Known and used by Amerindian The First Nations long ago
discovered the oil sands outcrops along the banks of the
Athabasca River and used the bitumen they found as caulking for
their canoes. At the end of the 18th century, Robert Fitzsimmons
managed to separate the bitumen from the sand industrially and
sold his production for road surfacing and roofing. Amerindian
carrying a canoe © Musée McCord, M990.757.4 Bitumen seeping into
the Athabasca River In the 1880s, the Canadian government became
convinced of the economic potential of the Athabasca deposits,
predicted to become “one of the wonders of northern Canada,” and
commissioned the first geological survey of the oil sands. At
the time, it was thought that the bitumen came from subsurface
oil accumulations. Some two dozen wells were drilled between
1906 and 1917, but no oil was found. These efforts nonetheless
turned out to be fruitful — the exploratory drilling revealed
the presence of salt formations and a thriving salt extraction
industry developed, whic