Canada was a great adventure for young Bobby Brown.
His dad and uncle were the drillers who brought in the famous discovery well along the banks of Sheep Creek west of Okotoks.
A century ago Joe and Bob Brown were busy drilling for oil. From January 1914 to May of 1914 they worked 12-hour shifts on the Calgary Petroleum Products’ No. 1 well. It eventually discovered Western Canada’s first commercial oilfield at Turner Valley in 1914.
The Brown brothers were not alone. Joe’s family had made the trip to the Alberta foothills too. His wife Mary, daughter Josephine, and sons Bobby and Charlie lived along the banks of Sheep Creek.
When interviewed in his later years in his 90s, youngest son Bobby recalled many details of life in the wild Canadian West.
Stoney natives often passed through the area and they sometimes took parts of the animals the whites didn’t use. Mary Brown quickly made friends with the Stoney Indians.
Mary provided them food in exchange for rose petals and wolf willow beads. After boiling the rose petals into a mush, she rolled them into balls and let them dry. A hot needle or hatpin burned a hole through them so she could string them on a stiff chord with the wolf willow beads. More than 70 years later the rose beads still wafted their fragrant perfume.
Bobby’s older brother Charlie quickly set up a trapline, hunted coyotes, ptarmigan and prairie chickens with a .22 calibre single-shot rifle.
The younger children stayed closer to home, helping mom with chores around the house.
Little Bobby loved the cowboys the best, especially Davey Blacklock. The local hero let Bobby dress up in his sheepskin chaps when he visited.
Sister Josephine had a doll or two. With no schools, neighbours, radio or electricity, the children made their own fun. The Stoneys visited often and the drillers’ children stared at the shy native kids.
For an itinerant drilling family from Pennsylvania, the Alberta oil patch as an interesting place indeed.
After helping discover Western Canada’s first commercial oilfield the Brown brothers moved on to drill for oil in Valdez, Alaska before ending up in California.
But Bobby Brown always remembered his childhood days on the banks of Sheep Creek.
In the coming year as the centennial of the discovery of Western Canada’s First Commercial Oilfield at Turner Valley approaches, Alberta historian David Finch will be giving regular columns outlining the Foothills’ colourful oil and gas history.
