Atlantic #3, September 1948, A story by Sterling Haynes

Our old hunting grounds were awash in oil and mud. Duck ponds, creeks, farmer’s stubble were splattered with muck and gas from Devonian subterranean reefs. In 1946 and 1947 “Leduc #1 and #2 oil wells spudded in.


On March 8th, 1948 Atlantic # 3 blew in and covered the snow and the Rebus home place, near Leduc Alberta, with oily muck. Atlantic # 3 was a rogue well and out of control. Oilmen’s bulldozers enlarged our duck ponds. Dikes contained the black gold. Blackmud and Whitemud Creeks were contaminated with oil. Pollution affected water purity in the North Saskatchewan River. People said it gave an added natural petroleum taste supplied by Imperial and Atlantic’s gold.


This terrain was well known to us. We grew up on the South Side of Edmonton and were students at the U of A. We knew that our hunting refuge was in jeopardy. We had been hunting there since 1942.


It was Labour Day, 1948, the start of the hunting season. An Edmonton CBC radio announcer declared that the outlaw Atlantic #3 of Leduc was out of control. The whole area was ablaze. The RCMP declared the region “off limits” that afternoon.


I was driving an old black Pontiac car when I re confirmed the news. I rushed to pick up my 3 engineering student friends and hunting partners. These guys were always ready for anything. We didn’t need maps; we knew the area, the roads, and the fields. The sky was ablaze in the night, our beacon easily visible. We hit the Calgary Trail in a cloud of dust and gravel, and then turned off onto dirt roads into farmer’s fields. We managed to avoid the cops as they combed the area for trespassers. We parked about a mile from the blaze; the car was covered in oil and dirt. Then we piled slash over the car to conceal it from the police.


We ran for a willow patch about 400 –500 ft. from the fire and headed down an old creek bottom. There was oil flowing everywhere. A policeman caught sight of us but we lost him in bulrushes growing along some ox-bow cut offs.


As we got closer to the blaze we stumbled in oil and mud and finally were stopped by an old, coiled barbed wire fence.


Was this a volcano? Mud and oil balls aflame shot into the night igniting lakes of surface oil. The stench of smoke and oil choked us. The heat from the burning wellhead was 2000 degrees F. It singed my eyebrows and mustache. I was stewing, my face aglow, my body awash in sweat. Anointed and lubricated, I was mesmerized while I cooked.


By the light of this man made volcano all four of us stood in awe ‘til 3 am. This flaming spectacle was etched in my retina and memory. I missed my opening 8 am class that morning at the U. I wouldn’t have missed this show, the burning of Atlantic # 3.


Sadly we never hunted ducks, partridge or grouse in this area again.