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Local Push-Global Pull: The Untold Story of the Athabaska Oil Sands, 1900-1930
The Untold Story of the Athabaska Oil Sands, 1900-1930
430 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2012
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May 22, 2023
I'd give this a 3.5 if I could because Hunt did a tremendous amount of detailed research for this self-published volume; this detailed quality also makes it a pretty difficult read for the average individual. This is first and foremost a business history of the early years of oil sands exploitation. Hunt ends the narrative at 1930 with the Alberta Resources Act of 1930, which transferred control of natural resources from the crown to the province.
This volume has some strengths:
- The research is very good.
- It's well-illustrated with images and photographs from the archives.
- Hunt bringing in the global dimension is important.
- Hunt interweaves natural elements like the river, and even mosquitoes, in ways that make this environmental historian's heart sing.
Some issues:
- It's really dense.
- Hunt is passionate about the subject... so passionate that she self-published this volume because she is very pro-oil sands. This doesn't mean that her take is automatically bad, but it does mean that she doesn't critically engage with the history of business development in the region in many critical ways... ie. colonialism, environmental exploitation, etc. (not to mention that the former CEO of Syncrude writes the forward).
- Hunt's history is entirely white. She barely mentions the Indigenous people in the region, and when she does, she uses the term "indians." For a book published in 2011, there's really no excuse for that.
This volume has some strengths:
- The research is very good.
- It's well-illustrated with images and photographs from the archives.
- Hunt bringing in the global dimension is important.
- Hunt interweaves natural elements like the river, and even mosquitoes, in ways that make this environmental historian's heart sing.
Some issues:
- It's really dense.
- Hunt is passionate about the subject... so passionate that she self-published this volume because she is very pro-oil sands. This doesn't mean that her take is automatically bad, but it does mean that she doesn't critically engage with the history of business development in the region in many critical ways... ie. colonialism, environmental exploitation, etc. (not to mention that the former CEO of Syncrude writes the forward).
- Hunt's history is entirely white. She barely mentions the Indigenous people in the region, and when she does, she uses the term "indians." For a book published in 2011, there's really no excuse for that.
Displaying 1 of 1 review