CRUDE
AWAKENING
Virden rolls with growing pains
and profits of oil boom
Western
by Judy Owen
Photos courtesy of Town of Virden
Cash Pumps:
Oil wells
spring up by
the hundreds
in southwest
Manitoba
fields.
44 MBiz November 2012
T
here are more than a few millionaires living
in and around Virden, but you'd be hard
pressed to pick them out of a crowd.
Sure, some are driving BMWs thanks to the area's
booming oil industry, but more often it's new pickup
trucks that are wheeling down the roads, and the
drivers aren't flashing jewelry and designer duds.
"We have a lot of people we know are wealthy, but
they're not obviously wealthy," Virden Mayor Jeff
McConnell says.
"They don't show it … there's lots of millionaires."
McConnell, a real estate lawyer, moved to Virden
from Winnipeg in 1994. He joined the town council
in 1998 and took the mayor's chair in 2010.
He's seen the oil industry become a major
contributor to the town's economy as oil prices
soared and extraction methods improved.
The boom took off about five years ago and its
impact has been positive and challenging at the
same time.
