On Sep­tem­ber 12, 1977, after sev­en months of inter­nal debate and mul­ti­ple sched­ul­ing delays, CBC aired its 58-minute docu­d­ra­ma The Tar Sands to an eager­ly await­ing nation-wide audi­ence of 1.1 mil­lion Cana­di­ans. Inspired by the aca­d­e­m­ic book The Tar Sands (1976) by Uni­ver­si­ty of Alber­ta polit­i­cal sci­en­tist Lar­ry Pratt, CBC’s loose adap­ta­tion pre­sent­ed a dra­ma­tized re-enact­ment of the polit­i­cal strug­gles sur­round­ing Alberta’s then Pre­mier, Peter Lougheed, in nego­ti­at­ing and secur­ing the Syn­crude Cana­da Ltd. agree­ment to devel­op Alberta’s Athabas­ca bitu­men sands. The docu­d­ra­ma, which com­bined actors play­ing real-life fig­ures with com­pos­ite char­ac­ters, was part of CBC’s For the Record series, a col­lec­tion of what CBC labelled “jour­nal­is­tic dra­mas” with an objec­tive of “mak­ing com­plex news sto­ries and polit­i­cal issues acces­si­ble to a mass audi­ence” (Mar­tin 60). For The Record pro­mo­tion­al mate­r­i­al described The Tar Sands as:

“Explo­sive, polit­i­cal dra­ma, zero­ing in on power­broke-ing [sic] by the inter­na­tion­al petro­le­um indus­try. The dra­mat­ic sto­ry of nego­ti­a­tions and con­fronta­tions between major oil indus­tries and the gov­ern­ments of Cana­da, Alber­ta and Ontario, that cli­max with the Cana­di­an tax­pay­er putting up near­ly two bil­lion dol­lars to ensure devel­op­ment of the Athabas­ca Tar Sands. Provoca­tive, con­tem­po­rary drama!”

Explo­sive and provoca­tive it was. Less than twen­ty-four hours after the show aired an indig­nant Peter Lougheed held court in his Edmon­ton leg­is­la­ture office to a throng of eager­ly await­ing jour­nal­ists where he dis­closed his inten­tion to sue the CBC for defama­tion. The Premier’s pro­nounce­ment made nation­al news. It also marked the start of a near­ly five-year legal bat­tle. Lougheed orig­i­nal­ly launched a $2.75 mil­lion law­suit (equiv­a­lent to $11.6 mil­lion in 2021), which end­ed in May 1982 in an out-of-court set­tle­ment, with CBC pay­ing the Pre­mier $50,000 in dam­ages and $32,500 in costs (respec­tive­ly $128,000 and $83,400 in 2021). CBC also agreed to tele­vise a nation­wide apol­o­gy and nev­er again “pub­lish” The Tar Sands docudrama.

The set­tle­ment helped to bury the docu­d­ra­ma deep in pub­lic mem­o­ry, as it was removed from CBC’s inter­nal archive and made unavail­able to staff, and remains so to this day.¹ Yet the show’s 1977 broad­cast and Lougheed’s ensu­ing law­suit and pub­lic con­tro­ver­sy stands as a crit­i­cal, though most­ly for­got­ten, moment in the medi­at­ed his­to­ry of Canada’s bitu­men sands.² Indeed, it is only recent­ly that schol­ars such as Lon­g­ley (2021) have begun cri­tiquing Lougheed’s lega­cy and—much like Pratt (1976)—questioning the cor­ner Lougheed and his gov­ern­ment backed them­selves into. Exca­vat­ing The Tar Sands affords a unique oppor­tu­ni­ty to fur­ther expose fos­sil fuel’s long-stand­ing dom­i­nant posi­tion in the Cana­di­an polit­i­cal and social imag­i­na­tion. This arti­cle, as part of a larg­er research project, is an ini­tial attempt to extract The Tar Sands and its sur­round­ing con­tro­ver­sy from the tar­ry mem­o­ry hole into which it was cast. 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

Schol­ars 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. 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). What Turn­er labels the begin­ning of oil’s “High Mod­ern” peri­od also rep­re­sents the thick­en­ing of petro­cul­ture marked by a steady rise in glob­al oil con­sump­tion, grow­ing West­ern efforts to devel­op domes­tic syn­thet­ic plays, and the fur­ther mate­r­i­al and cul­tur­al enmesh­ing of oil in every­day life (Wil­son, Carl­son, and Sze­man 2017). And while Stephanie LeMe­nag­er (2014) right­ly traces back the gen­e­sis of oil-dri­ven con­sumer cul­ture decades ear­li­er, the late 1960s and ear­ly 1970s were a peri­od of sig­nif­i­cant social, eco­nom­ic, and polit­i­cal change for Alber­ta and its tar sands (Chastko 2004; Elton and God­dard 1979).

