Cross Border Gas Shopping

For an eight year old Canadian motoring with his family in the US in 1954, nothing highlighted the difference between the two countries like gas stations.

With my fascination for things electrical and mechanical, the gas pumps were an obvious focus. There was a far wider range of models than I'd seen in Western Canada. I see in hindsight that this was due to a greater number of owners, with each placing their own order for equipment.

Then there were the labels and brand names. In Alberta back then we had ESSO, Texaco, BA (British American), North Star and White Rose. I'm sure there were others I don't remember, but those are the five familiars.

Royalite came in during my childhood after the others, Shell later still. I remember seeing Shell signs in magazines and on tank cars for electric trains long before I first saw a Shell station in Alberta.

Going south of the border, I saw a host of new labels and logos. Texaco was in both countries, with its brands of Fire Chief (regular) and Sky Chief (premium). With the possible exception of BA, Texaco was the only one of the Canadian five I saw regularly in the northern US states.

Most remarkable by its absence was the ESSO sign or Imperial Oil, as we came to call it later. But Carter gas in the US had the same type of gas pumps in the same colors as ESSO. did in Canada. It was not one of the most frequent stations, but I saw enough--at least one or two a day--to have a vague sense of the familiar, even if the words were different.

More frequent was Crown Gasoline. Its glass lamp covers on top of the pumps were crown-shaped with two brands: White Crown and Red Crown. These pumps with their glass tops looked different from anything I'd seen. Yet my Dad told us that "Crown was the same company as ESSO in Canada" and that was the kind of station we went to if there was the chance. So I gained there realization there were things that were the same in some way even if they didn't look it.

In small towns where we filled up, there were gas stations with brands and labels I only saw once or twice. A few of these still had gravity pumps, where you worked a stick by hand to pump the gas up to a certain level in a lighted beaker, then let it run down the hose into your gas tank.

Adult Postscript

Now these stations would be convenience stores with gas sold under franchise. Then they were Ma and Pa type operations, small businesses trying to get a corner an a growing market. In Canada two decades earlier a number of small services stations were built up and sold off to Imperial Oil in 1932 by Charlie Trudeau. This transaction helped fund the education of Pierre Trudeau, who became fifteenth Canada's Prime Minister

Until the past quarter century, the US has been a more economically dispersed society than Canada. It had more types of gas stations, more railroads and, until the current crunch, more banks per capita. Even the buyups, mergers and acquisitions that had led to mega-companies and monopolies can still be blocked by US Anti-Trust laws.

Canada, by contrast, was built by monopolies: the Company of One Hundred Associates (New France), the Hudson's Bay and North West Companies, Canadian Pacific and CN Rail (now owned Stateside). There has been an acceptance of these enterprises that has been rationalized with nation building.

Citizens' groups may rail at the concentration of wealth and power in the energy sector and in Canada's Big Five chartered banks. Yet having fewer and better financed players may serve us in coming through the global economic crisis.

On both sides of the border, the number and types of gas stations now is a far cry from the kaleidoscope I saw in Montana and North Dakota in the early 1950's