Outside tiny Oliver in the South Okanagan is this billboard from Westjet. Petrobucks are big ones and if you live in cities near the 49th parallel, you may not know it. We rarely have ten people at work in our shop but three of them went north hoping to make their fortune last year.
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Digital edition is
more common now
Handy to your pillow. |
I've travelled across the prairies by car in recent years. Every motel has two books in the night table. The first is the Canadian Oilfield Service and Supply Directory and the second is Gideon's Bible. You probably don't know how to find Three Hills, AB, on a map, it's so tiny, pop 3200. But it has a Super 8 and a Best Western motel with the yard full of oil field trucks and more than 130 busy rooms. They look like heavy truck sales lots.
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Not what you expect in a little village
and another like it just down the road. |
UPDATE: I talked to a salesman from Kelowna. 5000 people work in the Fort Mac oil field area and live around Kelowna, actively commuting. Allowing for the multiplier effect creating secondary jobs in Kelowna and allowing for family size, that's over 20,000 people feeding on Fort Mac directly and indirectly.
UPDATE: Our dinner guest flew out of St. John's, NFLD at 5:30 a.m. recently and they were welcomed aboard the "Fort Mac Express".
