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Story

Flora McDonald

Contributor

Barbara Hillis and David Stauft

Map Location

Latitude: 4° 34' 43.025" S
Longitude: 81° 16' 20.95" W

Date

1900-1974

The Petrolia men and women who were working in Talara and Negritos, Peru in 1926. Flora McDonald is pictured in the back row, third from the right.

It was not only the men of Lambton County who whet their appetite for adventure in the international oil fields. When friends who managed the refinery in Talara, Peru came to visit the McDonald family in Petrolia, they informed Flora McDonald who had recently begun a career in teaching that they were in need of a teacher for the children of the International Drillers. McDonald jumped at the chance and applied for the position while her brother applied for a drilling contract in order to accompany his sister. They departed Petrolia on July 9th, 1923 and soon made friends with many of the people on board the ship. McDonald recounted her time spent on the ship in a memoir: "For once in my life I was popular, not because I suddenly became glamorous but because I was the only single girl on the boat and there were several young men who were going to Peru and Chile. The purser was very kind to me and I think he really felt sorry for me going to Talara."

Talara proved to be anything but a disappointment. McDonald met many Petrolians in the International Petroleum Company's drilling camp. She roomed with a nurse from Toronto and the two got along very well together. She earned $125 per month and saved enough to take a trip to Ecuador with friends during her three weeks' vacation. She also found that teaching the children came easily as most of them were very intelligent.

It was during her first year in Talara that McDonald met a young American geologist named Jacob Lauer Stauft, nicknamed Pete. Stauft spent most of his time in the field and so it was not until he was stationed in Negritos for a few weeks that the two saw more of each other. "Peter called me up for a date and that was that," wrote McDonald. They spent the next two years together until McDonald's contract was finished and she returned to Canada. When Stauft next received his vacation, the two met in New York City where they were married. They returned to Peru where they lived for the next nine years and had two children. Stauft became an assistant superintendent, a promotion which granted them a home with a large verandah, spacious rooms, and even a library, along with many servants.

Unfortunately, the happiness and ease of life that they found in Peru would not last. On March 1, 1934, Stauft and another engineer were inspecting a gas well which had been shut off for some time when one of the valves blew out, killing them both. McDonald was five months pregnant with their third child and was given ten days to pack up the family's possessions and accompany her husband's body back to America on the next boat leaving Peru. When asked how she got through such a terrible time, she responded simply, "[I]n this life you do what you have to do and I did." After burying her husband in his hometown of Pittsburgh, she returned to Petrolia. Eventually, she received a settlement from the oil company which allowed her to live a comfortable life until her death in 1974.

Barb Hillis, daughter of Flora McDonald who lived in Peru from 1923 to 1934