Ulti­mate­ly, what Gis­mon­di and David­son map is not just the tar sands’ con­struc­tion, but the con­struc­tion of its myth; a myth cre­at­ed, in part, from images which remain in pub­lic circulation—from adver­tise­ments and books to muse­um exhi­bi­tions and edu­ca­tion centres—which rep­re­sent and recon­struct the tar sands’ past. Cul­tur­al myths, Roland Barthes reminds us, make his­to­ry seem nat­ur­al, yet their cre­ation “is con­sti­tut­ed by the loss of the his­tor­i­cal qual­i­ty of things: in it, things lose the mem­o­ry that they once were made of” (1972, 142). Myths are the selec­tive rep­re­sen­ta­tions of his­to­ry sed­i­ment­ed into unques­tioned fact. Myths are anchored in ide­ol­o­gy and rest upon silences and absences. As Michel-Rolph Trouil­lot in Silenc­ing the Past sug­gests, silences occur at “the moment of fact cre­ation (the mak­ing of archives); the moment of fact retrieval (the mak­ing of nar­ra­tive); the moment of ret­ro­spec­tive sig­nif­i­cance (the mak­ing of his­to­ry in the final instance)” (1995, 26). The task at present is to bring back into focus one such absence from the hege­mon­ic myth of Alberta’s bitu­men sands: CBC’s docu­d­ra­ma The Tar Sands. Acknowl­edg­ing this “silence”—and the polit­i­cal impli­ca­tions behind it—affords an oppor­tu­ni­ty to unset­tle the sed­i­ment of his­to­ry by revis­it­ing the docu­d­ra­ma and its accom­pa­ny­ing con­tro­ver­sy and ques­tion­ing the polit­i­cal forces and dri­ving ide­ol­o­gy under­writ­ing its era­sure. As such, while schol­ar­ship on Cana­di­an oil films tra­di­tion­al­ly focus­es on tex­tu­al analy­sis, this arti­cle focus­es on the show’s broad­cast as an inflec­tion point in the myth of the tar sands.

Traces of The Tar Sands

Histo­ry sed­i­ments in books, and while there is men­tion of The Tar Sands, ref­er­ences are spo­radic, dis­joint­ed, and often made in pass­ing. For exam­ple, the docu­d­ra­ma lands just two sen­tences in Peter Foster’s 1980 The Blue-Eyed Sheiks not­ing, “The CBC sub­se­quent­ly pro­duced a ‘docu­d­ra­ma’ based on the Syn­crude cri­sis. Lougheed sub­se­quent­ly sued the CBC for a total of $2.75 mil­lion” (99). Mean­while, Syncrude’s self-pub­lished book Syn­crude Sto­ry: In our own words briefly acknowl­edges the pro­gram (but not the broad­cast­er) not­ing: “While [Syn­crude Pres­i­dent] Frank Spra­gins was amused to find his name mis­spelled and pro­nounced incor­rect­ly in the tele­vi­sion show, then Pre­mier Peter Lougheed did not find his por­tray­al a laugh­ing mat­ter. He launched a $2.75 mil­lion law­suit against the offend­ing sta­tion for defama­tion of char­ac­ter” (1990, 51). Paul Eich­horn, in an essay on the his­to­ry of CBC’s For The Record series, gives a suc­cinct nod to The Tar Sands and writes that Welsh’s por­tray­al was “wide­ly known to be an unflat­ter­ing por­trait of Peter Lougheed” (1998, 40). More recent­ly Peter McKen­zie-Brown notes that while Lar­ry Pratt’s book was “cer­tain­ly a rea­son­able study. How­ev­er, the docu­d­ra­ma was not. It went beyond the facts to por­tray the per­son­al­i­ties involved—including Frank Spra­gins and Peter Lougheed—as foul-mouthed, cig­ar-chomp­ing and con­niv­ing” (2017, 145). While these char­ac­ter­i­za­tions cer­tain­ly align with how Lougheed viewed the docu­d­ra­ma, they clash with oth­er inter­pre­ta­tions in the his­tor­i­cal record.

Per­haps the most detailed doc­u­men­ta­tion of The Tar Sands comes from film schol­ar Seth Feld­man, whose pub­li­ca­tions (1978, 1986, 1987) and CBC Ideas episode (Feld­man 1982) skill­ful­ly explore the his­to­ry, ten­sions, and pol­i­tics of the docu­d­ra­ma genre. Feld­man viewed Lougheed’s por­tray­al by actor Ken­neth Welsh as “entire­ly sym­pa­thet­ic” (1978, 73), and some years lat­er reflect­ed, “The Tar Sands was, if not tame, a fair­ly straight­for­ward pro­duc­tion […] There was noth­ing flam­boy­ant about Ken­neth Welsh’s per­for­mance […] Pearson’s style was sim­i­lar­ly pro­fes­sion­al and well to the right of glitz” (Feld­man 1987, 16). Beyond Feld­man, most aca­d­e­m­ic ref­er­ences to The Tar Sands are in pass­ing. It has been briefly men­tioned in stud­ies of CBC pro­gram­ming and poli­cies (Miller 1987; Mac­Don­ald 2019). Epp (1984), in his analy­sis of Lougheed’s media strat­e­gy, described The Tar Sands as a docu­d­ra­ma “based loose­ly on a book by Lar­ry Pratt—which por­trayed Lougheed as a foul-mouthed dupe of the oil com­pa­nies dur­ing the Syn­crude nego­ti­a­tions” (53). David Hogarth’s (2002) study of doc­u­men­tary tele­vi­sion in Cana­da affords The Tar Sands a mid-sen­tence ref­er­ence in paren­the­ses. The show has also received some brief atten­tion from schol­ars study­ing the rela­tion­ship between Alber­ta and its ener­gy indus­try such as Geo Takach (2017) who suc­cinct­ly pin­points The Tar Sands as a sem­i­nal moment in the medi­at­ed his­to­ry of Alberta’s bitu­men sands. Mean­while, Debra David­son and Mike Gis­mon­di (2011) ded­i­cate a para­graph to the show and include an acknowl­edg­ment of the program’s era­sure from CBC archives. These pub­lished and con­flict­ing accounts, togeth­er with oth­er frag­ments such as news clip­pings and gov­ern­ment and insti­tu­tion­al archival records, con­struct The Tar Sands’ cur­rent lega­cy; a legacy—to use a phrase from Michel-Rolph Trouillot—built on a “silence” (Trouil­lot 1995).

