It was deep snows and long, cold winters east of Coronation years ago when I first tasted life in the oilpatch.
We were putting together well site shacks on location and staying in town. Wind chills and bitter cold temperatures were 70 below. It was too cold for all the crews, except with the company I was working for.
Ours was a poor boy's operation and besides no heat there was only one ladder -- which my boss needed. So my job was to lie at the edge of the corrugated steel roof, and hold the nut from underneath while tightening the bolt from the top. Fall protection was the rope I held to keep from going over the edge while tightening bolts.
To say production was slow that day would be an understatement and at noon my boss grudgingly admitted it may be too cold for working. It took the rest of the afternoon sitting beside an old steam heater in a dingy hotel room to take the frost out of my fingers and other parts of the body that were never meant to be frostbit.
And that was my introduction to a career that would change my life in ways I never could have imagined all those years ago.
After this chilly introduction I went to work for a service rig company as a roughneck. It seemed much better as they actually had a shack with a heater. The weather wasn’t any better, but man it was nice to sit inside a heated shack for lunch. We left our oil soaked clothes to dry that first night and came back in the morning raring to get back to work in warm, dry clothes. But the 20-pound propane bottle had run out through the night and our oil soaked rags were frozen stiff. We climbed into those Alberta crude soaked frozen rags and went to work.
I realized this poor boy's operation wasn’t much better but the oilpatch had got into my blood. Forty-five years later it still flows proudly through my veins. It led me to a 20-year career in corporate safety where I would tread through some of the biggest ivory towers in Calgary. However, I have always been more comfortable with the roughnecks of our industry, and so I have left the world of corporate safety with deep gratitude to all those I walked along with.
For this old roughneck it has been a wild, woolly and astounding journey with many tales to tell and many more to make.
Gratefully born and raised in Innisfail and recently retired, columnist Paul Hoffman will forever be a roughneck and Albertan, and proud to be so.
