William Henry McGarvey

Of all the International Drillers, William H. McGarvey amassed the largest fortune. This Petrolia shop keeper would go on to become Canada’s first oil magnate and owner of the largest oil refinery in Europe.

William McGarvey in Austria

Video clip. An actor discusses William McGarvey's career as an International Driller.

Duration: 02:45 minutes - Transcription

Born in Huntingdon, Quebec in 1843, McGarvey was brought to Lambton County by his father in 1861 who set up shop as a local grocer. By 1866 William McGarvey had moved to Petrolia, where he quickly took an active role in civic politics, becoming the town’s first reeve in 1867 and then mayor in 1875. While McGarvey had moved to Petrolia to start a store like his father’s, he was quickly drawn to the oil industry. McGarvey bought a small oil field and began working as an operator and refiner.

After an unsuccessful foray into provincial politics, McGarvey headed a government survey into the mineral resources of Western Canada, gaining valuable experience in oil surveying - experience that would help make his fortune.

In 1881 McGarvey travelled to the Carpathian Foothills (now in modern-day Ukraine) to look for oil. This region was thought to be rich with oil, yet oil prospectors there had yet to produce any significant finds. McGarvey discovered the problem was not the oil fields themselves, it was the drilling methods being used. The Canadian pole-tool drilling method was better suited for the rocky conditions, but this technology was not common in Europe at the time. He contacted a number of local experts in Petrolia and acquired the necessary materials to build a pole-tool and using this Canadian-made technology he struck it rich.

McGarvey started a company called “the Galizische Karpathen Petroleum Aktien Gesellschaft” (the Galician Carpathians Petroleum Company). The Galician oil field quickly became one of the largest in the world, and McGarvey’s company grew alongside it. So many people flooded into the oil field that entirely new towns and villages sprang up in the area.

As McGarvey’s fortunes grew, so too did his social standing in Europe - soon he was receiving honours from Kaiser Franz Josef of Austria, advising the British Navy on oil technologies, even becoming part of the Austrian nobility after his daughter married Count Eberhard Friedrich Alexander Joseph Edward Graf von Zeppelin (nephew of the inventor of the zeppelin airship).

For McGarvey the First World War changed everything. Russian and Austrian forces clashed in Galicia, destroying much of McGarvey’s life work. His refinery town in Mariupol was obliterated by shelling, incursions of Italian forces threatened his refinery at Trieste. On top of the loss of his hard work, McGarvey was pained by conflict between his home country of Canada and Austria, the country that had become his home.

William McGarvey passed away on his 70th birthday in 1914. One can only imagine the conflict that he would have felt at the time of his death, watching his work crumble and knowing his daughters were married to men, one German the other Austrian, who were fighting the allies of his own homeland.

William McGarvey’s obituary read as follows:

“WM. H. MCGARVEY NOTED OIL EXPERT DIES AT VIENNA
Word was received here yesterday of the death at Vienna Austria of Wm. H. McGarvey, formerly of this city, and the first reeve of Petrolia. The deceased, who was born at Huntington Quebec in 1843, had extensive oil holdings in Cracow, and had been decorated by Emperor Franz Joseph of Austria, for distinguished service, for introducing Canadian oil drilling techniques into the monarchy. He has been called upon for advice by the British admiralty when the naval board had under consideration the introduction of oil for fuel for the navy.”