Review: On Oil by Don Gillmor

On Oil
By Don Gillmor
Biblioasis, April 2025, 144 pp., paperback: $15.95.

Canadian author Don Gillmor is known for his insightful, often satirical commentary on Canadian culture and history. In On Oil, he examines oil’s place in modern life from a largely North American and particularly Canadian perspective. Gillmor worked in the Alberta tar sands during the 1970s while earning his English degree, and his account of oil is peppered with vivid images, insights and characters from his time there. He also pulls back from this perspective to examine how oil has shaped societies, economies and geopolitics around the world.

On Oil is informative and engaging throughout, but the parts that resonate most with me come early on, when Gillmor recounts his time working in the tar sands. These passages read like scenes from a novel, rich with sensory detail and sharp, vivid portraits of the people around him. One of my favorite lines: “We were south of Calgary and I was ten storeys off the ground, a view of the Rockies to the west and limitless prairie to the east, farms and ranches laid out like a Mondrian painting, a glorious solitude.” Another: “Joe was recently divorced, his teenage daughter a runaway. He lived out of his truck, drunk by noon, out of his mind.”

These firsthand accounts are part of the book’s opening chapter, “Babylon,” a mix of memoir, cultural critique and richly detailed narrative journalism. The chapter provides an eye-opening glimpse into the daily lives of those who make their living producing “synthcrude,” as it’s known, from the tenacious bitumen that makes up the tar sands, which is about as far as you can get from the light, sweet crude of Texas or Saudi Arabia. It wonderfully captures the gritty realities of life on the rigs and the frenetic energy of oil boomtowns like those in Alberta.

In the next chapter, “Fin de Siècle,” Gillmor shifts from personal narrative to historical mode. Drawing on early climate science, internal oil industry research and government reports, he chronicles the mounting evidence for climate change and other ecological harms linked to fossil fuels, as well as attempts by the oil industry and other institutions to downplay these risks, even as their own research confirmed them. He also examines how media coverage, grassroots activism and high-profile crises like the Exxon Valdez oil spill helped push environmental concerns into the public consciousness. His tone is restrained throughout; he lets the historical evidence speak for itself.

Gillmor goes on to examine how fossil fuel interests have captured political power and reshaped public opinion. In “The Battle Begins,” he describes how, in the ‘80s, oil dependency was rebranded as freedom, as oil and other corporate interests leveraged populist rhetoric to sway public opinion and promote policies that eroded environmental protections and democratic principles. The aptly titled “Through the Looking-Glass” examines how oil-funded governments attempted to change language in order to suppress dissent and reframe resource extraction as an act of patriotism. “Shifting Sands” uncovers the practical consequences of this narrative for the Canadian tar sands, with their enormous energy demands, staggering water usage that threatens regional watersheds, unsustainable financial model propped up by billions in public subsidies, and a toxic legacy that will take centuries to remediate.

“The Fracking Revolution” and “Orphan in the Storm” shine much-needed light on the troubling state of America’s tight-oil boom and the growing problem of orphan wells in Alberta, respectively. American tight-oil production has caused grave damage to the environment and public health and isn’t economically viable without the cheap credit that has thus far artificially propped it up. Orphan wells, or those left behind when the companies that drilled and produced them go bankrupt, also present a significant environmental threat, and the costs of cleaning them up, which could ultimately run into the billions, often fall to taxpayers.

“Long after it’s no longer fuelling our lives,” writes Gillmor, “oil will remain a part of us. Evidence of its comforting, violent reign will be spread across the world for generations.”

In its remaining chapters, the book takes equally compelling looks at oil’s formative influence on American identity and political culture, the role of evangelical Christianity in shaping modern fossil fuel politics and the global “resource curse.” The latter is the tendency of oil and other resource wealth to fuel corruption, inequality and authoritarianism in countries with the good and ill fortune to possess substantial reserves.

Gillmor closes on a hopeful note. Citing the growing adoption of renewable energy and electric vehicles around the world, along with the strong economic incentives driving the shift to green energy, he suggests that we’re steadily moving toward a sustainable energy future. These are indeed good signs. Let’s hope Gillmor’s optimism proves well-founded.