Myth and Rediscovery of The Tar Sands

In 1977, when CBC aired The Tar Sands, Impe­r­i­al Oil—a Cana­di­an oil com­pa­ny con­trolled by Exxon and por­trayed in The Tar Sands—was inten­si­fy­ing its oil sands play in Cold Lake, Alber­ta. Mean­while, Exxon’s Dr. James Black, Sci­en­tif­ic Advi­sor in the Prod­ucts Research Divi­sion of Exxon Research & Engi­neer­ing, had already told com­pa­ny man­age­ment that sum­mer “that the most like­ly man­ner in which mankind is influ­enc­ing the glob­al cli­mate is through car­bon diox­ide release from the burn­ing of fos­sil fuels” (Hall 2015). Yet broad pub­lic aware­ness as to the link between burn­ing fos­sil fuels and cli­mate change would not hap­pen for more than a decade. The now uni­ver­sal sci­en­tif­ic con­sen­sus of anthro­pogenic cli­mate change and its explic­it link with burn­ing fos­sil fuels has an unde­ni­able impact upon our rela­tion­ship with media texts about petro­le­um and its atten­dant socio-polit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic struc­tures. In the case of The Tar Sands, its redis­cov­ery in the con­text of this arti­cle and my wider research project allows us to con­sid­er how the docudrama—and the ener­getic polit­i­cal reac­tion which lead to its quashing—make vis­i­ble the pow­er and grip of “petro-hege­mo­ny” in Alber­ta both in the 1970s and today. Draw­ing from Theo Lequesne (2019), petro-hege­mo­ny is the pub­lic inter­nal­i­sa­tion of a Gram­s­cian com­mon sense and phi­los­o­phy root­ed in three rela­tions of power—consent, coer­cion, and compliance—which, togeth­er, serve to fur­ther fos­sil fuel com­pa­nies’ mate­r­i­al and dis­cur­sive objec­tives. Of par­tic­u­lar inter­est for the case at hand is Alberta’s polit­i­cal and cul­tur­al cli­mate where­by crit­ics who dare ques­tion the pow­er and reach of for­eign-owned oil com­pa­nies are silenced, mar­gin­al­ized, and/or vil­i­fied. Also rel­e­vant is the province’s eco­nom­ic reliance upon the for­eign-dom­i­nat­ed fos­sil fuel indus­try which forces com­pli­ance through a struc­tured depen­den­cy and addic­tion thus serv­ing to main­tain hegemony.

Under­stand­ing the reac­tion to The Tar Sands requires us to first con­sid­er Alberta’s dom­i­nant ide­ol­o­gy and the myth sur­round­ing Lougheed. R. W. Wright (1984) sug­gests that Alber­ta has come to oper­ate pri­mar­i­ly under a “hybrid” cor­po­ratist ide­ol­o­gy of “man­age­r­i­al cap­i­tal­ism,” a per­spec­tive which is “entrenched and vir­tu­al­ly unop­posed” in the province (105). Relat­ed, and almost three decades lat­er, David­son and Gis­mon­di (2011) suggest:

“In many ways, it was ide­ol­o­gy, not eco­nom­ics, which ensured the tar sands’ even­tu­al devel­op­ment. A west­ern­ized world­view of fron­tier indi­vid­u­al­ism, a util­i­tar­i­an view of ecosys­tems, and con­fi­dence in con­tin­ued progress sup­port­ed decades of invest­ment in research and mar­ket­ing by the provin­cial state, pub­lic invest­ments that were cru­cial to even­tu­al­ly attract­ing the inter­est of pri­vate cap­i­tal.” (170)

Thus, it was Con­ser­v­a­tive ideology—under Lougheed’s Premiership—which ensured the tar sands were devel­oped and nev­er nation­al­ized (Doern and Ton­er 35; Pratt 1976). Lougheed’s Con­ser­vatism was ground­ed on a com­mit­ment to extract the max­i­mum ben­e­fit out of the provinces’ nat­ur­al resources for its peo­ple by pri­vate indus­try. Stew­ard sum­maris­es Lougheed’s approach as follows:

“Lougheed saw gov­ern­ment as a coun­ter­weight to the eco­nom­ic pow­er and influ­ence of the petro­le­um indus­try. He believed that since gov­ern­ment man­aged nat­ur­al resources on behalf of Alber­tans it had a respon­si­bil­i­ty to obtain as much rev­enue and oth­er ben­e­fits as pos­si­ble from those resources.” (1)

