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Cecil Coutts (center) with local workers while in the employ of the Burmah Oil Company at the Yenangyuang oil fields between 1919 and 1934. -
Yenangyoung Oil Field, Burma (modern Myanmar).
Not all International Drillers made it home. While International Drillers faced a variety of exotic dangers, some men, like Cecil Coutts, simply passed away overseas.
Cecil Coutts, born March 2nd 1889 in Fletcher Ontario, left to work for the Burma Oil Company in the Yenangyauang Oil Fields (modern-day Myanmar) in 1919. Working for the Burma company until his untimely death in 1934, Coutts had a reputation of being well-known and well-liked amongst oil operatives throughout India.
When not in the international fields Coutts was a devoted family man with four daughters. In 1933 Coutts returned to his home in Kent County and paid to have his Burmese automobile brought back with him – a local paper noted that the car’s foreign license plates attracted considerable attention.
In 1934, just before his daughter Naomi planned to visit him in Burma, Coutts passed away without warning. The family received a cable message simply stating that he had died suddenly. Coutts was laid to rest at the age of 45.
In 2010 in conjunction with the Oil Museum of Canada’s 50th anniversary, the grandson of Mr. Coutts donated a number of photos that belonged to his late grandfather.