Of course, the stereotype is mostly a product of marketing. Fewer than 100,000 of the ~2 million workers in Alberta are employed in oil and gas. Whereas 1.5 million of them are employed in services of some sort. 81% of Alberta is urban, which is in line with the Canadian average. The average Albertan is pretty much the same as the average Canadian, an underpaid urban service worker. With a small, well paid minority of workers who really mess up the stats.
I was in a bar stateside once and met another Canadian, we got to talking about our most and least favourite cities and I mentioned that I find Calgary to be my least favourite major city. She asked why and I told her I find it to be a bit fake, among other things. She asked me what I meant by fake and I told her, ‘In Calgary the Realtors wear cowboy hats on their billboard ads, have you ever seen a Realtor in Halifax wearing a Sou’Wester?’
Anyway, this is just to agree that the perception is not unearned, their governments and local marketers chose to present them this way.
I seem to remember coming across some crude as a kid, not like in the wild, but when I was with my dad on deliveries. This would have been back when the tar sands were still un/starting to be developed. The shit stinks like crazy if I remember right, and its gross to touch. Think I seen crude, tar sands, and refined oil all in the same place, point in time. Cant remember the context around why I was able to get that close to it, so, hell its so fuzzy, it might have even been a dream at this point
Smelly sounds about right. The Canadian stuff (or at least the tar sands stuff) is really high in sulpher, too, to the point where we’re a pretty big exporter of it as a refining byproduct. A big part of the reason they don’t give crude to just anybody is that it occasionally belches out a potentially toxic amount of hydrogen sulphide (H2S).
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