Kevin Taft (2017), in his sting­ing cri­tique of oil’s “deep state” pres­ence in Alber­ta, eulo­gis­es Lougheed as a Pre­mier who fierce­ly fought for Alberta’s inter­ests and would bend the knee to no one. This por­tray­al is par­tic­u­lar­ly note­wor­thy as Taft’s book advances a “deep state” the­sis that Alber­ta gov­ern­ment has since been cap­tured by the oil indus­try and an assem­blage of inter­est­ed polit­i­cal and bureau­crat­ic boost­ers. How­ev­er, for Taft, Lougheed’s gov­ern­ment was unmo­lest­ed by cor­po­rate or polit­i­cal pres­sures which swayed sub­se­quent Pre­miers. Taft’s divine fram­ing of Lougheed is con­sis­tent with his myth­ic posi­tion in Alber­ta lore as “King Peter” (Lewis 27) of Camelot West. It is then per­haps under­stand­able why The Tar Sands—both Pratt’s and CBC’s version—was viewed with­in Alber­ta as an act of lèse-majesté.

Lougheed’s myth­ic sta­tus rests, at least part­ly, on the era­sure of The Tar Sands from pub­lic mem­o­ry. The CBC’s docu­d­ra­ma direct­ly chal­lenged the dou­bly artic­u­lat­ed myths of Syncrude’s found­ing and Lougheed’s Pre­mier­ship. To this end, The Tar Sands presents a dra­ma­tized inter­pre­ta­tion of events depict­ing a proud and deter­mined Pre­mier Lougheed becom­ing boxed in over the course of the Syn­crude nego­ti­a­tions by world events and pres­sure applied by the for­eign-con­trolled Syn­crude con­sor­tium. Here, it is per­haps pru­dent to offer more infor­ma­tion on the TV show itself, begin­ning with the show’s two-minute dis­claimer, aired at the start and read by jour­nal­ist and CBC icon Bar­bara Frum. The dis­claimer informs the audi­ence that The Tar Sands is, “a work of fic­tion con­struct­ed around cer­tain known events” based on “an imag­ined recre­ation of nego­ti­a­tions lead­ing up to an agree­ment reached on Feb­ru­ary 3, 1975” (Feld­man 1978, 71). “Since most of the agree­ment was worked out behind closed doors,” Frum tells view­ers: “Much of the film’s dia­logue and many of its scenes and char­ac­ters are, of neces­si­ty, fic­tion” (ibid).

Frum also briefly dis­cuss­es the show’s four main char­ac­ters, dif­fer­en­ti­at­ing between two char­ac­ters with real-world coun­ter­parts and two com­pos­ite char­ac­ters. The two real-world char­ac­ters were the show’s lead, Pre­mier Peter Lougheed, expert­ly por­trayed by Cana­di­an actor Ken­neth Welsh and, sec­ond, Frank Spra­gins, Pres­i­dent of Syn­crude Cana­da (Mavor Moore) who is por­trayed as the spokesper­son and chief nego­tia­tor for Syncrude’s inter­ests (Fig­ure 4). The Tar Sands also fea­tured two main com­pos­ite char­ac­ters, the most promi­nent of which was Willard Alexan­der (Ken Pogue). Alexan­der was a per­pet­u­al­ly crit­i­cal, cig­a­rette-smok­ing, alco­hol-drink­ing con­fi­dant of Pre­mier Lougheed whose func­tion was to rep­re­sent “the Alber­ta civ­il ser­vants who argued against pro­ceed­ing with the Athabas­ca tar sands devel­op­ment in the man­ner final­ly cho­sen” (Pear­son, 1977). The sec­ond main com­pos­ite char­ac­ter was the sleek and smart­ly dressed David Brom­ley, played by George Tou­liatos (Fig­ure 4). In the dis­claimer Frum iden­ti­fies Brom­ley as an “oil com­pa­ny rep­re­sen­ta­tive” who is “a com­pos­ite of the many oil men involved in the real nego­ti­a­tions,” how­ev­er he is iden­ti­fied in the show itself as being from Impe­r­i­al Oil (Pear­son, 1977). Brom­ley, with his dis­dain­ful and impa­tient atti­tude towards pub­lic ser­vice and relent­less focus on prof­it, per­fect­ly per­son­i­fies Pratt’s (1976) crit­i­cal view of for­eign inter­est squeez­ing the Alber­tan and Cana­di­an gov­ern­ment to their advantage.

