Acknowledgements

This is not an “official” history of Imperial Oil Ltd. I received no financial support from Imperial Oil, Exxon/Mobil or any of their affiliates, nor for that matter did I seek or receive funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Council of Canada or any other source. In writing this history I have used material that is available to any researcher, including most particularly the Imperial Oil Ltd. and Royalite records at the Glenbow Museum and Archives in Calgary and the Exxon/Mobil records at the Dolph Briscoe Center for American Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. I would like to acknowledge my appreciation to those companies for having made their business records available to the public.

This is also not a “definitive” history. The records of Imperial Oil are among the largest business archives in Canada, surpassed only by those of the Hudson’s Bay Company and the country’s transcontinental railways. These records are indeed a vast treasure trove for researchers on a wide range of topics—ranging from the history of the company’s large tanker fleet to the technological achievements of its research scientists, and much else in between—and I hope other scholars will find them valuable in understanding Imperial’s role in the history of our country. My intent was to sketch the general history of Imperial Oil and its role in that history and to focus on some particular features of the company that are of relevance to the evolution of multinational enterprises as significant players in the world’s economic, political, and natural environment over the past two centuries.

This project originated over forty years ago. When I first came to Canada in the 1970s one major controversy (in addition to the status of Quebec) focused on the role of foreign-owned corporations in the Canadian economy. Critics charged that these foreign multinationals undermined Canada’s industries, stifled innovation and entrepreneurship, and depleted the country’s natural resources. Defenders countered that these companies brought much-needed capital, technology, and management skills, which all contributed to the dramatic growth of the Canadian economy after the Second World War. The debate featured much rhetoric, reams of statistics, and media stories that celebrated their achievements or condemned their depredations.

It seemed to me that as a historian what I could contribute to this ongoing debate was analysis of how multinationals in Canada actually operated in practice: to what extent did parent firms determine not just the strategies but day-to-day functioning of the Canadian companies they owned or controlled? In the longer run did the relationship between the parent firm and subsidiaries evolve over time, as theorists such as Raymond Vernon maintained, from close control to a more diverse, autonomous model? Or was foreign domination so complete that it could only be constrained by government measures to limit and regulate these companies? Or indeed was there some other, more suitable model?

In these years the study of business enterprise was undergoing a transformation as historians such as Alfred D. Chandler Jr. and others explored the internal workings and evolution of large-scale enterprises and highlighted the relationship between corporate strategies and organization. I had the good fortune to discuss my interest and research in Canadian business with Dr. Chandler; I benefited from his advice, and perhaps benefited even more from my conversations with Mira Wilkins, the most accomplished historian of multinational business in our time.

In order to achieve my aim of observing business relationships “from the inside,” I sought to find companies whose internal records were available to research, which limited the range of my work to some extent, but allowed for more in-depth analysis. Over the years I developed “case studies” of Canadian affiliates of multinationals, mostly American or British, including Canadian Industries Ltd., Bell Canada, Vickers of Canada, and Great Canadian Oil Sands (now Suncor).

One of the objects of my quest was the “great white whale” of foreign-owned businesses in Canada: Imperial Oil, affiliated since 1899 with Standard Oil of New Jersey (Exxon, now Exxon/Mobil), which was not only one of the largest companies in the country, but one of the most enduring, and one whose significance was felt throughout Canadian history, comparable in many respects to the Hudson’s Bay Company and the Canadian Pacific Railway. In the late 1980s I was able to get access to the records of Imperial Oil in the early twentieth century, relating to the presidency of Walter Teagle, who went on to become the chief executive of Standard Oil for many years. When I learned that the Imperial Oil records were available at Glenbow Museum and Archives, I set out to fulfill that quest.

There were several people whose advice and assistance were particularly valuable to me in this endeavour. Robert Taylor-Vaisey had been the corporate archivist at Imperial for many years and in that capacity had systematically organized the company records. When Imperial Oil decided to move its headquarters from Toronto to Calgary, Taylor-Vaisey played a major role in arranging for the disposition of the company records at Glenbow. When I began my work on Imperial, I met with him several times and benefited from not only from his knowledge of the archives but also his insights into the history of the company.

My thanks also go to Douglas Cass, the director of the Glenbow Archives, who is himself an expert on the history of the Canadian oil industry, and who took a great interest in my project, introducing me to various other researchers whose input has also been valuable. I received inestimable help in locating and retrieving relevant material from two archivists at Glenbow responsible for the organization and maintenance of the Imperial Oil records: Tonia Fanella and particularly Lynette Walton who was always prepared to spend extra time chasing down documents I requested. All of the staff at the Glenbow Archives were helpful and courteous, even when working under apparently perpetual financial constraints.

I appreciate the help I received from a wide range of fellow researchers I encountered in writing this book. David Finch provided valuable information about the history of Turner Valley and the Alberta oil industry, through both his books and conversations with me. I had numerous discussions with Debbie McLeod Knall about the career of her grandfather, John McLeod, with Imperial Oil and Royalite. Joyce Hunt shared information about her research on the early history of the oil sands. David Breen provided insights on company-government relations in the Alberta oil industry based on his extensive research and publications on the subject. Timothy Cobban shared research materials on the early history of Imperial Oil in Ontario, drawing on his valuable work, Cities of Oil. Professors Stephen Bocking of Trent University and Sean Kheraj of York University provided guidance into the history of environmental law and policies in Canada. I received encouragement from Professor Geoffrey Jones of the Harvard Business School and Dr. Matthias Kipping, Richard E. Waugh Chair in Business History at York University, to seek ways of integrating my work on Canadian business into the growing literature on the history of multinational enterprises. In addition, I appreciate the careful review of my manuscript by the two anonymous peer reviewers for the University of Calgary Press whose comments stimulated me to provide more clarity in explaining the structure and value of my work to the wider audience of historians of Canada and the oil industry.

Perhaps my greatest debt is to Earle Gray, without question the “dean” of historians of Canadian oil, who in addition to providing many insights based on more than half a century of covering the industry, also read every chapter in this book in draft form and made many suggestions as well as providing useful advice on the geology and technology of oil and gas in an effort to correct my misconceptions. Gray is still very active in the field, and we traded drafts of my book for commentary on chapters on his current project, Fossil Fire, which will be a valuable contribution to the history of the fossil fuel industries and their impact on the environment.

Finally, my thanks to my wife, Deborah, who not only put up with frequent and extended visits to Calgary, but also provided much help with my research, going through sixty-odd years worth of the tedium of minutes of the board of directors of Imperial Oil, and locating pertinent articles in the Imperial Oil Review covering an almost equally long time period. As partial compensation, we spent weekends taking in the remarkable diversity of Alberta, from (melting) glaciers north of Lake Louise to dinosaurs in Drumheller.

Of course I accept responsibility for any errors of omission or commission in this work.

Graham D. Taylor

Professor Emeritus, Trent University

Peterborough, Ontario

August 1, 2018