Excavating CBC\u2019s Docudrama The Tar Sands<\/h1>\nPatrick McCurdy<\/div>\n\nThis article examines the political controversy around the banned 1977 CBC docudrama The Tar Sands<\/em>, which portrays the personal and political struggle of Alberta Premier Peter Lougheed to secure the Syncrude agreement to develop Alberta\u2019s bitumen sands. Immediately following the docudrama\u2019s broadcast, Lougheed launched a lawsuit which ultimately resulted in the show\u2019s expulsion from CBC archives. While the CBC docudrama sought to dramatize and elevate political critiques of the tar sands, Lougheed\u2019s litigious reaction quickly buried them, obfuscating the real possibility that The Tar Sands\u2014while a work of fiction\u2014portrays the genesis of Alberta\u2019s corporate capture by foreign oil.<\/div>\nCet article examine la controverse politique entourant le docudrame banni de 1977 produit par la CBC: _The Tar Sands_. Le docudrame d\u00e9peint la lutte personnelle et politique du premier ministre de l\u2019Alberta, Peter Lougheed, pour obtenir l\u2019accord de Syncrude pour l\u2019exploitation des sables bitumineux de l\u2019Alberta. Imm\u00e9diatement apr\u00e8s la diffusion du docudrame, Lougheed a intent\u00e9 un proc\u00e8s contre la CBC, qui a abouti \u00e0 le retrait de l\u2019\u00e9mission des archives de la CBC. Alors que le docudrame de la CBC cherchait \u00e0 dramatiser et \u00e0 soulever des critiques politiques \u00e0 propos des sables bitumineux, la r\u00e9action litigieuse de Lougheed les a rapidement enterr\u00e9es, occultant toute possibilit\u00e9 de permettre \u00e0 The Tar Sands<\/em>\u2014bien qu\u2019\u00e9tant une \u0153uvre de fiction\u2014\u00e0 d\u00e9peindre la gen\u00e8se de la capture de l\u2019Alberta par des soci\u00e9t\u00e9s p\u00e9troli\u00e8res \u00e9trang\u00e8res.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/header>\n
\nO<\/span>n September 12, 1977, after seven months of internal debate and multiple scheduling delays, CBC aired its 58-minute docudrama The Tar Sands<\/em> to an eagerly awaiting nation-wide audience of 1.1 million Canadians. Inspired by the academic book The Tar Sands<\/em> (1976) by University of Alberta political scientist Larry Pratt, CBC\u2019s loose adaptation presented a dramatized re-enactment of the political struggles surrounding Alberta\u2019s then Premier, Peter Lougheed, in negotiating and securing the Syncrude Canada Ltd.\u00a0agreement to develop Alberta\u2019s Athabasca bitumen sands. The docudrama, which combined actors playing real-life figures with composite characters, was part of CBC\u2019s For the Record<\/em> series, a collection of what CBC labelled \u201cjournalistic dramas\u201d with an objective of \u201cmaking complex news stories and political issues accessible to a mass audience\u201d (Martin 60). For The Record<\/em> promotional material described The Tar Sands<\/em> as:<\/p>\n\n\u201cExplosive, 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!\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n![\"Figure](\"https:\/\/imaginations.space\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/13-1-petromedia\/06-mccurdy-media\/06-mccurdy_image1.jpg\")
Figure 1: Page from For the Record promotional pamphlet produced by CBC, 1977.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nExplosive 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\u2019s 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 \u201cpublish\u201d The Tar Sands<\/em> docudrama.<\/p>\nThe settlement helped to bury the docudrama deep in public memory, as it was removed from CBC\u2019s internal archive and made unavailable to staff, and remains so to this day.1<\/sup><\/a> Yet the show\u2019s 1977 broadcast and Lougheed\u2019s ensuing lawsuit and public controversy stands as a critical, though mostly forgotten, moment in the mediated history of Canada\u2019s bitumen sands.2<\/sup><\/a> Indeed, it is only recently that scholars such as Longley (2021) have begun critiquing Lougheed\u2019s legacy and\u2014much like Pratt (1976)\u2014questioning the corner Lougheed and his government backed themselves into. Excavating The Tar Sands<\/em> affords a unique opportunity to further expose fossil fuel\u2019s 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<\/em> Tar Sands<\/em> and its surrounding controversy from the tarry memory hole into which it was cast. It argues that while CBC\u2019s docudrama sought to dramatize and elevate Pratt\u2019s (1976) political critiques, Lougheed\u2019s litigious reaction quickly buried them, obfuscating the real possibility that The Tar Sands<\/em>\u2014while a work of fiction\u2014portrays the genesis of Alberta\u2019s corporate capture by foreign oil interests.3<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\nSeeing The Tar Sands: Looking Back, Looking Forward<\/h2>\n
S<\/span>cholars Debra Davidson and Mike Gismondi have traced the evolution of the tar sands\u2019 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<\/em> article with an analysis of the Great Canadian Oil Sands Company (GCOS, now Suncor) and the \u201clegitimacy work\u201d of images showcasing the immense machinery\u2014from draglines to bucketwheels\u2014involved in mining bitumen. Such images, they argue, \u201cbecame selling features to the public, symbolizing the enormity of challenges overcome\u201d (Gismondi and Davidson 2012). Author Chris Turner, in his well-researched history of Alberta\u2019s oil patch, identifies the start of what he calls the \u201cHigh Modern\u201d era as GCOS\u2019s 1967 bitumen plant opening ceremony (Turner 24). What Turner labels the beginning of oil\u2019s \u201cHigh Modern\u201d 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).<\/p>\n![\"Figure](\"https:\/\/imaginations.space\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/13-1-petromedia\/06-mccurdy-media\/06-mccurdy_image2.jpg\")
Figure 2: For the Record Advertisement, 1977<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nUltimately, what Gismondi and Davidson map is not just the tar sands\u2019 construction, but the construction of its myth; a myth created, in part, from images which remain in public circulation\u2014from advertisements and books to museum exhibitions and education centres\u2014which represent and reconstruct the tar sands\u2019 past. Cultural myths, Roland Barthes reminds us, make history seem natural, yet their creation \u201cis constituted by the loss of the historical quality of things: in it, things lose the memory that they once were made of\u201d (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<\/em> suggests, silences occur at \u201cthe moment of fact creation (the making of archives<\/em>); the moment of fact retrieval (the making of narrative<\/em>); the moment of retrospective significance (the making of history<\/em> in the final instance)\u201d (1995, 26). The task at present is to bring back into focus one such absence from the hegemonic myth of Alberta\u2019s bitumen sands: CBC\u2019s docudrama The Tar Sands<\/em>. Acknowledging this \u201csilence\u201d\u2014and the political implications behind it\u2014affords 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\u2019s broadcast as an inflection point in the myth of the tar sands.<\/p>\nTraces of The Tar Sands<\/h2>\n