The “real life” char­ac­ters in The Tar Sands are also car­i­ca­tures. Both the on-screen Lougheed and Spra­gins are dra­mat­ic rep­re­sen­ta­tions of the inter­pre­ta­tion of cer­tain his­tor­i­cal events based on Pratt’s book and sup­ple­men­tal research con­duct­ed by the show’s two main writ­ers, Peter Pear­son and Ralph Thomas. As will be dis­cussed in the next sec­tion, Pre­mier Lougheed took excep­tion to his por­tray­al and that of the Syn­crude nego­ti­a­tions. How­ev­er, there were also pub­lic mis­giv­ings about Frank Spra­gins’ rep­re­sen­ta­tion. For some in the indus­try such as John Barr, Head of Syncrude’s Pub­lic Rela­tions depart­ment, and Harold Mil­li­can, for­mer Lougheed Chief of Staff and promi­nent oil­man, Spra­gins was a “gen­tle­man” and Moore’s por­tray­al was unfair. Cal­gary-based petro­le­um indus­try his­to­ri­an Peter McKen­zie Brown summed up the on-screen Frank Spra­gins as a “foul mouthed […] cig­ar chomp­ing, Amer­i­can oil­man” (Spra­gins 2012, 22). In a 2012 inter­view con­duct­ed by McKen­zie Brown for The Oil Sands Oral His­to­ry Project, Nell Spra­gins described her hus­band Frank’s por­tray­al as, “unbe­liev­able, you know. Just how they could make it up like that and not even try to come close to what kind of man he was, unbe­liev­able, real­ly” (ibid). Yet com­pared to Impe­r­i­al Oil’s fic­tion­al rep­re­sen­ta­tive David Brom­ley, Frank Spra­gins’ screen per­sona was not unlike­able. Lar­ry Pratt, who was not involved in mak­ing CBC’s adap­ta­tion of his book, said in a Sep­tem­ber 13, 1977 Cana­da-wide live radio inter­view on CBC Morn­ing Side: “I didn’t think that the por­tray­al of Mr. Spra­gins was that unfair. But it is the case that they had to personify—they had to per­son­i­fy the oil indus­try in one indi­vid­ual and, if it’s unfair to Mr. Spra­gins, that’s unfor­tu­nate” (CBC Morn­ing Side, 1977).

Frank Spra­gins appears for the first time in The Tar Sands about four min­utes into the broad­cast when “top exec­u­tives” from the Amer­i­can-con­trolled oil com­pa­nies behind Syn­crude Cana­da Ltd. have been asked to meet with Pre­mier Lougheed (Welsh). The scene takes place in a screen­ing room where Pre­mier Lougheed is about to be shown a Syn­crude adver­tise­ment intend­ed to help sell the infra­struc­ture project to Cana­di­ans. As this scene unfolds the show’s narrator—famed NFB direc­tor and pro­duc­er Don­ald Brittain—provides con­text for the gath­er­ing and intro­duces the audi­ence to the “Amer­i­can-con­trolled” oil com­pa­nies in the room and “Syncrude’s Pres­i­dent Frank Spra­gins, a Mis­sis­sip­pi­an by birth and in his words, ‘A Cana­di­an by choice’” (Pear­son, 1977). Spra­gins, por­trayed by cel­e­brat­ed actor Mavor Moore, deliv­ers his tar sands pitch in an exag­ger­at­ed raspy round­ed south­ern drawl which serves as a per­sis­tent reminder of Spra­gins’ for­eign ori­gin and pre­sumed for­eign allegiance.

Frank Spra­gins nev­er offi­cial­ly com­ment­ed on the CBC broad­cast, how­ev­er Syncrude’s head of Pub­lic Rela­tions John Barr spoke to the media. Barr defend­ed Lougheed’s bar­gain­ing skills, called the show “inac­cu­rate,” and said The Tar Sands “is best treat­ed as a work of imag­i­na­tion, or, bet­ter, as a work of fan­ta­sy” (Cal­gary Her­ald, 1977). As for why Syn­crude did not react to The Tar Sands in an offi­cial capac­i­ty, Barr said Syn­crude “decid­ed not to make any com­ment […] It would be like try­ing to refute Mein Kampf —you wouldn’t know where to start” (ibid). While Syn­crude didn’t know where to start, Pre­mier Lougheed did: by call­ing his lawyer.

Defamation and the Drama of Docudrama

As Peter Lougheed pub­licly expressed his dis­plea­sure about The Tar Sands dur­ing a news con­fer­ence the morn­ing after its Sep­tem­ber 12^th broad­cast, the wheels were already in motion for a defama­tion law­suit. Lougheed’s lawyers had sent a pre­emp­tive telex to CBC on Sep­tem­ber 11, 1977 warn­ing of pos­si­ble legal action and then fol­lowed up two days lat­er with a hand-deliv­ered reg­is­tered let­ter sent to CBC Edmon­ton request­ing “the name and address of the oper­a­tor of your sta­tion” (CBC ATIP A0062824_1-000759). Although the let­ter was deliv­ered to CBC Edmon­ton, the Premier’s real tar­get was fur­ther east: the Cana­di­an Broad­cast­ing Corporation’s nation­al head­quar­ters in Toron­to, Ontario.

