before I started university. And I worked on every foot of highway between the U.S. border, through Waterton Park and up to Edmonton and from Edmonton east to Lloydminster, every foot of highway during the 4 seasons. Various jobs, surveying, gravel checking, asphalt distributor operator, time keeper, which was the bookkeeper. BC: When we think of highway construction now, we think of these million dollar per mile macadam covered highways, that isn’t exactly what you were constructing prior to the war. SP: No. Part of the work was in grade construction, the survey work was during grade construction, the dirt work. And at that time, the province was trying to put, this new Social Credit government was trying to put highways through very rapidly and cheaply, but have some kind of asphalt. So they used what the called a blotter coat system, which meant you built the subgrade, just like we do today, and then you spread a penetrating oil on it and then another oil on top of that and then spread a layer of gravel on top of it. The second layer of oil penetrating up through the gravel and what they call a blotter coat. It was about an inch thick, maybe an inch and a half thick and usually went out the second year because of frost heaving and the fact that the asphalt layer was really too thin. But it put through a lot of highway in a hurry and that’s essentially what we did, in those late years of the 30's and the very early 40's, was to cram through these blotter coat systems. We also laid the first plant mix highway between Medicine Hat and Redcliff and that was a regular 4" thick layer of macadam and done somewhat similar to what they do today, except we did the mix right on the highway. But most of the work that I was involved with, as an undergraduate student, was highway construction. BC: As an undergraduate in geology, can you think of any of your professors at the University of Alberta who had particular influence on you as far as the area of geology that you went into, I mean you went in just thinking of the fossils? SP: Yes. As I said, my interest was originally generated by the aspect of palaeontology that 3 Stan Pearson Tape 1 Side 1 I’d seen as a youngster. Plus some of the early oil wells that had been drilled in the 30's southwest of Pincher Creek. And as you know, Oil City was drilled about 1901, down in Waterton Park, through the Lewis overthrust. That old history, some of the first early drilling, and the fact that Turner Valley also was drilling fascinated me as well as the fossils. So Dr. Warren, who was the top palaeontology, stratigraphy and elementary geology was a great influence and I liked his subject matter very much. But Dr. Allen, who was head of the department and Dr. Rutherford were also very fine people and encouraged me as well as other geologists in their career. But I’d have to say that probably Colonel Warren was maybe more influence on me than any of the others. #080 SB: Did he, did Colonel Warren, do any summer work that you could be involved with or extra work that you were able to be involved with? SP: Not that I was involved. I didn’t get involved in doing geology until I had my degree. The summer between my degree and my post graduate study I worked under Con Hague in the Alberta foothills. So most of my undergraduate work was done on highway construction, more engineering work. BC: You didn’t get a chance to apply your geological knowledge at all. SP: No, not during that. BC: I want to go back to the Pincher Creek, because besides being your birthplace, it played a very influential part in your career and interesting that it should being as how you’d come from there. But I would like to talk about your summer with Conrad Hague, this would be for the Geological Survey? SP: Yes. And that as I mentioned, was the first time that I had been exposed to actual, in the field, geological work, under professional supervision and guidance. I had taken the academic work and had my bachelor’s degree, but because the money was better working for the highways I had really put myself through school, with a little bit of help from my father, by working on highways. I think I was making about $100 a month as a time keeper and surveyor in highway construction. After I got a bachelor of science degree and went to . BC: That would be about 1940. .? SP: 1941, the summer of ‘41, I went to work under Con Hague and I got $86 a month as a professional geologist with a degree, where in highway construction without a degree, I’d been making up to $100 a month. That’s why I worked on highway construction rather than geology as an undergraduate. But once I got into the work, notwithstanding that it was only $86 a month, had to supply my own blankets and tobacco, to work under Con Hague was a real inspiration for any young geologist.