H<\/span>istory sediments in books, and while there is mention of The Tar Sands<\/em>, references are sporadic, disjointed, and often made in passing. For example, the docudrama lands just two sentences in Peter Foster\u2019s 1980 The Blue-Eyed Sheiks<\/em> noting, \u201cThe CBC subsequently produced a \u2018docudrama\u2019 based on the Syncrude crisis. Lougheed subsequently sued the CBC for a total of $2.75 million\u201d (99). Meanwhile, Syncrude\u2019s self-published book Syncrude Story: In our own words<\/em> briefly acknowledges the program (but not the broadcaster) noting: \u201cWhile [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\u201d (1990, 51). Paul Eichhorn, in an essay on the history of CBC\u2019s For The Record<\/em> series, gives a succinct nod to The Tar Sands<\/em> and writes that Welsh\u2019s portrayal was \u201cwidely known to be an unflattering portrait of Peter Lougheed\u201d (1998, 40). More recently Peter McKenzie-Brown notes that while Larry Pratt\u2019s book was \u201ccertainly a reasonable study. However, the docudrama was not. It went beyond the facts to portray the personalities involved\u2014including Frank Spragins and Peter Lougheed\u2014as foul-mouthed, cigar-chomping and conniving\u201d (2017, 145). While these characterizations certainly align with how Lougheed viewed the docudrama, they clash with other interpretations in the historical record.<\/p>\nPerhaps the most detailed documentation of The Tar Sands<\/em> comes from film scholar Seth Feldman, whose publications (1978, 1986, 1987) and CBC Ideas<\/em> episode (Feldman 1982) skillfully explore the history, tensions, and politics of the docudrama genre. Feldman viewed Lougheed\u2019s portrayal by actor Kenneth Welsh as \u201centirely sympathetic\u201d (1978, 73), and some years later reflected, \u201cThe Tar Sands was, if not tame, a fairly straightforward production [\u2026] There was nothing flamboyant about Kenneth Welsh\u2019s performance [\u2026] Pearson\u2019s style was similarly professional and well to the right of glitz\u201d (Feldman 1987, 16). Beyond Feldman, most academic references to The Tar Sands<\/em> 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\u2019s media strategy, described The Tar Sands<\/em> as a docudrama \u201cbased loosely on a book by Larry Pratt\u2014which portrayed Lougheed as a foul-mouthed dupe of the oil companies during the Syncrude negotiations\u201d (53). David Hogarth\u2019s (2002) study of documentary television in Canada affords The Tar Sands<\/em> 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<\/em> as a seminal moment in the mediated history of Alberta\u2019s bitumen sands. Meanwhile, Debra Davidson and Mike Gismondi (2011) dedicate a paragraph to the show and include an acknowledgment of the program\u2019s 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\u2019<\/em> current legacy; a legacy\u2014to use a phrase from Michel-Rolph Trouillot\u2014built on a \u201csilence\u201d (Trouillot 1995).<\/p>\nMyth and Rediscovery of The Tar Sands<\/em><\/h2>\nI<\/span>n 1977, when CBC aired The Tar Sands,<\/em> Imperial Oil\u2014a Canadian oil company controlled by Exxon and portrayed in The Tar Sands<\/em>\u2014was intensifying its oil sands play in Cold Lake, Alberta. Meanwhile, Exxon\u2019s Dr.\u00a0James Black, Scientific Advisor in the Products Research Division of Exxon Research & Engineering, had already told company management that summer \u201cthat the most likely manner in which mankind is influencing the global climate is through carbon dioxide release from the burning of fossil fuels\u201d (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<\/em>, its rediscovery<\/em> in the context of this article and my wider research project allows us to consider how the docudrama\u2014and the energetic political reaction which lead to its quashing\u2014make visible the power and grip of \u201cpetro-hegemony\u201d 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\u2014consent, coercion, and compliance\u2014which, together, serve to further fossil fuel companies\u2019 material and discursive objectives. Of particular interest for the case at hand is Alberta\u2019s 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\u2019s economic reliance upon the foreign-dominated fossil fuel industry which forces compliance through a structured dependency and addiction thus serving to maintain hegemony.<\/p>\n![\"Figure](\"https:\/\/imaginations.space\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/13-1-petromedia\/06-mccurdy-media\/06-mccurdy_image3.jpg\")
Figure 3: Peter Lougheed (Kenneth Welsh) and Willard Alexander (Ken Pogue) in The Tar Sands, 1977.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nUnderstanding the reaction to The Tar Sands<\/em> requires us to first consider Alberta\u2019s dominant ideology and the myth surrounding Lougheed. R. W. Wright (1984) suggests that Alberta has come to operate primarily under a \u201chybrid\u201d corporatist ideology of \u201cmanagerial capitalism,\u201d a perspective which is \u201centrenched and virtually unopposed\u201d in the province (105). Related, and almost three decades later, Davidson and Gismondi (2011) suggest:<\/p>\n\n\u201cIn many ways, it was ideology, not economics, which ensured the tar sands\u2019 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.\u201d (170)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
Thus, it was Conservative ideology\u2014under Lougheed\u2019s Premiership\u2014which ensured the tar sands were developed and never nationalized (Doern and Toner 35; Pratt 1976). Lougheed\u2019s Conservatism was grounded on a commitment to extract the maximum benefit out of the provinces\u2019 natural resources for its people by private industry. Steward summarises Lougheed\u2019s approach as follows:<\/p>\n
\n\u201cLougheed 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.\u201d (1)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
Kevin Taft (2017), in his stinging critique of oil\u2019s \u201cdeep state\u201d presence in Alberta, eulogises Lougheed as a Premier who fiercely fought for Alberta\u2019s interests and would bend the knee to no one. This portrayal is particularly noteworthy as Taft\u2019s book advances a \u201cdeep state\u201d 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\u2019s government was unmolested by corporate or political pressures which swayed subsequent Premiers. Taft\u2019s divine framing of Lougheed is consistent with his mythic position in Alberta lore as \u201cKing Peter\u201d (Lewis 27) of Camelot West. It is then perhaps understandable why The Tar Sands<\/em>\u2014both Pratt\u2019s and CBC\u2019s version\u2014was viewed within Alberta as an act of l\u00e8se-majest\u00e9<\/em>.<\/p>\nLougheed\u2019s mythic status rests, at least partly, on the erasure of The Tar Sands<\/em> from public memory. The CBC\u2019s docudrama directly challenged the doubly articulated myths of Syncrude\u2019s founding and Lougheed\u2019s Premiership. To this end, The Tar Sands<\/em> 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\u2019s 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<\/em> is, \u201ca work of fiction constructed around certain known events\u201d based on \u201can imagined recreation of negotiations leading up to an agreement reached on February 3, 1975\u201d (Feldman 1978, 71). \u201cSince most of the agreement was worked out behind closed doors,\u201d Frum tells viewers: \u201cMuch of the film\u2019s dialogue and many of its scenes and characters are, of necessity, fiction\u201d (ibid).<\/p>\n![\"Figure](\"https:\/\/imaginations.space\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/13-1-petromedia\/06-mccurdy-media\/06-mccurdy_image4.jpg\")
