Profile of Joe Little Sr.

Unless we're talking about Canadian politics, Joe Little Sr., isn't about to get too riled about anything nowadays . The easy-going hard-working nice guy next door gets along with 99 percent of the people he meets. With in the oilpatch, Little's reputation has been a long the lines of geophysical field services contractor, rather than a die-hard theoretician.

"I really love the people of the oilpatch and Calgary," Little said from his White Rock, B.C. residence during a recent telephone interview.

But terminating Little's love affair with Calgary would be totally out of the question. While Little and Tynn, his wife of 50 years live near daughter Joanne, their four sons work and live in Calgary. Although Little candidly says that his kids "grew up by the seat of their pants", they certainly learned a lot from their father's adventures and entrepreneurial pursuits.

Little was the second last of five children born on January 29, 1918 to a mechanic and his wife in Treherne – a small Manitoba town. His father and Uncle co-owned a large garage with auto agency that also sold farm implements. Childhood memories dwell on hard work. "As a youngster growing up in the dirty thirties, Little always had a part-time job since he was 12 years old. It was all blood and guts, working with the butcher in the slaughterhouse. Early hours at a bakery consumed Little, but at least it was warm. He held a wide variety of other jobs, including helping the local veterinarian with larger animals and working with a cattle buyer. At the age of 14, Little started a newspaper route for the Winnipeg Free Press, and later won his first trip away from home, to a YMCA camp, east of Kenora.

During the winter, Little was a helper on a firewood-sawing machine. "Now that was a dangerous job, because of the large saw, it was such a hit and miss affair," he recalls, "But it was dammed good pay, two bits a cord ."

Little quit high school at age 16 and spent two summers "riding the rods (freight trains )" along with hundreds of other hobos. "That was a great experience," he says. Little became acquainted with every divisional railroad cop between Moose Jaw and Ottawa; especially a miserable bugger called Capreal Red.

The highlight of working in the '30's, Little muses was harvest time in the Canadian prairies, "A buck a day and all you could eat, for stocking and associated jobs around the thrasher (no combines, then.)

One year I got to fire the steam engine with straw as the fuel. It was no easy job as we worked from 3:30 am until dark." Back then, it was typical to be woken up in the middle of the night to be fed, only after the horses were fed, watered and harnessed. All this was hard work was compensated by Saturday nights when everyone, Little reckons, "would go in to town, drink beer and ogle at the girls."

In 1937, Little got a steady job at a Winnipeg pork packing plant, starting at five dollars a week, " I was happy to get the job. If I stopped running , there was 12 other guys waiting to take my place. " A year later, his salary was boosted to $7.50 per week, still, with no over time pay. "Sometimes, we would get an order from Eaton's or The Bay for 1,000 pounds of sliced bacon around 5 PM on a Friday night. We worked until midnight to get the order out and then got two bits (25 cents) to buy our supper."

A year later, Little enlisted in the Canadian military, and received honorable discharge in October 1945. His six years of service included five years being stationed overseas. "There were no heroics, but a combat record that I am proud of," says Little.

Encouraged by the military, Little then finished off his high school matriculation within a few months, after which he enrolled at the University of Manitoba. His summer of 1946, was a particular memorable one. That's when Little and a fellow student friend took off in a 1930 Ford Model A, and cruised west for the summer. They stopped to work in Saskatoon, and at the Jasper Park Lodge where Bing Crosby was starring in a film. They spent a day at the Calgary Stampede and on to Ladner, B.C. to work on a farm. One particular moment cast a spell over Little and that's when he met his wife Tynn, on the pier at White Rock.

In the fall of 1948, he continued his studies at U.B.C. To attend his wedding in Ladner on November 25, Little hitchhiked from the university campus. Subsequently, he flunked every single Christmas exam that year.

During the summer of 1949, Little received his first taste of the geophysical industry, working as a rodman using an Alidade and plane table. Notables on the Canadian Exploration Co. crew, were owner Cece Cheshire, party chief Gordon Hess, operator Sandy Macdonald, and head driller Tom Somerville. At $125 a month, with no living allowance, Little set up binders after hours to help get by financially.

After graduating with his bachelor's of arts degree majoring in geology and physics and field school, Little came to Calgary and shopped around for a job. He received two offers and accepted a job with Shell, where he was hired on by Ted Rozsa, who was then Shell's chief geophysicist and was assigned to work for a Cochrane-based company crew. It was here at Shell that Little met individuals who would later become life-long associates – Ed Rutlege, Jim Hamilton, Lou Stevens, Wally Semkow, and Ken Thompson.

Over the next 50 years, Little and his family would move about 25 times. In 1952, Little was transferred to Shell's Saskatchewan division in Regina working under Norm Martison and developing friendships with Ben Veilleux, Andy Dame, John Stout, and Art Torode. After work, they shared many good times at the Hotel Saskatchewan – until their family houses were built, several months later.

At the time, Shell drilled many wells and Little was responsible for conducting the velocity surveys, which inevitably occurred during the middle of the night when it was raining . There was once when Little and a General Geophysical contractor named Chuck, had hooked up the hydrophone to a cable. When they failed to get a signal back to the recorder, they sent someone up to tap on the hydrophone. "But we forgot about him, he tapped so long that the hydrophone came loose and fell 8,000 feet down the well. The drillers weren't impressed," recalls Little.

