I worked for Jim from 1980-1990 as the geologist in what then was a 5 to 10 person company.  Those were volatile times in the Canadian oil patch, with price fluctuations and new federal regulations that chased many companies out of the country.  He was without a doubt the toughest boss I ever had.  We shared the pain (personal to him as sole owner) of a dry hole, and the exhilaration of smelling oil in the core sample as it was pulled to the drilling floor.  His demands were excruciating, requiring long hours, short vacations, and an attention to detail that was impossible to tolerate at times.  We had no formal meetings, only technical sessions over hand drawn maps that had better be accurate or there was hell to pay.  He’d continue to ask questions about every point on the map, until he’d find something I couldn’t answer, so I’d have to retreat, do my research or calculations, and return.  We got into shouting matches at times over interpretations or even conversion factors to metric measurements.  (I threw my calculator across the room at him for that one). You had to take the insults with humor: “I found more oil under my CAR than you’ll ever find!”… or “that boy couldn’t find oil in a REfinery!”

Then the next morning there’d be a pair of his season tickets to the Flames game on my desk and a fatherly conversation about my young family and new home.  His intolerance for incomplete work was painful, but his booming laugh and Oklahoma expressions broke the cloud.  Christmas parties at the “country club” were always memorable events for a small company, and celebrations in the Eau Claire penthouse will always be remembered.   I drove an old Volvo with a broken passenger seat for part of the time, and once took him to the lab to see core from a successful well…on the way the seat collapsed, leaving him fully reclined for the 20 minutes to our destination.  That booming laugh of his probably could be heard for blocks, and we both were crying with laughter as we went through the lab lobby. In all the years in that small company, through our ups and downs, dry holes and successes, Jim was blunt, direct, critical, and sometimes cruel, but never dishonest and always fair. I always knew where I stood with him, there was no deception.

I moved on to other companies and my own consulting work for the next 25 years, but the work ethic I developed with Jim as a taskmaster stayed with me and paid dividends. As a geology graduate from the 50’s, Jim could care less about sequence stratigraphy, or many other “modern” ideas.  “Just tell me about the rocks, son, the rocks!” “The core is your lie detector, don’t show me well logs without core!!”   Or my all time favorite and the one that shaped my work ethic for decades to follow: “I don’t pay you to LOOK for oil, I pay you to FIND IT”.

I met Jim and his son Mark for dinner a few years back and lamented that he hadn’t fulfilled his promise to me made in 1986.  I had to remind him that he had been reluctant to drill a well I recommended based on a risky interpretation of a certain piece of data.  He finally agreed in the end, but told me “if that well makes more than a balloon full of gas I’ll kiss your a** on Main Street!”.   The well was one of our best but I never met him on Main Street….He did buy dinner that evening though.   

Rest in Peace Jim..as you said when we last shook hands, we’ll be friends forever.

Mike Beattie

North Bay, Ontario