Did you know that North America's first oil well was in Canada?

Question

http://www.macleans.ca/article.jsp?content=n080937A

Answer 1

oil springs, Ontario? huh, I would have thought if anywhere, Alberta.

Thanx for the info.

Go green Go.

Answer 2

You are WRONG... DEAD WRONG... the FIRST oil well in AmeriKa WAS IN PENNSYLVANIA.. I don't know where you people get your version of history... BUT IT'S WRONG. The indians in the north had been using PITCH to waterproof their canoes.. but they didn't DRILL A WELL... it was just floating on the ground.  The FIRST DRILLED OIL WELL was in PENNSYLVANIA.

Answer 3

Does anyone remember the actual name and the nickname of the First Nations people who inhabited that area (before they were driven out by the Iroquois massacre of the Huron (Wendat) and successive attacks on all of the Huron Nation's friendly neighbours)? The nickname stemmed from the bubbling crude oil in their homelands.

They may have been a clan of the Neutrals (as they were called by the French---the Huron called them the Attawandaron).

Later:

On the offchance that these jingoistic "facts" being bellowed at us are correct and Macleans (which, though reputable, is a Canadian source) got it wrong, a cursory browse of the net finds (1) Noble Cty, Ohio claiming the first oil well in North America (they discovered oil and natural gas while drilling for salt in 1814; small quantities were bottled and sold as tonic but the oil wasn't actually used until after1859); (2) the Drake Oil Well museum in Titusville, Pa. claims to be the site where North America's first oil well was drilled (they had to go down 69 feet) in August 1859; (3) the Canadian government records that James Williams drilled the first commercial oil well in North America in 1857, at Oil Springs, Ontario; approx. 37 bbl/dy were pumped and distilled, and by 1861 there were more than 400 wells producing in the area (though it is noted, with characteristic modesty, that our first oil boom 'paralleled a larger oil boom in northern Pennsylvania, where energy dynasties were beginning to emerge').

Lest these sites, beating their own drums, be misleading, the Timeline 347 BCE--1859 CE of Geocities' History of the Oil Industry has the following dates of interest::

--1849: Distillation of kerosene from oil by Canadian geologist Dr. Abraham Gesner. (Kerosene eventually replaces whale oil as the illuminant of choice and creates a new market for crude oil.)

--1850: Oil from hand-dug pits in California at Los Angeles is distilled to produce lamp oil by General Andreas Pico.

--1857: Michael Dietz invents a kerosene lamp that forces whale oil lamps off the market.

--1858: First oil well in North America is drilled in Ontario, Canada.

--1859: First oil well in United States is drilled 69 feet deep at Titusville, Pennsylvania by Colonel Edwin Drake.

So it looks to me that the Titusville well might have been drilled deeper, but also a year later.

Answer 4

Garrison ought to change his name to garrulous. And for heaven's sake, STOP SHOUTING!

Btw, Canada also invented basketball and football. The United States invented the Edsel and Enron. (The Russians invented everything else.) So there!