"Two Gentlemen of Verona," Bob Edwards' Summer Annual, 1920.
This cartoon addresses the sudden interest of the American multi-national Standard Oil of New Jersey, and its president John D. Rockefeller, in the oil of the Canadian North. The conspirator, or other "gentleman," showing Rockefeller the vast potential riches of the Mackenzie River basin is William Lyon Mackenzie King. He had been hired during World War I by Rockefeller to arbitrate an industrial dispute in Colorado and had just been elected head of the Liberal Party as Laurier's successor. The following year King formed a minority government, fulfilling the prophecy referred to in the cartoon's caption.
The anti-American and anti-Liberal bias of the cartoon suggests possible sympathy with the policies of the Conservative Minister of the Interior, Senator James Lougheed, who framed the regulations in 1920 governing the development of the oil fields in the North. Acting to a large degree upon the prompting of the British government and Admiralty to secure strategic supplies of oil for the Royal Navy in future wars, Lougheed had drafted new oil lands regulations to prevent foreign ownership and monopoly in the new fields. Ironically, the same Conservative government opened the southern fields to greater penetration of American capital in 1920 by permitting companies such as Standard Oil's main Canadian subsidiary, Imperial, and its Turner Valley affiliates, the Northwest Company and Royalite, to explore the Dominion forest reserves on the west boundary of the Turner Valley field.
As Western Canada's most biting political satirist, Bob Edwards displayed a persistently anti-federal bias dating back to editorials and cartoons in the Calgary Eye Opener in 1905. A strong critic of Canadian exploitation of the West, Edwards never let pass an opportunity to mention western grievances, such as the tariff freight rates and ownership of western natural resources.
