The Ocean Ranger: Remaking the Promise of Oil

by Susan Dodd

Overview

Reflecting on Canada’s worst sea disaster since World War II, this chronicle captures the 1982 sinking of the oil rig Ocean Ranger, which took the entire crew of 84 men—including the author’s brother—down with it. The memory of this tragic event gradually faded into a sad story about a terrible storm, relegated to the “Extreme Weather” section of the news archives. Resurrecting this disaster from the realm of history, this study maps the sociopolitical processes of its aftermath, when power, money, and collective hopes for the future transformed a story of corporate indifference and betrayal of public trust into a “lesson learned” by a heroic industry. This book acts as a navigational resource for other disaster aftermaths—including that of the Deepwater Horizon in the Gulf of Mexico—as well as a call for vigilant government regulation of industry in all its forms.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781552664643
Publisher:	Fernwood Publishing
Publication date:	03/01/2012
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	192
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Susan Dodd is an assistant professor in the Foundation Year Program at the University of
King's College. She lives in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements vii

Preface: February 14-15, 1982 1

Introduction: The Promise of Oil... Broken and Remade 5

The Promise of Oil, Circa 1982 8

The Broken Promise 10

Gathering the Pieces in the Early Aftermath 13

Personal and Collective Trauma 19

1 "The" Ocean Ranger Story: The Royal Commission 29

The Work of a Public Inquiry 30

"For the Public" 33

The Authority to Tell the Story 34

Survival of the Fittest 35

Disastrously Designed Ballast Control and Untrained Workers 36

Making Sense of the Wreckage 39

Untrained Evacuation and Rescue Attenpts 41

The Socio-Political Work of the Report 43

Report Two and Industry Responses 45

"The" Ocean Ranger Story 50

2 The Families' Financial Settlements: The Costs of Closure 55

Settling Before the Year Was Out - "Amicably, Without Admitting Liability" 63

Ocean Ranger Claimants Committee-"on the back of her dead man" 66

Rolling the Dice - "Who were they to put a Price Figure on our sons' lives?" 74

Pricing the Priceless: False Closure - "We were a nuisance, a nuisance that made not one iota of difference" 83

To Punish, Deter and Vindicate Rights? - "At That Amount, you would have to say they got away with it" 87

3 Blood Money: Right, Responsibility and Stigma 91

Early Blood Feuds and Conflict Resolution-"Gifts to melt rage" 92

Medieval Feuds and Blood Prices-"Thirty pieces of silver" 95

Modern Law-"A pound of flesh" 99

Legitimation and Industrial Accidents - "To go to law for redress is to confess publicly that you have been wronged" 100

Blood Money and Closure 103

4 Commemorations: Giving Shape to Loss 109

Commemorative Activism: But Who Cares Now? 112

Memorial Service and Monument 112

"Atlantic Blue": Is That You? 115

Rig and February: "Memory and emotion, not history" 117

The Politics of Commemoration 132

5 Remaking the Promise of Oil: The Aftermath of the Ocean Ranger Disaster 135

Quasi-Judicial Inquiries and Their Reports 138

Mass Media and the Power to Buy "the News" 141

Electoral Politics - Ads, Leaflets, Platforms, Speeches and Election Results 142

The Threat of Lawsuits and Financial Settlements 143

Parliamentary Debate and Legislation 145

Commemorations and Monuments 146

Popular Art, Performances and Literary Works 147

The Power of Aftermath Revisions 148

6 Remaking the Promise of Liberal Capitalism: Legitimation Crisis and Working Through 150

Remembering Disaster: Writing Collective Trauma 152

Qualitative Distinctions Between Ways of Remembering 155

Recovering from Legitimation Crisis 160

Conclusion: The Promise of Oil? From the Ocean Ranger to the Deepwater Horizon 164

Select Bibliography 176

Index 190

Editorial Reviews

"This is an extraordinary book. Dodd's discussion of personal injury litigation and the role of monetary compensation, or 'blood money,' should be mandatory reading for all first-year law students."  —Eric Tucker, Osgoode Hall Law School, York University

From the Publisher