Note: The Saskatchewan Oil and Gas Show in Weyburn recognizes Southeast Saskatchewan Legends at every edition of the biennial event. Six long-time employees of the southeast oil patch will be recognized at this year's gathering June 3 and 4.
WEYBURN — Mel Trobert was born in 1950 and raised on a farm near Tribune.
He soon found himself working on drilling rigs at a young age. That’s not surprising since, as the youngest of seven children, the probability of a Trobert working in the oil patch was pretty high. Nearly the entire family worked in the industry.
Trobert was one of those irrepressible people who lived 24 hours in every day. That is, except for the one time Doris Frehlick asked why his time card said 25 hours. He replied, “Must not have stopped for lunch”.
He worked at Bourassa’s in Radville, assembling equipment, and bought his first truck before he had a driver’s licence. He went to work on drilling rigs at age 15.
After a few years on the rigs, Trobert went to work for Flint, first as an equipment operator and then as a pipeline foreman. He spent about five years with Flint before going to work for his brother Joe’s company CEDA in Williston, N.D. Trobert spent about five years down south in the 1990s before coming to work for Ray Frehlick in the rat hole business.
A key but lesser-known component of drilling oilwells is done before the drilling rig even shows up. It’s done by the rat hole rig, which drills and installs the cellar and conductor pipe for the main hole, the mouse hole and the rat hole. Trobert entered the rat hole business in the 1980s.
“We leased a rig from the States to get going. It was a bucket rig, a water well rig, more or less,” he said in 2011.
They purchased their first screw rig in 1987.
Ray Frehlick, the owner of Prairie Mud and Prairie Petro-Chem, used to own the business. Trobert was working for Frehlick at the time.
“Buck Scheely said we should get into setting conductors,” Trobert said. They initially leased a rig from Scheely.
Trobert was partners with Frehlick for many years. He bought out his two partners in 2004 and 2008, becoming sole owner that year.
He also had two sideline businesses – M&N Rentals, an oilfield rental outfit, and Man Construction.
In 1998, Trobert married Donna Paterson. It was a package deal, with Donna’s kids Travis and Tasha as part of the package. They very much became his kids, too, and by 2005 Travis was working in the business, while Tasha joined in 2010. Donna retired from SaskTel in 2007 and joined Prairie Rathole that year. Then Tasha’s son Bryce came onboard in 2016.
Tasha said Trobert was “Saskatchewan’s original rat man”, to which Travis added, “And I’m rat boy”.
Prairie Rat Hole is one of only two rat hole operations in Saskatchewan. While based in Estevan, they covered the whole province and beyond.
Trobert said, “We’ve been in Cold Lake, Alberta. They told us, ‘You worked for us down there, you work for us up here.’”
The company was an early adopter of the Small Employer Certificate of Recognition program.
In 2013, the company expanded its fleet and moved into a new shop on the east side of Estevan.
If working 25 hours a day wasn’t enough, Trobert decided to take up farming in 2004, pouring his heart into Simmentals, highland cattle and more. He even bought his wife a miniature donkey for a birthday gift. It got to the point where Travis was largely running the rat hole operation and Trobert would be tooling about on the farm, putting in fences and everything else you could imagine a few head needed. Prairie Rat Hole staff often spent a good chunk of spring break up working on the farm.
Eventually Trobert and his wife sold the farm in 2018.
When he wasn’t working or farming, Trobert loved spending time with his grandchildren.
Trobert did not retire, but he did die in 2021.
Prairie Rat Hole continues to be run by Trobert’s son Travis and wife Donna. Tasha, her husband Jayson King and their son Bryce own and operate JK Containments out of Corning.
