S.A.I.T.
Authors: Ellison A.H. 
Published: March 2010

In this year of 1982, the Petroleum Department at the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology (S.A.I.T.), in Calgary, will graduate over 100 students. The cumulative total since 1960 must be nearly 800. Such an abundant supply of skilled people-women as well as men was not always available to industry which, until 1959, had to train its own personnel. Many good people rose through the ranks to become excellent "technicians" the term was ill-defined but training was often haphazard.

Despite its proximity to Canada's major oil fields, S.A.I.T. actually the Alberta government was a late-comer to the idea of training people for that industry. It took a nudge from Ryerson Institute in Toronto to stimulate interest. In 1957, Ryerson proposed a three-year course to "train engineering technicians for Canada's rapidly developing natural gas industry." In response, the Canadian Gas Association published a 12 page brochure to encourage Ontario high school students to join the gas industry.

Credit for making the first moves here in the heartland of Canadian oil and gas must go to the late Principal, Ernest Wood, when, in 1957, he approached the Canadian Petroleum Association with a proposal to "circularize our producing companies at management level to determine what sort of technicians for which they have the greatest need." Ernie Wood had, himself, risen through the ranks of the Electrical Department and appreciated adequate training of young people for industries.

The responding letter from C.P.A. was encouraging-signed, incidentally, by one J.S. Peach, now a popularizer of local history-confirming Mr. Wood's idea.

Vic Zubko, an engineer still with Sun Oil Company (now Suncor), recalls: Eight men from industry were contacted to form the first advisory group to help formulate a course. Where to turn? We had no precedence to guide us until finally the curriculum of the University of Wyoming impressed us as a good starting point."

Probably for this reason, S.A.I.T.'s first course in Petroleum Technology was heavily oriented toward engineering, and drilling, production, well servicing and laboratory procedures were to be mainstays. With an initial budget of $10,000 (1959 dollars!), there were to be no wild splurges for equipment. Again, Vic Zubko: "Fortunately those were the days when equipment remained fairly standardized for years at a time, so we scrounged cast-off bits and pieces from industry. They were worn, perhaps, but at least the students had similar models to those in industry." Six microscopes at $400 each were to be somehow shared by an expected 30 students.

With a framework established, subsequent meetings modified the objectives to include oil-field instruments, electric logging, and geological, drafting and "petroleum" education. The major participants now, besides the Advisory Committee, were Principal Wood, Vice-Principal W. "A1" Saunders (later to be principal at N.A.I.T.) and Deputy Minister of Education Swift.

By September of 1957-a decade after the great oil discovery at Leduc and in the full flush of a true oil boom-Mr. Wood and Mr. Saunders of the Institute were able to offer the Department of Education