Alexander Earle Gray, affectionately known as Earle to all who knew him, passed away on April 2, 2024, at the age of 92. He was born on May 24, 1931, in Medicine Hat, Alberta. Earle was predeceased by his loving wife, Joan, and his brother Dennis. He is survived by his children Glen Gray, Mary Bellingham (nee Gray), Carol Gray, and Gordon Gray, as well as 10 grandchildren and 16 great-grandchildren.

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My full moniker is Alexander Earle Gray but I am best known by my middle name. I am said to be “without question the ‘dean’ of historians of Canadian oil,” by Graham D. Taylor, History Professor Emeritus, Trent University, Peterborough, Ontario, writing in Imperial Standard (page xii,) his epic history of Imperial Oil, the Canadian subsidiary of Exxon Mobil.

I was born in Medicine Hat in 1931, but grew up at Sechelt, a coastal village a short distance northwest of Vancouver, then accessible only by a six-hour steamship voyage or, rarely, by aircraft. While in high school, I began writing for the local newspaper and as a stringer for the Vancouver Sun. My first feature-length article appeared in the magazine section of the Sun in 1948. In 1949 and early 1950 I was a reporter with a weekly newspaper in West Vancouver, and then with the Vancouver Sun.

In 1950 I moved to Calgary where I worked nights in the sports department and days as assistant to the oil editor of the Albertan newspaper. In 1951 I was a writer for the precursor of Oilweek magazine, the leading trade journal of the Canadian petroleum industry. I diverted for one year from oil writing in 1953 to establish a weekly newspaper at Invemere, B.C., later acquired by the Black Press (no relation to Conrad Black) and published for 54 years before merging with another newspaper.

Moving back to Calgary, I was editor of Oilweek from 1955 to 1971 when I became Director of Public Affairs for Arctic Gas, a consortium of major Canadian and U.S. gas utilities, pipeline companies, and oil and gas producers that planned to pipeline natural gas from the Prudhoe Bay oil and gas field on Alaska’s northern Arctic coast—the continent’s largest, and Canada’s Mackenzie River Delta —to consumers across both counties. The need for such costly gas Arctic gas was later obviated by new technology (wells drilled vertically then horizontally through prolific gas bearing shale, and fractured by hydraulic pressure and chemicals. This made the United States the world’s largest oil and gas producer by 2019).

I am the author of seven published histories, six books about the Canadian petroleum industry, and a seventh book about an international uranium cartel in the 1970s, as well as a recipient of lifetime achievement awards from Petroleum History Society of Canada and the U.S. Petroleum History Institute.

On a personal note, Joan and I celebrated 65 years of marriage in September 2017. Joan passed away the following month.