Imagining the Tar Sands 1880-1967 and Beyond

Abstract

For much of the history of Alberta’s tar sands, a series of visual conventions have shaped Canadian imaginaries of the resource, the emergence of the non-conventional oil industry, and the mining of oil. We introduce a series of archival images dating from 1880 until the opening of Great Canadian Oil Sands (Suncor) in 1967, to analyze how visual representations were used to justify government and public support for bitumen mining and refining, to legitimate state research into the separation of oil from the sands, and to ideologically sustain public funding of the development of this unique Canadian resource industry. We conclude that many elements of these early positive normative conceptual frameworks remain in play today, used by corporate and government meaning–makers to blunt contemporary critiques by the public of social and ecological tradeoffs, and ultimately to legitimate Alberta and Canada’s pursuit of non-conventional oil as an acceptable energy future.

The Medium Is the Monster: Canadian Adaptations of Frankenstein and the Discourse of Technology

“…The script for this scene invokes the discourse of technology explicitly: "The neolithic weapons are jarring amid all the advanced technology" (Cameron 2009, 8). The bucket-wheel image itself is suggestively critical: the bucket-wheel excavator was discontinued in the 1990s (Gismondi and Davidson 2012), so it appears here as an obsolete icon of extraction machinery, as if to signal the unsustainability and ultimate failure of the Pandora mine and to suggest the combined obsolescence and rapacity-the living death-of fossil fuel technology in general.…”

Excavation du docudrame de CBC The Tar Sands

“…It argues that while CBC's docudrama sought to dramatize and elevate Pratt's (1976) political critiques, Lougheed's litigious reaction quickly buried them, obfuscating the real possibility that The Tar Sands-while a work of fiction-portrays the genesis of Alberta's corporate capture by foreign oil interests. 3 SEEING THE TAR SANDS: LOOKING BACK, LOOKING FORWARD S cholars Debra Davidson and Mike Gismondi have traced the evolution of the tar sands' visual conventions, which tell a story of taming rugged frontiers, conquest, as well as scientific and technological innovation (Davison and Gismondi 2011;Gismondi and Davidson 2012). The authors conclude their Imaginations article with an analysis of the Great Canadian Oil Sands Company (GCOS, now Suncor) and the "legitimacy work" of images showcasing the immense machinery-from draglines to bucketwheels-involved in mining bitumen.…”

“…The authors conclude their Imaginations article with an analysis of the Great Canadian Oil Sands Company (GCOS, now Suncor) and the "legitimacy work" of images showcasing the immense machinery-from draglines to bucketwheels-involved in mining bitumen. Such images, they argue, "became selling features to the public, symbolizing the enormity of challenges overcome" (Gismondi and Davidson 2012). Author Chris Turner, in his well-researched history of Alberta's oil patch, identifies the start of what he calls the "High Modern" era as GCOS's 1967 bitumen plant opening ceremony (Turner 24).…”