The Tar Sands had been delayed mul­ti­ple times since its first antic­i­pat­ed air date in Feb­ru­ary 1977 due to CBC man­age­ment con­cerns. The Bar­bara Frum dis­claimer was added in what Feld­man, post-broad­cast, called “a futile attempt to avoid legal reper­cus­sions” (1978, 72). Nonethe­less, the dis­claimer helped the pro­gram get to air. But, pub­licly, the specifics of The Tar Sands’ path to being broad­cast by the CBC were kept a mys­tery. Indeed, even one of CBC’s top brass seemed sur­prised about the show’s air­ing as report­ed in The Cal­gary Her­ald: John Hirsch, head of CBC-TV dra­ma, told reporters and crit­ics who saw a pre­view of the work Wednes­day that God alone knows “who let it go on the air” (Nel­son 1977, C3). Pub­licly, the CBC was con­fi­dent about The Tar Sands with pro­duc­er Ralph Thomas quot­ed at the pre-screen­ing as say­ing “no legal com­pli­ca­tions are expect­ed” (Zanger 1977, 26). How­ev­er, Mel Hur­tig, staunch Cana­di­an nation­al­ist and pub­lish­er of Lar­ry Pratt’s The Tar Sands, thought dif­fer­ent­ly. When Hur­tig was asked how he thought Lougheed and Spra­gins would react to the show, he replied “I sus­pect both of them are going to go through the roof” (Waters 1977, A23). Per­haps unsur­pris­ing­ly, with his polit­i­cal lean­ings, Hur­tig stood behind the show, com­ment­ing “It is a very accu­rate reflec­tion of the process of bar­gain­ing that occurred over the Syn­crude plant” (Cal­gary Her­ald 1977, A1) and went as far to say that the CBC had “per­formed a remark­able pub­lic ser­vice and has, in fact, been very coura­geous. It (the show) was unique, one of a kind. They’ll nev­er put on any­thing as tough” (Toron­to Star 1977, A69).

Hur­tig, it should be not­ed, also had a cameo in The Tar Sands. The brief scene shows Hur­tig re-enact­ing a 1973 news con­fer­ence where he revealed a leaked civ­il ser­vice report to the press. The report—which plays a vital role in Pratt’s 1976 book—was authored by a col­lec­tion of top Alber­ta gov­ern­ment senior civ­il ser­vants and took a crit­i­cal posi­tion towards what it described as the creep of for­eign own­er­ship of the province’s tar sands (Pratt 1976, 22; also see Lon­g­ley 2021). Hur­tig was sup­pos­ed­ly giv­en the con­fi­den­tial report—titled “The Fort McMur­ray Tar Sands Strategy”—by an unnamed civ­il ser­vant who had become frus­trat­ed with the Lougheed gov­ern­ment for ignor­ing the report’s rec­om­men­da­tions (ibid).

Hur­tig was cor­rect: Lougheed went through the roof. Vis­i­bly angry at a Sep­tem­ber 13^th press con­fer­ence, Lougheed used a pre­pared state­ment to describe The Tar Sands as “immoral,” “out­ra­geous,” and “unfair,” commenting:

“If the CBC is allowed to get away with­out a fight with this approach of char­ac­ter­i­sa­tion of real peo­ple involved in pub­lic events in the guise of a dra­ma to suit the CBC’s inter­pre­ta­tion of such events then, they no doubt will not hes­i­tate to use this vehi­cle to esca­late their dis­tor­tions of pub­lic affairs and in so doing, to destroy or dam­age rep­u­ta­tions.” (Alber­tan Edmon­ton Bureau 1977, A33)

Mem­bers of Lougheed’s cab­i­net were equal­ly dis­turbed by The Tar Sands. Lougheed’s Busi­ness Devel­op­ment Min­is­ter Bob Dowl­ing said, “It was a bunch of garbage […] The writer has no regard for 5,000 peo­ple who have jobs up there (on the Syn­crude project)” (Gilchrist 1977, A1). Alberta’s Solic­i­tor-Gen­er­al Roy Far­ran told the Edmon­ton Jour­nal the pro­gram was “a com­plete dis­tor­tion of fact,” and went on to make flip­pant com­par­isons with Nazi pro­pa­gan­da com­ment­ing, “I think it was sim­i­lar to Dr. Goebbels at his worst” (Hume 1977, P1). Min­is­ter of the Envi­ron­ment Dave Rus­sel was more con­cise, sim­ply call­ing it “a load of crap” (ITV News 1977). While there was Con­ser­v­a­tive con­sen­sus about the pro­gram, NDP leader Grant Not­ley believed Lougheed over­re­act­ed to the broad­cast say­ing, “Quite sim­ply if one reads the Syn­crude papers that is the sto­ry that was there” (Thorne 1977, A6).

The docudrama’s nation­al broad­cast was an act of counter-hege­mo­ny; it open­ly chal­lenged the near sed­i­ment­ed view of the Syn­crude nego­ti­a­tions as a pub­lic win, not a cor­po­rate oil coup. Con­sis­tent with Pratt’s (1976) book, The Tar Sands offered a dra­ma­tized inter­pre­ta­tion crit­i­cal of the sway and pow­er of for­eign cor­po­rate oil inter­ests in Cana­da. How­ev­er, as argued above, this dis­sent­ing per­spec­tive was dis­cur­sive­ly dis­missed by rul­ing politi­cians and coer­cive­ly quashed via the court sys­tem. Togeth­er these actions worked towards achiev­ing hege­mo­ny over Syncrude’s found­ing and the pres­ence and impli­ca­tions of for­eign oil cor­po­ra­tions in the tar sands. Nonethe­less, and as Feld­man notes, the fact that CBC made a docu­d­ra­ma about Alberta’s “tar sands” was a tes­ta­ment to its stand­ing and the accom­pa­ny­ing pol­i­tics it had attained. Feld­man (1985) suggests:

