FORMER OILMAN IN CANADA

Press, Volume XCIV, Issue 28162, 28 December 1956, Page 9

FORMER OILMAN IN CANADA

THREE WEEK VISIT TO N.Z. (New Zealand Press Association) AUCKLAND, December 27. A Texas-born former oilman and cattle rancher, Colonel H. Snyder, in New Zealand for. a three-week tour of the Dominion, owns an 80-acre estate in the centre of a rich Alberta oilfield, but hopes there is no oil under his land. “With oil wells there’s too darn much noise and stink and excitement,” he said in Auckland today. “We’ve got a lovely home there and I’m darned if I’m going to go digging for oil under it.” Yet Colonel Snyder claims, grinning, that he is a poor man. “I went broke over a radiummining deal for the Canadian Government, and had to start all over again,” he said. Colonel Snyder became a Canadian citizen in 1938. He has packed a lot into his life. Shooting all over the world (he wrote a book on shooting three years ago) and exploring are his pastimes. He was made a fellow of the Royal Geographic Society after discovering a range of mountains in Canada’s far north. Mrs Snyder will go fishing at Taupo and her husband will go shooting in the South Island. But Colonel and Mrs Snyder are also going to hunt for three New Zealanders, who were stationed at Red Deer Training Camp, Alberta, during World War 11, and stayed with them at week-ends. “Now we’ve lost their names and addresses,” Colonel Snyder said. “I suppose it’s too much to hope we can find these fellows.”