Figure 4: Production still from The Tar Sands featuring director Peter Pearson (crouching in foreground), Mavor Moore (with glasses and his back to the camera) in character as Frank Spragins, President of Syncrude Canada Ltd., and George Touliatos as oil company representative David Bromley.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nFrum also briefly discusses the show\u2019s four main characters, differentiating between two characters with real-world counterparts and two composite characters. The two real-world characters were the show\u2019s 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\u2019s interests (Figure 4). The Tar Sands<\/em> 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 \u201cthe Alberta civil servants who argued against proceeding with the Athabasca tar sands development in the manner finally chosen\u201d (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 \u201coil company representative\u201d who is \u201ca composite of the many oil men involved in the real negotiations,\u201d 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\u2019s (1976) critical view of foreign interest squeezing the Albertan and Canadian government to their advantage.<\/p>\nThe \u201creal life\u201d characters in The Tar Sands<\/em> are also caricatures. Both the on-screen Lougheed and Spragins are dramatic representations of the interpretation of certain historical events based on Pratt\u2019s book and supplemental research conducted by the show\u2019s 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\u2019 representation. For some in the industry such as John Barr, Head of Syncrude\u2019s Public Relations department, and Harold Millican, former Lougheed Chief of Staff and prominent oilman, Spragins was a \u201cgentleman\u201d and Moore\u2019s portrayal was unfair. Calgary-based petroleum industry historian Peter McKenzie Brown summed up the on-screen Frank Spragins as a \u201cfoul mouthed [\u2026] cigar chomping, American oilman\u201d (Spragins 2012, 22). In a 2012 interview conducted by McKenzie Brown for The Oil Sands Oral History Project<\/em>, Nell Spragins described her husband Frank\u2019s portrayal as, \u201cunbelievable, 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\u201d (ibid). Yet compared to Imperial Oil\u2019s fictional representative David Bromley, Frank Spragins\u2019 screen persona was not unlikeable. Larry Pratt, who was not involved in making CBC\u2019s adaptation of his book, said in a September 13, 1977 Canada-wide live radio interview on CBC Morning Side<\/em>: \u201cI didn\u2019t think that the portrayal of Mr.\u00a0Spragins was that unfair. But it is the case that they had to personify\u2014they had to personify the oil industry in one individual and, if it\u2019s unfair to Mr.\u00a0Spragins, that\u2019s unfortunate\u201d (CBC Morning Side, 1977).<\/p>\nFrank Spragins appears for the first time in The Tar Sands<\/em> about four minutes into the broadcast when \u201ctop executives\u201d from the American-controlled oil companies behind Syncrude Canada Ltd.\u00a0have 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\u2019s narrator\u2014famed NFB director and producer Donald Brittain\u2014provides context for the gathering and introduces the audience to the \u201cAmerican-controlled\u201d oil companies in the room and \u201cSyncrude\u2019s President Frank Spragins, a Mississippian by birth and in his words, \u2018A Canadian by choice\u2019\u201d (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\u2019 foreign origin and presumed foreign allegiance.<\/p>\nFrank Spragins never officially commented on the CBC broadcast, however Syncrude\u2019s head of Public Relations John Barr spoke to the media. Barr defended Lougheed\u2019s bargaining skills, called the show \u201cinaccurate,\u201d and said The Tar Sands<\/em> \u201cis best treated as a work of imagination, or, better, as a work of fantasy\u201d (Calgary Herald, 1977). As for why Syncrude did not react to The Tar Sands<\/em> in an official capacity, Barr said Syncrude \u201cdecided not to make any comment [\u2026] It would be like trying to refute Mein Kampf<\/em> \u2014you wouldn\u2019t know where to start\u201d (ibid). While Syncrude didn\u2019t know where to start, Premier Lougheed did: by calling his lawyer.<\/p>\nDefamation and the Drama of Docudrama<\/h2>\n
A<\/span>s Peter Lougheed publicly expressed his displeasure about The Tar Sands<\/em> during a news conference the morning after its September 12th<\/sup> broadcast, the wheels were already in motion for a defamation lawsuit. Lougheed\u2019s 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 \u201cthe name and address of the operator of your station\u201d (CBC ATIP A0062824_1-000759). Although the letter was delivered to CBC Edmonton, the Premier\u2019s real target was further east: the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation\u2019s national headquarters in Toronto, Ontario.<\/p>\nThe Tar Sands<\/em> 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 \u201ca futile attempt to avoid legal repercussions\u201d (1978, 72). Nonetheless, the disclaimer helped the program get to air. But, publicly, the specifics of The Tar Sands\u2019<\/em> path to being broadcast by the CBC were kept a mystery. Indeed, even one of CBC\u2019s top brass seemed surprised about the show\u2019s airing as reported in The Calgary Herald:<\/em> John Hirsch, head of CBC-TV drama, told reporters and critics who saw a preview of the work Wednesday that God alone knows \u201cwho let it go on the air\u201d (Nelson 1977, C3). Publicly, the CBC was confident about The Tar Sands<\/em> with producer Ralph Thomas quoted at the pre-screening as saying \u201cno legal complications are expected\u201d (Zanger 1977, 26). However, Mel Hurtig, staunch Canadian nationalist and publisher of Larry Pratt\u2019s The Tar Sands<\/em>, thought differently. When Hurtig was asked how he thought Lougheed and Spragins would react to the show, he replied \u201cI suspect both of them are going to go through the roof\u201d (Waters 1977, A23). Perhaps unsurprisingly, with his political leanings, Hurtig stood behind the show, commenting \u201cIt is a very accurate reflection of the process of bargaining that occurred over the Syncrude plant\u201d (Calgary Herald 1977, A1) and went as far to say that the CBC had \u201cperformed a remarkable public service and has, in fact, been very courageous. It (the show) was unique, one of a kind. They\u2019ll never put on anything as tough\u201d (Toronto Star 1977, A69).<\/p>\n![\"Figure](\"https:\/\/imaginations.space\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/13-1-petromedia\/06-mccurdy-media\/06-mccurdy_image5.jpg\")
Figure 5: Kenneth Welsh as Peter Lougheed in The Tar Sands, 1977.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nHurtig, it should be noted, also had a cameo in The Tar Sands<\/em>. The brief scene shows Hurtig re-enacting a 1973 news conference where he revealed a leaked civil service report to the press. The report\u2014which plays a vital role in Pratt\u2019s 1976 book\u2014was 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\u2019s tar sands (Pratt 1976, 22; also see Longley 2021). Hurtig was supposedly given the confidential report\u2014titled \u201cThe Fort McMurray Tar Sands Strategy\u201d\u2014by an unnamed civil servant who had become frustrated with the Lougheed government for ignoring the report\u2019s recommendations (ibid).<\/p>\n![\"Figure](\"https:\/\/imaginations.space\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/13-1-petromedia\/06-mccurdy-media\/06-mccurdy_image6.jpg\")
Figure 6: \u201cThem\u2019s fightin\u2019 words, Mister.\u2019\u201d An editorial cartoon by Tom Innes, published in the Calgary Herald September 16, 1977.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nHurtig was correct: Lougheed went through the roof. Visibly angry at a September 13th<\/sup> press conference, Lougheed used a prepared statement to describe The Tar Sands<\/em> as \u201cimmoral,\u201d \u201coutrageous,\u201d and \u201cunfair,\u201d commenting:<\/p>\n\n\u201cIf 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\u2019s 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.\u201d (Albertan Edmonton Bureau 1977, A33)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
Members of Lougheed\u2019s cabinet were equally disturbed by The Tar Sands<\/em>. Lougheed\u2019s Business Development Minister Bob Dowling said, \u201cIt was a bunch of garbage [\u2026] The writer has no regard for 5,000 people who have jobs up there (on the Syncrude project)\u201d (Gilchrist 1977, A1). Alberta\u2019s Solicitor-General Roy Farran told the Edmonton Journal<\/em> the program was \u201ca complete distortion of fact,\u201d and went on to make flippant comparisons with Nazi propaganda commenting, \u201cI think it was similar to Dr.\u00a0Goebbels at his worst\u201d (Hume 1977, P1). Minister of the Environment Dave Russel was more concise, simply calling it \u201ca load of crap\u201d (ITV News 1977). While there was Conservative consensus about the program, NDP leader Grant Notley believed Lougheed overreacted to the broadcast saying, \u201cQuite simply if one reads the Syncrude papers that is the story that was there\u201d (Thorne 1977, A6).<\/p>\nThe docudrama\u2019s 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\u2019s (1976) book, The Tar Sands<\/em> 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\u2019s 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\u2019s \u201ctar sands\u201d was a testament to its standing and the accompanying politics it had attained. Feldman (1985) suggests:<\/p>\n\n\u201cThe 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.\u201d (349)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