“The act of see­ing the recre­ation after being taught the his­to­ry, read­ing the news or liv­ing through the peri­od is essen­tial­ly nar­cis­sis­tic; we are look­ing at some­thing that is already part of our­selves. Fur­ther sat­is­fac­tion is derived from the com­mu­nal shar­ing of an event and the mass cathar­sis inher­ent in joint­ly expos­ing social anx­i­eties expe­ri­enc­ing the retelling of a famil­iar hor­ror.” (349)

If, as Feld­man argues, watch­ing a docu­d­ra­ma is a “nar­cis­sis­tic” expe­ri­ence, for Lougheed it was like­ly clos­er to “nar­cis­sis­tic mor­ti­fi­ca­tion” (Eidel­berg 1957). A clin­i­cal term pop­u­larised by psy­chi­a­try pro­fes­sor Lud­wig Eidel­berg in the late 1950s, nar­cis­sis­tic mor­ti­fi­ca­tion refers to feel­ings of anger and ter­ror over the loss of con­trol over a sit­u­a­tion. “If the unplea­sure caused by a nar­cis­sis­tic mor­ti­fi­ca­tion is too great,” Eidel­berg warns, “the indi­vid­ual elim­i­nates it from his con­scious­ness by repres­sion or denial” (1957, 596). While it is not pos­si­ble to know how Lougheed’s con­scious­ness han­dled The Tar Sands, Lougheed cer­tain­ly ensured it was repressed from the Cana­di­an consciousness.

Lougheed’s actions in the media and courts are con­sis­tent with his over­all media strat­e­gy as pre­mier, which was char­ac­terised by image con­trol and par­ty-wide mes­sage dis­ci­pline (Epp 1984). Yet not only was the CBC docu­d­ra­ma firm­ly out­side of Lougheed’s com­mand, its dra­ma­tized depic­tion of events—shown to a nation-wide audience—directly dis­put­ed Lougheed’s own care­ful­ly con­struct­ed media image. As one of Canada’s first media savvy politi­cians, a case could be made that Lougheed had lit­tle choice but to sue the CBC; per­for­ma­tive pol­i­tics demand­ed it. Mar­shall McLuhan once said of Peter Lougheed, “on TV Lougheed strives for a role rather than a goal” (Hus­tak 1979, 191). In this case, Lougheed’s role was one of an indig­nant west­ern Pre­mier eager for jus­tice (and keen to be seen seek­ing it) after being slight­ed one too many times by feck­less Easterners.

At the time, those seen crit­i­ciz­ing the province’s Con­ser­v­a­tive estab­lish­ment were large­ly treat­ed with con­tempt as Pratt him­self acknowl­edges in The Tar Sands: “The present polit­i­cal atmos­phere in Alber­ta is such that crit­i­cism tends to be regard­ed as trea­so­nous (‘alien forces,’ to quote Pre­mier Lougheed) and unpleas­ant facts are dis­missed as ide­o­log­i­cal heresy” (1976, 10). Pratt’s quo­ta­tion is sig­nif­i­cant as it acknowl­edges the inhos­pitable polit­i­cal envi­ron­ment for nar­ra­tives which sought to chal­lenge the dom­i­nant gov­ern­ment dis­course. As an eco­nom­ic nation­al­ist, Pratt sought to cau­tion against the grow­ing pow­ers and polit­i­cal sway of for­eign-owned oil cor­po­ra­tions whose inter­ests, from his per­spec­tive, didn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly align with the province. How­ev­er, Pratt’s con­cerns were dis­missed and shelved while his pres­ence was met with hos­til­i­ty; the CBC docu­d­ra­ma based on Pratt’s book would meet the same fate.

Imme­di­ate­ly after the show aired, Lougheed, his cab­i­net, and indeed most crit­ics direct­ed their crit­i­cism towards The Tar Sands docu­d­ra­ma for­mat, describ­ing it as “unfair” and “unjust”; as a medi­um to explore con­tem­po­rary pol­i­tics it was decried as hereti­cal. Yet as Feld­man right­ly notes, “the images that result from both The Tar Sands and The Nation­al are sim­ply two inter­pre­ta­tions of the same role, a role that may loose­ly be described as “the pub­lic image of Peter Lougheed” (Feld­man 1978, 72). Both rep­re­sen­ta­tions—The Tar Sands and The Nation­al—are syn­thet­ic, processed for pub­lic con­sump­tion. Inter­est­ing­ly, Lougheed and his cab­i­net react­ed pri­mar­i­ly to the medi­um and not the mes­sage, thus direct­ing pub­lic atten­tion towards the drama­ti­za­tion of cur­rent events and not the cri­tiques it con­tained. To be sure, the docu­d­ra­ma for­mat could have eas­i­ly been deployed as a medi­at­ed mis­tri­al to memo­ri­al­ize the con­quests of King Peter of Camelot West. Yet the major­i­ty of pub­lic dis­course around The Tar Sands—includ­ing news articles—centred on the ethics and use of docu­d­ra­ma to explore the Syn­crude Agree­ment. Con­se­quent­ly, dis­cus­sions around the creep­ing pow­er of for­eign oil inter­ests over Alberta’s resources were large­ly side­lined in favour of debate around the docudrama’s scan­dalous for­mat and pro­pa­gan­dist nature; petro-hege­mo­ny pre­vailed. While the docu­d­ra­ma may have sought to tell a cau­tion­ary tale about the poten­tial con­se­quences of for­eign oil’s sway over Alber­ta, Lougheed and his sup­port­ers drew upon dis­cur­sive and legal means to quick­ly quash this hereti­cal chal­lenge to the dom­i­nant orthodoxy.

