If you're anything like me, you raise an eyebrow when you learn that oil companies once believed that Manitoulin Island was going to be the location of the next great oil and gas reserve. So much so, they were willing to commit millions of dollars and employ large numbers of men in the pursuit of this lucrative resource on a remote Northern Ontario island as far back as the mid-nineteenth century.

Their interest was sparked in 1847 when the Geological Survey of Canada noted the presence of petroleum-bearing shale on Manitoulin Island. Petroleum companies at that time were busy exploring for oil and gas in southern Ontario and successes there made them hungry for more. When they caught wind of the potential for oil on the island, their ambitions started to drift north.

By 1864, an oil company had started to inquire about drilling rights at a seepage it'd caught wind of near Wikwemikong. Others would soon follow. And it wasn't just established petroleum companies that were showing interest. Traders, politicians, businessmen and promoters in Canada and the US wanted to get in on the action. By 1865, leases had been issued for 16,000 acres in the area of Sheguiandah, West Bay and Providence Bay.

All of this was happening before Manitoulin had been opened to non-indigenous settlement, and politicians who were keen to see the island settled quickly feared these oil leases -- some of which covered land that would be going up for sale the following year -- would interfere with the agricultural potential of the island.

They needn't have worried. Exploration soon determined that although initial drilling efforts occasionally resulted in a gusher, that initial bounty couldn't be sustained. Millions of dollars were being invested to earn millions of dollars. If that wasn't going to happen then there was no point in drilling for oil on Manitoulin.

That initial interest waned only to surge again in the mid-1880s when a gusher at a site near Wikwemikong caught the attention of oil prospectors once again, but extensive explorations by several oil and gas companies ultimately yielded anemic results and, a decade interest had been revived, it once again waned.

Interest would ebb and flow over the course of the twentieth century. Oil prospectors would become convinced the oil was there. Occasionally they would be rewarded with a gushers, but those gushers continually failed to herald a sustainable supply. Over the decades efforts would periodically be renewed only to be abandoned.

Ultimately, Manitoulin wouldn't pan out as a major oil reserve but it wasn't for lack of trying.

Photo by Delfino Barboza on Unsplash