If, as Feldman argues, watching a docudrama is a \u201cnarcissistic\u201d experience, for Lougheed it was likely closer to \u201cnarcissistic mortification\u201d (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. \u201cIf the unpleasure caused by a narcissistic mortification is too great,\u201d Eidelberg warns, \u201cthe individual eliminates it from his consciousness by repression or denial\u201d (1957, 596). While it is not possible to know how Lougheed\u2019s consciousness handled The Tar Sands<\/em>, Lougheed certainly ensured it was repressed from the Canadian consciousness.<\/p>\nLougheed\u2019s 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\u2019s command, its dramatized depiction of events\u2014shown to a nation-wide audience\u2014directly disputed Lougheed\u2019s own carefully constructed media image. As one of Canada\u2019s 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, \u201con TV Lougheed strives for a role rather than a goal\u201d (Hustak 1979, 191). In this case, Lougheed\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
At the time, those seen criticizing the province\u2019s Conservative establishment were largely treated with contempt as Pratt himself acknowledges in The Tar Sands<\/em>: \u201cThe present political atmosphere in Alberta is such that criticism tends to be regarded as treasonous (\u2018alien forces,\u2019 to quote Premier Lougheed) and unpleasant facts are dismissed as ideological heresy\u201d (1976, 10). Pratt\u2019s 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\u2019t necessarily align with the province. However, Pratt\u2019s concerns were dismissed and shelved while his presence was met with hostility; the CBC docudrama based on Pratt\u2019s book would meet the same fate.<\/p>\nImmediately after the show aired, Lougheed, his cabinet, and indeed most critics directed their criticism towards The Tar Sands<\/em> docudrama format, describing it as \u201cunfair\u201d and \u201cunjust\u201d; as a medium to explore contemporary politics it was decried as heretical. Yet as Feldman rightly notes, \u201cthe images that result from both The Tar Sands<\/em> and The National<\/em> are simply two interpretations of the same role, a role that may loosely be described as \u201cthe public image of Peter Lougheed\u201d (Feldman 1978, 72). Both representations\u2014The Tar Sands<\/em> and The National<\/em>\u2014are 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<\/em>\u2014including news articles\u2014centred on the ethics and use of docudrama to explore the Syncrude Agreement. Consequently, discussions around the creeping power of foreign oil interests over Alberta\u2019s resources were largely sidelined in favour of debate around the docudrama\u2019s 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\u2019s sway over Alberta, Lougheed and his supporters drew upon discursive and legal means to quickly quash this heretical challenge to the dominant orthodoxy.<\/p>\nConclusion: Repression and Rediscovery<\/h2>\n
T<\/span>he initiation of a defamation lawsuit against CBC for The Tar Sands<\/em> sealed the show\u2019s fate as a media event destined to become repressed in the Canadian consciousness. Larry Pratt\u2019s 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<\/em>\u2014both Pratt\u2019s book and the banned CBC docudrama\u2014are important texts for their contrapuntal narratives challenging the dominant myths around Syncrude\u2019s founding, concessions won and lost, and the influence of corporate power. Reflecting on Lougheed\u2019s legacy, Foster (1980) suggests:<\/p>\n\n\u201cIt remains uncertain just how much of Alberta\u2019s modern-day wealth can be attributed to Lougheed\u2019s 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\u2019s fortune. In the eyes of many Albertans, it is Lougheed who has made the province the wealthiest and fastest growing in Canada.\u201d (43)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
Forty years later, Foster\u2019s 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\u2019s (2017) \u201cdeep state\u201d thesis is correct and democratic institutions provincially in Alberta and federally have indeed been \u201ccaptured\u201d by the oil industry, who let them in and under what terms? Taft, as argued above, puts the blame squarely beyond Lougheed\u2019s premiership. But what if CBC\u2019s docudrama The Tar Sands<\/em> captures the origin story of the corporatization and exploitation of the Athabasca tar sands?<\/p>\nOurs is a political moment when the tar sands\u2019 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\u2019s book addressed the issue of climate change, while the environmental concerns expressed, though present, were minor. Yet Pratt\u2019s (1976) concerns about the influence of corporate power over government formed the docudrama\u2019s core: concerns about petro-hegemony\u2019s creep. Indeed, while works such as Taft (2017) are rightly critical of Alberta\u2019s current deep state oil links, the reaction to a now forty-four-year-old docudrama reveals concerns early in Alberta\u2019s synthetic energy history as to the consequences of a political culture and common sense underwritten by and intertwined with corporate oil interests.<\/p>\n
In conclusion, if docudrama provides the building blocks for \u201cself recognition\u201d (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\u2014particularly in Alberta\u2014accepted this dogma; the docudrama was heretical. Yet, The Tar Sands<\/em> 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<\/em> aired forty-five years ago, for its first and only time.<\/p>\nAcknowledgements<\/h2>\n
This research was supported by an Insight Grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada under Grant 430-2018-1019.<\/p>\n
\nWorks Cited<\/h2>\n
Albertan Edmonton Bureau. \u201cLougheed\u2019s statement.\u201d Calgary Albertan<\/em>, 14 Sept.\u00a01977, p.\u00a0A33.<\/p>\nBarthes, Roland. Mythologies<\/em>. Translated by Annette Lavers, Hill and Wang, 1972.<\/p>\nCalgary Herald. \u201c\u2018Inaccurate,\u2019 says oilman of TV show on Tar Sands deal.\u201d 13 Sept.\u00a01977, p.\u00a0A1.<\/p>\n
Carroll, William K., editor. Regime of Obstruction: How Corporate Power Blocks Energy Democracy<\/em>. Athabasca University Press, 2021.<\/p>\nCBC Morning Side. \u201cCBC Morning Side with Don Harron.\u201d Radio interview with Larry Pratt, Harold Millican, and John Barr. 13 Sept.\u00a01977.<\/p>\n