Conclusion: Repression and Rediscovery

The ini­ti­a­tion of a defama­tion law­suit against CBC for The Tar Sands sealed the show’s fate as a media event des­tined to become repressed in the Cana­di­an con­scious­ness. Lar­ry Pratt’s 1976 book, on the oth­er hand, remains pub­licly avail­able, though it has become increas­ing­ly dif­fi­cult to find despite hav­ing sold 13,000 copies (Macken­zie-Brown 2017). Yet The Tar Sands—both Pratt’s book and the banned CBC docudrama—are impor­tant texts for their con­tra­pun­tal nar­ra­tives chal­leng­ing the dom­i­nant myths around Syncrude’s found­ing, con­ces­sions won and lost, and the influ­ence of cor­po­rate pow­er. Reflect­ing on Lougheed’s lega­cy, Fos­ter (1980) suggests:

“It remains uncer­tain just how much of Alberta’s mod­ern-day wealth can be attrib­uted to Lougheed’s tren­chant bar­gain­ing stance. The OPEC cri­sis, by qua­dru­pling oil prices, would have made the province much rich­er who­ev­er was in pow­er, but his intran­si­gence has led to him being insep­a­ra­bly linked to the province’s for­tune. In the eyes of many Alber­tans, it is Lougheed who has made the province the wealth­i­est and fastest grow­ing in Cana­da.” (43)

Forty years lat­er, Foster’s state­ment would undoubt­ed­ly be tak­en as hereti­cal by many, espe­cial­ly when com­pared to the lega­cy of many sub­se­quent Alber­tan pre­miers. More­over, Alber­tans and Cana­di­ans have unques­tion­ably ben­e­fit­ed from the tar sands extrac­tion which Lougheed kick­start­ed. Yet if Taft’s (2017) “deep state” the­sis is cor­rect and demo­c­ra­t­ic insti­tu­tions provin­cial­ly in Alber­ta and fed­er­al­ly have indeed been “cap­tured” by the oil indus­try, who let them in and under what terms? Taft, as argued above, puts the blame square­ly beyond Lougheed’s pre­mier­ship. But what if CBC’s docu­d­ra­ma The Tar Sands cap­tures the ori­gin sto­ry of the cor­po­ra­ti­za­tion and exploita­tion of the Athabas­ca tar sands?

Ours is a polit­i­cal moment when the tar sands’ future is open­ly and active­ly chal­lenged, and so too is the ide­o­log­i­cal grip of fos­sil fuels. Despite decades of cor­po­rate obfus­ca­tion and obstruc­tion, the link between burn­ing fos­sil fuels and cli­mate change is unde­ni­able. Spurred by an ever-inten­si­fy­ing cli­mate emer­gency, there is near uni­ver­sal con­sen­sus on the need to rapid­ly tran­si­tion away from soci­eties and economies built on oil, espe­cial­ly resource inten­sive oil such as the tar sands; how­ev­er, some polit­i­cal and cor­po­rate actors con­tin­ue to active­ly chal­lenge the pace and urgency of this tran­si­tion in pur­suit of their own inter­ests (Car­roll 2021). To be clear, nei­ther the docu­d­ra­ma nor Pratt’s book addressed the issue of cli­mate change, while the envi­ron­men­tal con­cerns expressed, though present, were minor. Yet Pratt’s (1976) con­cerns about the influ­ence of cor­po­rate pow­er over gov­ern­ment formed the docudrama’s core: con­cerns about petro-hegemony’s creep. Indeed, while works such as Taft (2017) are right­ly crit­i­cal of Alberta’s cur­rent deep state oil links, the reac­tion to a now forty-four-year-old docu­d­ra­ma reveals con­cerns ear­ly in Alberta’s syn­thet­ic ener­gy his­to­ry as to the con­se­quences of a polit­i­cal cul­ture and com­mon sense under­writ­ten by and inter­twined with cor­po­rate oil interests.

In con­clu­sion, if docu­d­ra­ma pro­vides the build­ing blocks for “self recog­ni­tion” (Feld­man 1985, 354), Pre­mier Lougheed did not like what he saw, so much so that he had it metaphor­i­cal­ly thrown into a tar pit. Com­mon sense at the time—particularly in Alberta—accepted this dog­ma; the docu­d­ra­ma was hereti­cal. Yet, The Tar Sands was not an indict­ment of Lougheed, despite him see­ing it that way. It was and remains a skill­ful­ly dra­mat­ic and damn­ing cri­tique of fos­sil-cap­i­tal­ism; a cri­tique which remains as com­pelling today as when The Tar Sands aired forty-five years ago, for its first and only time.

Acknowledgements

This research was sup­port­ed by an Insight Grant from the Social Sci­ences and Human­i­ties Research Coun­cil of Cana­da under Grant 430-2018-1019.