In late 1954, Little was promoted from seismologist to party chief for a company crew that shot reflection and refraction surveys in the Foothills region. Fundamental interpretation was conducted in the field office. " Back then, we carried only two maps, basement and top Palezoic with 500 foot contour intervals, and we only had two geophones per channel." Eight to ten holes daily was considered good, "but I loved every minute of it. " This crew worked every valley from Waterton Park to south of Grande Prairie.

The crews always attracted a fair number of career-minded students. There was an incident with one crew, when one student and a non-swimming surveyor were caught by the rising water level of the North Saskatchewan River, east of Nordegg. The student decided to swim across for help, but ended up a couple of miles downstream and finally located a forest ranger. They returned with a boat to the scene and found the surveyor standing on top of the truck, with his arms loaded with bundles of lath. This brave student's name was David Strangway, who went on to being the president of the University of British Columbia during the 1990's, among other great endeavors.

According to Little, the Shell Foothills crews, were the first to shoot seismic in the Foothills Pre-Cambrian area behind the Lewis thrust. This work eventually lead to Shell's huge Waterton gas discovery.

After nine years as party chief, including a stint with an experimental crew in the St. Lawrence lowlands in Quebec, and seven teen years with Shell, Little then set up his own contract services. He partnered with Ed Rutlege and together they formed Canwest Geophysical in 1967. They ran a successful operation, which they later sold in 1969 to Olympic Geophysical of Houston, Texas . The management team was left intact, and when Olympic sold out to Dresser Industries in 1972, Little attempted retirement and moved to Sorrento, B.C.

Still, Little commuted to Calgary, consulting for Dresser. While in Sorrento, the Little family found themselves at wit's end with the children attending school in Sorrento, Salmon Arm and Kamloops. Just to keep the kids out of trouble, Little purchased a portable stud saw mill, "to teach them what work was all about. We cut the timber into railway ties, but soon ran out of good timber. This was not a financial success, but a good life. "

While consulting for Dresser, Little and his wife experienced their dream trip of a lifetime. The couple accompanied two other Dresser couples and a crew of four in a BAC-111 jet on a 10-day South American tour. "We were royally entertained in Bogota, Rio de Janeiro, Buenos Aries, and Lima," recalls Little, on an adventure that also took them to Cusco, Peru and by train across this interesting land.

In 1975, the Little family moved to Schwartz Bay, B.C. As another business lesson for his children, Little leased a hydroponics green house. They grew English cucumbers from 5,000 plants started from seed, and had about 1.5 acres under glass. This venture took a beating when heating oil prices jumped.

In 1978, Little started a Calgary-based geophysical crew called ALEXCO. Two years later, he resigned to co-found Capilano Geophysical. In 1981, Little and his wife began living six months every year in Yuma, Arizona.

Somehow, history has repeated itself as Little and his wife now reside in White Rock, just a skip away from where they first met at the pier decades ago. They spend their Canadian winters south in California. While Little is mum about what he plans to do next, one thing is certain. He would be willing to try his hand at anything at least once.

Notes from the Desk of Joe Little Sr.

"The Great Depression (Dirty Thirties) was a period of tough times for growing teenagers. Long, cold Manitoba winters were the norm with hockey being the main sports recreation. I was not a star player but always made the line up at various age levels in a great hockey town. I was able to utilize this talent on an army regimented hockey team in London, England and later on Shell's championship team in the first Petroleum Hockey League of the 1950-51 season."

"Overseas military service was spent in the United Kingdom, North Africa, Italy, France, Belgium, Germany and Holland. Major campaigns spent in Italy and Holland. Lucky to get through various skirmishes and battles physically unscathed and thankful I was a member of an armoured corp and felt reasonably safe in a tank. I did not envy the role of the infantry. As one can imagine there were numerous hilarious events over the six year period."

"In addition to previously mentioned geophysical industry activity, I was temporarily associated with Pacer Geophysical. To be brief, this company "imploded". With my first partner, Ed Rutledge at Canwest Geophysical, we accomplished a few firsts: 1. First D.F.5. III (0.5 inch tape) in Canada, 2. First digital Vibroseis recording system in Canada and, 3. First digital Correlator in North America D.C. 101".

"We as a family had many family moves from Dartmouth, N.S.; Drummondville, Que.; Regina, Edmonton – three times, Calgary – six times and Pincher Creek – three times. There was always a funny story or two to tell about every move.

Our friends always got a laugh out of a situation on one of the numerous Shell moves. We were able to rent a house in Pincher Creek. One particular move, my wife Tynn negotiated a rental house from a young doctor who had been transferred out of Pincher Creek. He had been building his house as funds became available. Consequently, the house was livable but no palace. The bathroom entry from the living room didn't have a door. If we wanted a door, the rent went up from $60 to $65 per month. We took it without the door.

Another event associated with the Shell moves happened during one of Tynn's five pregnancies. She started out with a doctor in Regina, then we moved to Edmonton, then Calgary and finally Pincher Creek. That was four doctors and four locations during one pregnancy. When the time came, she hailed a taxi at 3:00 am and went to the Pincher Creek Hospital only to find the door locked. Somehow, she got in and our next door neighbour – a doctor delivered the baby."