Chastko, Paul Anthony. Developing Alberta\u2019s Oil Sands: from Karl Clark to Kyoto<\/em>. Calgary, University of Calgary Press, 2004.<\/p>\nDavidson, Debra J., and Mike Gismondi. Challenging Legitimacy at the Precipice of Energy Calamity<\/em>. New York, Springer Science & Business Media, 2011.<\/p>\nEichhorn, Paul. \u201cFor The Record: Watching Canadian Reality.\u201d Take One: Film & Television in Canada<\/em>, no. 20, June 1998.<\/p>\nEidelberg, Ludwig. \u201cAn Introduction to the Study of Narcissistic Mortification.\u201d The Psychiatric Quarterly<\/em>, vol.\u00a031, 4 Oct.\u00a01957, pp.\u00a0595-597.<\/p>\nElton, David K., and Arthur M. Goddard. \u201cThe Conservative Takeover, 1971\u2013.\u201d Society and Politics in Alberta: Research Papers<\/em>, edited by C. Caldarola, Methuen, Toronto, 1979, pp.\u00a049-72.<\/p>\nEpp, Robert. \u201cThe Lougheed Government and the Media: News Management in the Alberta Political Environment.\u201d Canadian Journal of Communication<\/em>, vol.\u00a010, no. 2, 1984, pp.\u00a037-65. DOI: doi.org\/10.22230\/cjc.1983v10n2a338<\/a><\/p>\nFeldman, Seth. \u201cO Television Docudrama: The Tar Sands,\u201d Cine-Tracts<\/em>, 4 Spring-Summer, 1978, pp.\u00a071-76. Retrieved from https:\/\/library.brown.edu\/cds\/cinetracts\/CT04.pdf<\/a>.<\/p>\nFeldman, Seth. \u201cStyles of truth. Part One. Decoding the Documentary: Performance on Trial\u201d. CBC Ideas<\/em>, CBC Radio. Original airdate: 14 Dec.\u00a01982.<\/p>\nFeldman, Seth. \u201cCBC Docudrama-Since The Tar Sands: What\u2019s New?\u201d Cinema Canada<\/em>, vol.\u00a0142, 1987, pp.\u00a016-17.<\/p>\nFeldman, Seth. \u201cFootnote to Fact: The Docudrama.\u201d Film genre reader<\/em>, edited by Barry Keith Grant, University of Texas Press, 1986, pp.\u00a0344-369.<\/p>\nGilchrist, Mary. \u201dLougheed to Fight CBC in West\u201d, The Calgary Herald<\/em>, 14 Sept.\u00a01977, p.\u00a0A1.<\/p>\nGismondi, Mike, and Debra J. Davidson. \u201cImagining the Tar Sands 1880-1967 and Beyond.\u201d Imaginations: Journal of Cross-Cultural Image Studies<\/em>, vol.\u00a03, no. 32, 2012, pp.\u00a068-103. http:\/\/dx.doi.org\/10.17742\/IMAGE.sightoil.3-2.6<\/a>.<\/p>\nHall, Shannon. \u201cExxon Knew About Climate Change Almost 40 Years Ago.\u201d Scientific American<\/em>, 26 Oct.\u00a02015. Retrieved from: https:\/\/www.scientificamerican.com\/article\/exxon-knew-about-climate-change-almost-40-years-ago\/<\/a>.<\/p>\nHogarth, David. Documentary Television in Canada<\/em>. Montreal, McGill-Queen\u2019s University Press, 2002.<\/p>\nHume, Stephen. \u201cPremier Silent Over TV Drama.\u201d Edmonton Journal<\/em>, 13 Sept.1977, P.1.<\/p>\nHustak, Allan. Peter Lougheed: a Biography<\/em>. Toronto, McClelland and Stewart, 1979.<\/p>\nITV News. Evening News<\/em>. ITV News Edmonton, 13 Sept.\u00a01977.<\/p>\nJekanowski, Rachel Webb. \u201cFuelling the Nation: Imaginaries of Western Oil in Canadian Nontheatrical Film.\u201d Canadian Journal of Communication<\/em>, vol.\u00a043, no. 1, 2018, pp.\u00a0111-125.<\/p>\nLatour, Bruno. Pandora\u2019s Hope: Essays on the Reality of Science Studies<\/em>. Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1999.<\/p>\nLeMenager, Stephanie. Living Oil: Petroleum Culture in the American Century<\/em>. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2013.<\/p>\nLeQuesne, Theo. \u201cPetro-hegemony and the Matrix of Resistance: What can Standing Rock\u2019s Water Protectors Teach Us About Organizing for Climate Justice in the United States?\u201d Environmental Sociology<\/em>, vol.\u00a05, no. 2, 2019, pp.\u00a0188-206.<\/p>\nLewis, Robert. \u201cA Show of Power from King Peter.\u201d Maclean\u2019s<\/em>, 26 Nov.\u00a01979, pp 27-30.<\/p>\nLongley, Hereward. \u201cConflicting Interests: Development Politics and the Environmental Regulation of the Alberta Oil Sands Industry, 1970\u20131980.\u201d Environment and History<\/em>, vol.\u00a027, no.1, 2021, pp.\u00a097-125.<\/p>\nMacDonald, Monica. Recasting History: How CBC Television Has Shaped Canada\u2019s Past.<\/em> McGill-Queen\u2019s University Press, 2019.<\/p>\nMartin, Sandra. \u201cTelevision: Any Resemblance\u2026 is Purely Intentional.\u201d Maclean\u2019s<\/em>, 21 Feb.\u00a01977, pp.\u00a059-60.<\/p>\nMcKenzie-Brown, Peter. Bitumen: The People, Performance and Passions Behind Alberta\u2019s Oil Sands<\/em>. Peter McKenzie-Brown, 2017.<\/p>\nMiller, David, and Claire Harkins. \u201cCorporate Strategy, Corporate Capture: Food and Alcohol Industry Lobbying and Public Health.\u201d Critical Social Policy<\/em>, vol.\u00a030, no. 4, 2010, pp.\u00a0564-589.<\/p>\nMiller, Mary-Jane. Turn Up The Contrast: CBC Television Drama Since 1952<\/em>. UBC Press, 1987.<\/p>\nNelson, James. \u201cControversial Tar Sands Drama Goes Ahead on Monday,\u201d The Calgary Herald<\/em>, 9 Sept.\u00a01977, p.\u00a0C3.<\/p>\nPearson, Peter. \u201cThe Tar Sands.\u201d For the Record<\/em>, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Toronto. 12 Sept.\u00a01977.<\/p>\nPeters, John Durham. The Marvelous Clouds: Towards a Philosophy of Elemental Media<\/em>. Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2015.<\/p>\nPratt, Larry. The Tar Sands<\/em>. Edmonton, Hurtig, 1976.<\/p>\nRennie, Bradford James. Alberta Premiers of the Twentieth Century<\/em>. Regina, Canadian Plains Research Center, University of Regina, 2005.<\/p>\nSpragins, Nell. Interview by Peter McKenzie-Brown. The Oil Sands Oral History Project<\/em>, Petroleum History Society, June 7 2012. Retrieved from https:\/\/glenbow.ucalgary.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/Spragins_Nell.pdf<\/a>.<\/p>\n
\n
O<\/span>n September 12, 1977, after seven months of internal debate and multiple scheduling delays, CBC aired its 58-minute docudrama The Tar Sands<\/em> to an eagerly awaiting nation-wide audience of 1.1 million Canadians. Inspired by the academic book The Tar Sands<\/em> (1976) by University of Alberta political scientist Larry Pratt, CBC\u2019s loose adaptation presented a dramatized re-enactment of the political struggles surrounding Alberta\u2019s then Premier, Peter Lougheed, in negotiating and securing the Syncrude Canada Ltd.\u00a0agreement to develop Alberta\u2019s Athabasca bitumen sands. The docudrama, which combined actors playing real-life figures with composite characters, was part of CBC\u2019s For the Record<\/em> series, a collection of what CBC labelled \u201cjournalistic dramas\u201d with an objective of \u201cmaking complex news stories and political issues accessible to a mass audience\u201d (Martin 60). For The Record<\/em> promotional material described The Tar Sands<\/em> as:<\/p>\n \u201cExplosive, 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!\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n 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\u2019s 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 \u201cpublish\u201d The Tar Sands<\/em> docudrama.<\/p>\n The settlement helped to bury the docudrama deep in public memory, as it was removed from CBC\u2019s internal archive and made unavailable to staff, and remains so to this day.1<\/sup><\/a> Yet the show\u2019s 1977 broadcast and Lougheed\u2019s ensuing lawsuit and public controversy stands as a critical, though mostly forgotten, moment in the mediated history of Canada\u2019s bitumen sands.2<\/sup><\/a> Indeed, it is only recently that scholars such as Longley (2021) have begun critiquing Lougheed\u2019s legacy and\u2014much like Pratt (1976)\u2014questioning the corner Lougheed and his government backed themselves into. Excavating The Tar Sands<\/em> affords a unique opportunity to further expose fossil fuel\u2019s 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<\/em> Tar Sands<\/em> and its surrounding controversy from the tarry memory hole into which it was cast. It argues that while CBC\u2019s docudrama sought to dramatize and elevate Pratt\u2019s (1976) political critiques, Lougheed\u2019s litigious reaction quickly buried them, obfuscating the real possibility that The Tar Sands<\/em>\u2014while a work of fiction\u2014portrays the genesis of Alberta\u2019s corporate capture by foreign oil interests.3<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n S<\/span>cholars Debra Davidson and Mike Gismondi have traced the evolution of the tar sands\u2019 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<\/em> article with an analysis of the Great Canadian Oil Sands Company (GCOS, now Suncor) and the \u201clegitimacy work\u201d of images showcasing the immense machinery\u2014from draglines to bucketwheels\u2014involved in mining bitumen. Such images, they argue, \u201cbecame selling features to the public, symbolizing the enormity of challenges overcome\u201d (Gismondi and Davidson 2012). Author Chris Turner, in his well-researched history of Alberta\u2019s oil patch, identifies the start of what he calls the \u201cHigh Modern\u201d era as GCOS\u2019s 1967 bitumen plant opening ceremony (Turner 24). What Turner labels the beginning of oil\u2019s \u201cHigh Modern\u201d 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).