Fonds F0679 - Dingman family fonds

Archibald Wayne Dingman, 1850-1936, was born in Ontario. He worked in the Pennsylvania, USA oil fields as a young man, and in the soap business in Toronto. He moved to Calgary ca. 1902, and in 1905 organized the Calgary Natural Gas Company. In 1908 the company drilled its first producing well, which was linked by pipeline to its first user, the Calgary Brewing and Malting Company, in 1910. Dingman had the original franchise to supply natural gas to Calgary. He created the Calgary Petroleum Products Company in 1912. The company made the first major naphtha-laden gas discovery in Alberta when it drilled the Dingman #1 well in Turner Valley. It blew in on May 14, 1914 and started a major oil boom in the province. Dingman organized the Highwood Petroleum Company in 1934, which later became part of the Highwood-Sarcee Oil Company. Dingman was inducted into the Canadian Petroleum Hall of Fame in 2005. Dingman and his wife, Ida, married in 1882, had two children, Corinne Curragh (Patteson), 1887-1978, and Claude Lane, 1894-1970. Corinne married Arthur Patteson in 1924. Claude, began to work in the oil business in 1916, and wrote many historical accounts of the petroleum industry. Dingman's nephew, Charles Willard Dingman, 1889-1946, came to Alberta in 1913 to work at Turner Valley. He subsequently had a long career in the oil business, with the provincial government and Home Oil.