Jack Weaver
Involvement in the Oil Industry
In 1945, Jack left the farm and came to town. He spent two years working at a grocery
store and then decided that he should look for work at the Husky Refinery. He went and
talked to Shorty Willard who was the Maintenance Foreman. Jack started work at the Husky
Refinery in April 1947. Pete Campbell was there at that time and Bill Williams was in
charge of production.
Jack started out in construction and after three or four months was put on process as
an operator's helper. He worked in various positions over the years; shift supervisor,
senior operator and then as maintenance assistant.
Recollections
Jack recalls that trucks couldn't get around the refinery. He remembers four or five
men carrying four inch pipe on their shoulders. They dug the footings for the building and
towers by hand.
He recalls when they were putting in a gas line in the winter. They would shovel the
snow, lay steam coils, dig to the frost and then repeat this.
He was on shiftwork and in the early days most nights were spent outside. He recalls
that the pipelines often would freeze-up. Looking back, he comments that he was one of the
biggest firesetters at the Refinery. There wasn't a lot of firefighting equipment then.
In the early days, everyone did a bit of everything. You were often a mechanic, a
firefighter or whatever was needed. At one point, he worked on the tank car loading rack
for two months. He remembers loading 32 cars of Bunker C a day, 16 on each side of the
rack. He vividly remembers a derailment that took place when the train came in too fast.
He believes it was one of the biggest. There was a new crew on the train because the other
crew was involved with the fair. In those days the trains brought the fair to town. To
clean up the spill, they shoveled by hand and filled four foot by six foot buckets. Then
they would winch them on a truck and empty. There were no bulldozers or front-end loaders.
