He did more to save the great whales than probably any other individual in history. He was a civil rights activist one hundred years before it became fashionable. He laid the foundations for the modern petrochemical industry, yet showed a keen insight into waste control and pollution prevention. Abraham Gesner was by training a physician, a GP (a general practitioner, now usually called a Family Physician) who practiced in the little town of Parrsboro in Nova Scotia almost two centuries ago. Like many talented Canadians, his story is little known to most people.
Gesner was born into genteel poverty on May 2, 1797, to Henry and Sarah Gesner. Growing up on a farm in Cornwallis, Kings County, Nova Scotia, young Abraham’s education was limited, due to his family’s impoverished state. By age twenty-four, the young man’s situation was desperate. Without education and nearly bankrupt, he was in love with Harriet Webster, the daughter of a prosperous local physician, Dr. Isaac Webster. The young couple married, and Harriet’s father agreed to bail the young man out of debt, but only if Abraham would agree to go to England to study medicine. While medicine did not especially interest Gesner, he had no other choice and soon found himself in London studying at Guy’s and St. Bartholemew’s hospitals. His great intellectual loves were chemistry and geology, and in addition to his medical studies, Ges-ner attended lectures on these subjects. At age thirty he returned home to set up practice in Parrsboro.
This small village, located on the Bay of Fundy, was a geological treasure trove, and Gesner interspersed his medical practice with collecting expeditions and surveys of the coal- and fossil-rich cliffs of his new home.
Dr. Abraham Gesner, the founder of the modern petrochemical industry. NEW BRUNSWICK MUSEUM
During his wanderings, he made many friends among the Mi’kmaq in the province, and later proved to be a strong advocate for this people. Gesner was a great proponent of smallpox immunization among European and native peoples alike. He also proved to be a vocal critic of the dumping of fish offal and waste into the Bay of Fundy and later developed a technique for recycling this waste as fertilizer. In addition to ministering to local health needs, he would often liven up the isolated cabins of his clientele with the sound of his flute.
Eventually Gesner gave up his medical practice in Parrsboro, and such was his prestige in geology that in 1838 the government of New Brunswick hired him to do a geological survey of the province. By then he was acknowledged to be the greatest authority on this subject in Maritime Canada. The position also offered financial security to Gesner whose burgeoning offspring placed a large economic demand on the family.
While in New Brunswick, he set the groundwork for Canada’s first museum, the Saint John Museum, with the collection he began under the auspices of the Mechanics’ Institute. Gesner’s son was later to relate how all winter long his father’s Mi’kmaq guides lived and laboured in the attic of the family home, mounting specimens for the museum. In 1842 Gesner was honoured by Sir Charles Lyell, the great English geologist, with a request to guide him on his explorations of the Maritimes.
His years in New Brunswick were marred by a vicious and libelous letter campaign spearheaded by a jealous physician colleague, Dr. James Robb. In 1843 Gesner decided to leave the province and return to Corn-wallis, Nova Scotia. This move was no doubt fueled by his increasingly vociferous critics and by his father’s increasing age and inability to manage the family farm on his own.
Although setting early productivity records in Cornwallis by using a new fertilizer he developed from apple-processing waste, the disastrous harvest of 1848 finally forced him to sell the property. Nevertheless, Ges-ner’s prospects looked good, for while living in New Brunswick he had developed a process for extracting a high-quality illuminating gas, as well as an oil he called “kerosene,“ from Albertite ore. This mineral, similar to asphalt or bitumen, was named for its place of discovery, Albert County, New Brunswick.
The name kerosene derived from the Greek keros and elaion, meaning respectively “wax” and “oil.” Kerosene proved to be an excellent and cheap alternative to whale oil for lighting purposes. Gesner also invented a type of lantern suitable for burning his new discovery. Unintentionally, he had knocked the bottom out of the whale oil market and significantly reduced the slaughter of cetaceans. Many feel that the great whales would already be extinct but for his timely discovery.
In 1846, he did a geological survey of Prince Edward Island and also had great success lecturing on his findings. Gesner was a forceful and charismatic speaker, and audiences always flocked to hear him. Not forgetting medicine entirely, Gesner also advocated that a summer cholera outbreak in Charlottetown could be stemmed by piping a clean source of fresh water from nearby Grey’s Spring.
Moving back to Nova Scotia, Gesner became Commissioner of Indian Affairs. Appalled at the state of the Mi’kmaq nation, he organized a protest at the Nova Scotia legislature in 1849. Accompanied by ten Mi’kmaq chiefs in full regalia, he was greeted cordially by Lt. Governor Sir John Harvey. Little was accomplished by this rally except to damage Gesner’s reputation further in the eyes of the reactionary powers in Halifax.
Unfortunately, Gesner was never able to obtain much financial benefit from his discoveries, due to opposition from well-financed monopolies such as Nova Scotia’s General Mining Association (GMA). Several disastrous and expensive lawsuits were all decided against him, and he found himself in worse financial straits than ever. This was in spite of the fact that the city of Washington D.C. had adopted his Albertite gas to light the American capital. Gesner’s old nemesis, Dr. Robb, actually did an about face and supported his former rival’s claims, but to no avail. Ten years after Gesner’s proposal to gaslight the city of Saint John was turned down, the city hired an American company to accomplish that task.
In the face of these disappointments, Gesner decided to move to New York. The Americans had a greater appreciation for his talents than had his fellow Maritimers, and he was promptly snapped up by the newly formed Asphalt Mining and Kerosene Gas Company. Here he continued to expand on his work with kerosene, pioneering the modern petrochemical industry.
Living in Brooklyn, Gesner’s son later related how at church picnics his kindhearted father would pass barrels of food across the fence to starving urchins. In 1859, Dr. Gesner, at age sixty-two, lost his job with the Kerosene Gas Company due to a changeover in production techniques. He practiced medicine for a while in New York, then returned to Nova Scotia, working for a while on a fertilizer called “Artificial Guano,” and later tried his hand at gold prospecting. Still destitute, he applied to Dalhousie University in Halifax for a professorship of Chemistry and Natural History. Unfortunately, on the board of the college was one of the principals of the Halifax Gas Company, another company with which Gesner had feuded in the course of asserting his claims. His application was rejected and a Dr. Lawson from Toronto was offered the post.
Gesner died in April 1864. No mention was made in his obituary of the doctor’s many accomplishments, and he was buried in an unmarked grave in the Camp Hill Cemetery in Halifax. In 1933, Imperial Oil finally erected a monument commemorating this great Canadian, the neglected founder of the petroleum refining industry, a pioneering environmentalist and the saviour of the great whales.
George Burden
Handsome, intelligent and refined, sociopath Henry Moon conned and cheated his way across North America. NEW BRUNSWICK MUSEUM