<\/p>\n Ultimately, what Gismondi and Davidson map is not just the tar sands\u2019 construction, but the construction of its myth; a myth created, in part, from images which remain in public circulation\u2014from advertisements and books to museum exhibitions and education centres\u2014which represent and reconstruct the tar sands\u2019 past. Cultural myths, Roland Barthes reminds us, make history seem natural, yet their creation \u201cis constituted by the loss of the historical quality of things: in it, things lose the memory that they once were made of\u201d (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<\/em> suggests, silences occur at \u201cthe moment of fact creation (the making of archives<\/em>); the moment of fact retrieval (the making of narrative<\/em>); the moment of retrospective significance (the making of history<\/em> in the final instance)\u201d (1995, 26). The task at present is to bring back into focus one such absence from the hegemonic myth of Alberta\u2019s bitumen sands: CBC\u2019s docudrama The Tar Sands<\/em>. Acknowledging this \u201csilence\u201d\u2014and the political implications behind it\u2014affords 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\u2019s broadcast as an inflection point in the myth of the tar sands.<\/p>\n H<\/span>istory sediments in books, and while there is mention of The Tar Sands<\/em>, references are sporadic, disjointed, and often made in passing. For example, the docudrama lands just two sentences in Peter Foster\u2019s 1980 The Blue-Eyed Sheiks<\/em> noting, \u201cThe CBC subsequently produced a \u2018docudrama\u2019 based on the Syncrude crisis. Lougheed subsequently sued the CBC for a total of $2.75 million\u201d (99). Meanwhile, Syncrude\u2019s self-published book Syncrude Story: In our own words<\/em> briefly acknowledges the program (but not the broadcaster) noting: \u201cWhile [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\u201d (1990, 51). Paul Eichhorn, in an essay on the history of CBC\u2019s For The Record<\/em> series, gives a succinct nod to The Tar Sands<\/em> and writes that Welsh\u2019s portrayal was \u201cwidely known to be an unflattering portrait of Peter Lougheed\u201d (1998, 40). More recently Peter McKenzie-Brown notes that while Larry Pratt\u2019s book was \u201ccertainly a reasonable study. However, the docudrama was not. It went beyond the facts to portray the personalities involved\u2014including Frank Spragins and Peter Lougheed\u2014as foul-mouthed, cigar-chomping and conniving\u201d (2017, 145). While these characterizations certainly align with how Lougheed viewed the docudrama, they clash with other interpretations in the historical record.<\/p>\n Perhaps the most detailed documentation of The Tar Sands<\/em> comes from film scholar Seth Feldman, whose publications (1978, 1986, 1987) and CBC Ideas<\/em> episode (Feldman 1982) skillfully explore the history, tensions, and politics of the docudrama genre. Feldman viewed Lougheed\u2019s portrayal by actor Kenneth Welsh as \u201centirely sympathetic\u201d (1978, 73), and some years later reflected, \u201cThe Tar Sands was, if not tame, a fairly straightforward production [\u2026] There was nothing flamboyant about Kenneth Welsh\u2019s performance [\u2026] Pearson\u2019s style was similarly professional and well to the right of glitz\u201d (Feldman 1987, 16). Beyond Feldman, most academic references to The Tar Sands<\/em> 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\u2019s media strategy, described The Tar Sands<\/em> as a docudrama \u201cbased loosely on a book by Larry Pratt\u2014which portrayed Lougheed as a foul-mouthed dupe of the oil companies during the Syncrude negotiations\u201d (53). David Hogarth\u2019s (2002) study of documentary television in Canada affords The Tar Sands<\/em> 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<\/em> as a seminal moment in the mediated history of Alberta\u2019s bitumen sands. Meanwhile, Debra Davidson and Mike Gismondi (2011) dedicate a paragraph to the show and include an acknowledgment of the program\u2019s 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\u2019<\/em> current legacy; a legacy\u2014to use a phrase from Michel-Rolph Trouillot\u2014built on a \u201csilence\u201d (Trouillot 1995).<\/p>\n I<\/span>n 1977, when CBC aired The Tar Sands,<\/em> Imperial Oil\u2014a Canadian oil company controlled by Exxon and portrayed in The Tar Sands<\/em>\u2014was intensifying its oil sands play in Cold Lake, Alberta. Meanwhile, Exxon\u2019s Dr.\u00a0James Black, Scientific Advisor in the Products Research Division of Exxon Research & Engineering, had already told company management that summer \u201cthat the most likely manner in which mankind is influencing the global climate is through carbon dioxide release from the burning of fossil fuels\u201d (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<\/em>, its rediscovery<\/em> in the context of this article and my wider research project allows us to consider how the docudrama\u2014and the energetic political reaction which lead to its quashing\u2014make visible the power and grip of \u201cpetro-hegemony\u201d 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\u2014consent, coercion, and compliance\u2014which, together, serve to further fossil fuel companies\u2019 material and discursive objectives. Of particular interest for the case at hand is Alberta\u2019s 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\u2019s economic reliance upon the foreign-dominated fossil fuel industry which forces compliance through a structured dependency and addiction thus serving to maintain hegemony.<\/p>\n Understanding the reaction to The Tar Sands<\/em> requires us to first consider Alberta\u2019s dominant ideology and the myth surrounding Lougheed. R. W. Wright (1984) suggests that Alberta has come to operate primarily under a \u201chybrid\u201d corporatist ideology of \u201cmanagerial capitalism,\u201d a perspective which is \u201centrenched and virtually unopposed\u201d in the province (105). Related, and almost three decades later, Davidson and Gismondi (2011) suggest:<\/p>\n \u201cIn many ways, it was ideology, not economics, which ensured the tar sands\u2019 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.\u201d (170)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Thus, it was Conservative ideology\u2014under Lougheed\u2019s Premiership\u2014which ensured the tar sands were developed and never nationalized (Doern and Toner 35; Pratt 1976). Lougheed\u2019s Conservatism was grounded on a commitment to extract the maximum benefit out of the provinces\u2019 natural resources for its people by private industry. Steward summarises Lougheed\u2019s approach as follows:<\/p>\n \u201cLougheed 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.\u201d (1)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Kevin Taft (2017), in his stinging critique of oil\u2019s \u201cdeep state\u201d presence in Alberta, eulogises Lougheed as a Premier who fiercely fought for Alberta\u2019s interests and would bend the knee to no one. This portrayal is particularly noteworthy as Taft\u2019s book advances a \u201cdeep state\u201d 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\u2019s government was unmolested by corporate or political pressures which swayed subsequent Premiers. Taft\u2019s divine framing of Lougheed is consistent with his mythic position in Alberta lore as \u201cKing Peter\u201d (Lewis 27) of Camelot West. It is then perhaps understandable why The Tar Sands<\/em>\u2014both Pratt\u2019s and CBC\u2019s version\u2014was viewed within Alberta as an act of l\u00e8se-majest\u00e9<\/em>.<\/p>\n Lougheed\u2019s mythic status rests, at least partly, on the erasure of The Tar Sands<\/em> from public memory. The CBC\u2019s docudrama directly challenged the doubly articulated myths of Syncrude\u2019s founding and Lougheed\u2019s Premiership. To this end, The Tar Sands<\/em> 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\u2019s 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<\/em> is, \u201ca work of fiction constructed around certain known events\u201d based on \u201can imagined recreation of negotiations leading up to an agreement reached on February 3, 1975\u201d (Feldman 1978, 71). \u201cSince most of the agreement was worked out behind closed doors,\u201d Frum tells viewers: \u201cMuch of the film\u2019s dialogue and many of its scenes and characters are, of necessity, fiction\u201d (ibid).