Our History
From a wooden rig and a steam engine to four generations of drillers. The same family, drilling the same county's water, for over a century.
William D. Hopper returns from Manitoba, where he'd been installing telephone lines for the provincial government. Figuring that soon everyone would have a telephone, he decided he'd better find something else to do.
He bought a Listowel Drill, a wooden drilling rig on four iron wheels, powered by its own steam engine, built by a man named Melrose in Listowel, Ontario. A Sawyer Massey steam engine pulled the drill, supplied it with steam, and hauled water.
The first well W.D. drilled was not a commercial job. He went on to drill eleven wells in 1915, at a price of $1.25 per foot, the first of them 90 feet deep.
Steam was smooth but slow to start, and hungry for wood and water. The steam engine was replaced by a Sawyer Massey gas tractor. The first gas deliveries came from Supertest Petroleum, by horse-drawn tanker.
A larger, self-propelled Cyclone Class C spudder was bought from Orrville, Ohio.
The machine was mounted on a Godferson truck. Not fancy, but moving speed jumped from 3 mph to about 30 mph. A special $10 licence was required to drive it on the road. It served until 1952, when a 22W Bucyrus Erie replaced it.
A Keystone 50 machine was purchased, with a second arriving around 1957. By then William's family was in the business, with sons Neil, James, and Durl all working the rigs. William retired in 1959, at age 69.
James and Neil converted the Bucyrus Erie 22W to rotary drilling. The conversion was a success, and the other Keystone rigs followed.
Neil's oldest son Ron started in the business, with younger brother Paul and Ron's wife Candace joining in 1989. For seven years Ron and Candace drilled wells together with a D40K Driltech, while brother-in-law Brian Gowan joined the pump installation crew in 1987.
James and Neil formed W.D. Hopper & Sons Ltd., while Durl formed Durl Hopper Ltd., which later moved to the Stratford area, where Durl's family (Shawn, Melissa, and Simon, along with James' son Doug) carry on drilling with Ingersoll Rand T-4, TH-60, and DR-24 dual rotary rigs.
W.D. Hopper & Sons Ltd. in Seaforth employs Neil's sons Ron and Paul, fourth-generation Phillip and Matthew (sons of Ron and Candace), and James' sons Scott and Tim, along with Natalie, Jesse Gowan, and Evan Wijnsma.
The company runs a D40K3-DH rig and a Massenza MI-28 rig, plus three pump-pulling units and two down hole video units. The pump installation business, begun in 1956, has grown into a sizable part of the company, installing Grundfos and Franklin submersible pumps across every application we drill.
Drilling conditions across Southern Ontario are as varied as ever: depths of 50 to 700 feet, bedrock in the west, Karst formations with caves, sinkholes, and breathing wells, and screened overburden wells through central Ontario. Domestic wells average 6 inches and 10–20 gpm; larger commercial and municipal wells run 8 to 14 inches and produce 500 to 1,500 gpm.
The industry has changed: far more regulation, paperwork, equipment, and training than when William started in 1915. We approach all of it as professionally as we can, knowing it's for the betterment of the industry and the protection of the water itself.
From the family album
