The oil fields of Petrolia proved to be a training ground for the international oil industry. Beginning in 1874 and continuing well into the next century, drillers from this small, Ontario town travelled all over the globe, opening and developing foreign oil fields. The so-called foreign drillers never numbered more than two hundred men at any one time. Yet they had a hand in establishing oil fields in Mexico, Venezuela, Brazil, Egypt, Rumania, India, Australia, Java, Sumatra, Italy, Poland, Germany, Russia and two dozen other places. This photograph shows two drillers from Petrolia at work in Cuba. One of the most notable fields opened by Petrolia drillers was Masidji-Salaiman, Persia, which established in 1908 a base for the economic power currently held by the Middle Eastern countries. The foreign drillers took the Canadian Rig and Canadian petroleum technology to every corner of the world.
The most illustrious of the foreign drillers was William H. McGarvey. He had come to Petrolia from QuΘbec in the early days of the town's development. Beginning as a merchant, McGarvey soon became an oil well operator and refiner. In 1875 he served as Mayor of Petrolia and later ran as candidate for the provincial legislature. In 1880 McGarvey was appointed head of a Dominion Government survey of the mineral resources of the Canadian West and, later the same year, he set out with several other Petrolians for Germany. Failing to find oil near Hanover, McGarvey moved to Galicia where enormous reservoirs were discovered and his business empire was founded. McGarvey's refinery in Trieste became the biggest in Europe and awards were bestowed upon him by a number of governments, including several decorations from Emperor Franz Josef of Austria. McGarvey's fortunes collapsed, however, at the beginning of World War I when the guns of Russia and Austria laid his refineries to ruins.