<\/p>\n Frum also briefly discusses the show\u2019s four main characters, differentiating between two characters with real-world counterparts and two composite characters. The two real-world characters were the show\u2019s 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\u2019s interests (Figure 4). The Tar Sands<\/em> 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 \u201cthe Alberta civil servants who argued against proceeding with the Athabasca tar sands development in the manner finally chosen\u201d (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 \u201coil company representative\u201d who is \u201ca composite of the many oil men involved in the real negotiations,\u201d 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\u2019s (1976) critical view of foreign interest squeezing the Albertan and Canadian government to their advantage.<\/p>\n The \u201creal life\u201d characters in The Tar Sands<\/em> are also caricatures. Both the on-screen Lougheed and Spragins are dramatic representations of the interpretation of certain historical events based on Pratt\u2019s book and supplemental research conducted by the show\u2019s 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\u2019 representation. For some in the industry such as John Barr, Head of Syncrude\u2019s Public Relations department, and Harold Millican, former Lougheed Chief of Staff and prominent oilman, Spragins was a \u201cgentleman\u201d and Moore\u2019s portrayal was unfair. Calgary-based petroleum industry historian Peter McKenzie Brown summed up the on-screen Frank Spragins as a \u201cfoul mouthed [\u2026] cigar chomping, American oilman\u201d (Spragins 2012, 22). In a 2012 interview conducted by McKenzie Brown for The Oil Sands Oral History Project<\/em>, Nell Spragins described her husband Frank\u2019s portrayal as, \u201cunbelievable, 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\u201d (ibid). Yet compared to Imperial Oil\u2019s fictional representative David Bromley, Frank Spragins\u2019 screen persona was not unlikeable. Larry Pratt, who was not involved in making CBC\u2019s adaptation of his book, said in a September 13, 1977 Canada-wide live radio interview on CBC Morning Side<\/em>: \u201cI didn\u2019t think that the portrayal of Mr.\u00a0Spragins was that unfair. But it is the case that they had to personify\u2014they had to personify the oil industry in one individual and, if it\u2019s unfair to Mr.\u00a0Spragins, that\u2019s unfortunate\u201d (CBC Morning Side, 1977).<\/p>\n Frank Spragins appears for the first time in The Tar Sands<\/em> about four minutes into the broadcast when \u201ctop executives\u201d from the American-controlled oil companies behind Syncrude Canada Ltd.\u00a0have 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\u2019s narrator\u2014famed NFB director and producer Donald Brittain\u2014provides context for the gathering and introduces the audience to the \u201cAmerican-controlled\u201d oil companies in the room and \u201cSyncrude\u2019s President Frank Spragins, a Mississippian by birth and in his words, \u2018A Canadian by choice\u2019\u201d (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\u2019 foreign origin and presumed foreign allegiance.<\/p>\n Frank Spragins never officially commented on the CBC broadcast, however Syncrude\u2019s head of Public Relations John Barr spoke to the media. Barr defended Lougheed\u2019s bargaining skills, called the show \u201cinaccurate,\u201d and said The Tar Sands<\/em> \u201cis best treated as a work of imagination, or, better, as a work of fantasy\u201d (Calgary Herald, 1977). As for why Syncrude did not react to The Tar Sands<\/em> in an official capacity, Barr said Syncrude \u201cdecided not to make any comment [\u2026] It would be like trying to refute Mein Kampf<\/em> \u2014you wouldn\u2019t know where to start\u201d (ibid). While Syncrude didn\u2019t know where to start, Premier Lougheed did: by calling his lawyer.<\/p>\n A<\/span>s Peter Lougheed publicly expressed his displeasure about The Tar Sands<\/em> during a news conference the morning after its September 12th<\/sup> broadcast, the wheels were already in motion for a defamation lawsuit. Lougheed\u2019s 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 \u201cthe name and address of the operator of your station\u201d (CBC ATIP A0062824_1-000759). Although the letter was delivered to CBC Edmonton, the Premier\u2019s real target was further east: the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation\u2019s national headquarters in Toronto, Ontario.<\/p>\n The Tar Sands<\/em> 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 \u201ca futile attempt to avoid legal repercussions\u201d (1978, 72). Nonetheless, the disclaimer helped the program get to air. But, publicly, the specifics of The Tar Sands\u2019<\/em> path to being broadcast by the CBC were kept a mystery. Indeed, even one of CBC\u2019s top brass seemed surprised about the show\u2019s airing as reported in The Calgary Herald:<\/em> John Hirsch, head of CBC-TV drama, told reporters and critics who saw a preview of the work Wednesday that God alone knows \u201cwho let it go on the air\u201d (Nelson 1977, C3). Publicly, the CBC was confident about The Tar Sands<\/em> with producer Ralph Thomas quoted at the pre-screening as saying \u201cno legal complications are expected\u201d (Zanger 1977, 26). However, Mel Hurtig, staunch Canadian nationalist and publisher of Larry Pratt\u2019s The Tar Sands<\/em>, thought differently. When Hurtig was asked how he thought Lougheed and Spragins would react to the show, he replied \u201cI suspect both of them are going to go through the roof\u201d (Waters 1977, A23). Perhaps unsurprisingly, with his political leanings, Hurtig stood behind the show, commenting \u201cIt is a very accurate reflection of the process of bargaining that occurred over the Syncrude plant\u201d (Calgary Herald 1977, A1) and went as far to say that the CBC had \u201cperformed a remarkable public service and has, in fact, been very courageous. It (the show) was unique, one of a kind. They\u2019ll never put on anything as tough\u201d (Toronto Star 1977, A69).<\/p>\n Hurtig, it should be noted, also had a cameo in The Tar Sands<\/em>. The brief scene shows Hurtig re-enacting a 1973 news conference where he revealed a leaked civil service report to the press. The report\u2014which plays a vital role in Pratt\u2019s 1976 book\u2014was 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\u2019s tar sands (Pratt 1976, 22; also see Longley 2021). Hurtig was supposedly given the confidential report\u2014titled \u201cThe Fort McMurray Tar Sands Strategy\u201d\u2014by an unnamed civil servant who had become frustrated with the Lougheed government for ignoring the report\u2019s recommendations (ibid).<\/p>\n Hurtig was correct: Lougheed went through the roof. Visibly angry at a September 13th<\/sup> press conference, Lougheed used a prepared statement to describe The Tar Sands<\/em> as \u201cimmoral,\u201d \u201coutrageous,\u201d and \u201cunfair,\u201d commenting:<\/p>\n \u201cIf 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\u2019s 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.\u201d (Albertan Edmonton Bureau 1977, A33)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Members of Lougheed\u2019s cabinet were equally disturbed by The Tar Sands<\/em>. Lougheed\u2019s Business Development Minister Bob Dowling said, \u201cIt was a bunch of garbage [\u2026] The writer has no regard for 5,000 people who have jobs up there (on the Syncrude project)\u201d (Gilchrist 1977, A1). Alberta\u2019s Solicitor-General Roy Farran told the Edmonton Journal<\/em> the program was \u201ca complete distortion of fact,\u201d and went on to make flippant comparisons with Nazi propaganda commenting, \u201cI think it was similar to Dr.\u00a0Goebbels at his worst\u201d (Hume 1977, P1). Minister of the Environment Dave Russel was more concise, simply calling it \u201ca load of crap\u201d (ITV News 1977). While there was Conservative consensus about the program, NDP leader Grant Notley believed Lougheed overreacted to the broadcast saying, \u201cQuite simply if one reads the Syncrude papers that is the story that was there\u201d (Thorne 1977, A6).<\/p>\n The docudrama\u2019s 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\u2019s (1976) book, The Tar Sands<\/em> 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\u2019s 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\u2019s \u201ctar sands\u201d was a testament to its standing and the accompanying politics it had attained. Feldman (1985) suggests:<\/p>\n \u201cThe 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.\u201d (349)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n If, as Feldman argues, watching a docudrama is a \u201cnarcissistic\u201d experience, for Lougheed it was likely closer to \u201cnarcissistic mortification\u201d (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. \u201cIf the unpleasure caused by a narcissistic mortification is too great,\u201d Eidelberg warns, \u201cthe individual eliminates it from his consciousness by repression or denial\u201d (1957, 596). While it is not possible to know how Lougheed\u2019s consciousness handled The Tar Sands<\/em>, Lougheed certainly ensured it was repressed from the Canadian consciousness.<\/p>\n Lougheed\u2019s 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\u2019s command, its dramatized depiction of events\u2014shown to a nation-wide audience\u2014directly disputed Lougheed\u2019s own carefully constructed media image. As one of Canada\u2019s 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, \u201con TV Lougheed strives for a role rather than a goal\u201d (Hustak 1979, 191). In this case, Lougheed\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n At the time, those seen criticizing the province\u2019s Conservative establishment were largely treated with contempt as Pratt himself acknowledges in The Tar Sands<\/em>: \u201cThe present political atmosphere in Alberta is such that criticism tends to be regarded as treasonous (\u2018alien forces,\u2019 to quote Premier Lougheed) and unpleasant facts are dismissed as ideological heresy\u201d (1976, 10). Pratt\u2019s 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\u2019t necessarily align with the province. However, Pratt\u2019s concerns were dismissed and shelved while his presence was met with hostility; the CBC docudrama based on Pratt\u2019s book would meet the same fate.<\/p>\n Immediately after the show aired, Lougheed, his cabinet, and indeed most critics directed their criticism towards The Tar Sands<\/em> docudrama format, describing it as \u201cunfair\u201d and \u201cunjust\u201d; as a medium to explore contemporary politics it was decried as heretical. Yet as Feldman rightly notes, \u201cthe images that result from both The Tar Sands<\/em> and The National<\/em> are simply two interpretations of the same role, a role that may loosely be described as \u201cthe public image of Peter Lougheed\u201d (Feldman 1978, 72). Both representations\u2014The Tar Sands<\/em> and The National<\/em>\u2014are 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<\/em>\u2014including news articles\u2014centred on the ethics and use of docudrama to explore the Syncrude Agreement. Consequently, discussions around the creeping power of foreign oil interests over Alberta\u2019s resources were largely sidelined in favour of debate around the docudrama\u2019s 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\u2019s sway over Alberta, Lougheed and his supporters drew upon discursive and legal means to quickly quash this heretical challenge to the dominant orthodoxy.<\/p>\n T<\/span>he initiation of a defamation lawsuit against CBC for The Tar Sands<\/em> sealed the show\u2019s fate as a media event destined to become repressed in the Canadian consciousness. Larry Pratt\u2019s 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<\/em>\u2014both Pratt\u2019s book and the banned CBC docudrama\u2014are important texts for their contrapuntal narratives challenging the dominant myths around Syncrude\u2019s founding, concessions won and lost, and the influence of corporate power. Reflecting on Lougheed\u2019s legacy, Foster (1980) suggests:<\/p>\n \u201cIt remains uncertain just how much of Alberta\u2019s modern-day wealth can be attributed to Lougheed\u2019s 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\u2019s fortune. In the eyes of many Albertans, it is Lougheed who has made the province the wealthiest and fastest growing in Canada.\u201d (43)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Forty years later, Foster\u2019s 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\u2019s (2017) \u201cdeep state\u201d thesis is correct and democratic institutions provincially in Alberta and federally have indeed been \u201ccaptured\u201d by the oil industry, who let them in and under what terms? Taft, as argued above, puts the blame squarely beyond Lougheed\u2019s premiership. But what if CBC\u2019s docudrama The Tar Sands<\/em> captures the origin story of the corporatization and exploitation of the Athabasca tar sands?<\/p>\n Ours is a political moment when the tar sands\u2019 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\u2019s book addressed the issue of climate change, while the environmental concerns expressed, though present, were minor. Yet Pratt\u2019s (1976) concerns about the influence of corporate power over government formed the docudrama\u2019s core: concerns about petro-hegemony\u2019s creep. Indeed, while works such as Taft (2017) are rightly critical of Alberta\u2019s current deep state oil links, the reaction to a now forty-four-year-old docudrama reveals concerns early in Alberta\u2019s synthetic energy history as to the consequences of a political culture and common sense underwritten by and intertwined with corporate oil interests.<\/p>\n In conclusion, if docudrama provides the building blocks for \u201cself recognition\u201d (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\u2014particularly in Alberta\u2014accepted this dogma; the docudrama was heretical. Yet, The Tar Sands<\/em> 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<\/em> aired forty-five years ago, for its first and only time.<\/p>\n This research was supported by an Insight Grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada under Grant 430-2018-1019.<\/p>\n Albertan Edmonton Bureau. \u201cLougheed\u2019s statement.\u201d Calgary Albertan<\/em>, 14 Sept.\u00a01977, p.\u00a0A33.<\/p>\n Barthes, Roland. Mythologies<\/em>. Translated by Annette Lavers, Hill and Wang, 1972.<\/p>\n Calgary Herald. \u201c\u2018Inaccurate,\u2019 says oilman of TV show on Tar Sands deal.\u201d 13 Sept.\u00a01977, p.\u00a0A1.<\/p>\n Carroll, William K., editor. Regime of Obstruction: How Corporate Power Blocks Energy Democracy<\/em>. 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Alberta Premiers of the Twentieth Century<\/em>. Regina, Canadian Plains Research Center, University of Regina, 2005.<\/p>\n Spragins, Nell. Interview by Peter McKenzie-Brown. The Oil Sands Oral History Project<\/em>, Petroleum History Society, June 7 2012. Retrieved from https:\/\/glenbow.ucalgary.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/Spragins_Nell.pdf<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n
Seeing The Tar Sands: Looking Back, Looking Forward<\/h2>\n
Traces of The Tar Sands<\/h2>\n
Myth and Rediscovery of The Tar Sands<\/em><\/h2>\n
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Defamation and the Drama of Docudrama<\/h2>\n
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Conclusion: Repression and Rediscovery<\/h2>\n
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Acknowledgements<\/h2>\n
Works Cited<\/h2>\n