1910-1911 - The Birth of the ALSA       There is little information on record about the birth of the Alberta Land Surveyors’ Association, but it appears that when the Alberta Land Surveyors Act had been passed in 1910, the Dominion Land Surveyors then practising in the province immediately got together and organized the Association provided for by the terms of the Act. There was an unrecorded and apparently an unofficial meeting in the spring of 1910, but the first Annual General Meeting of the Association was held on the morning of January 17th, 1911, in the committee room of the Edmonton Builders Exchange, wherever that may have been. That meeting was attended by twenty members under the chairmanship of R.W. Cautley, D. and ALS The first item of business at that meeting seems to have been the sorting out of a difference of opinion between the provincial Attorney General and the federal Minister of Justice as to the admissibility of Dominion Land Surveyors to membership in the Association. The old professional jealousy between Dominion and provincial land surveyors was apparently simmering and was having its repercussions in higher places, as the following extracts from the minutes show: “Mr. Cautley was able to inform the meeting that the Deputy Attorney General, after consultation with the Hon. Mr. Mitchell (Attorney General), had definitely decided that any Dominion Land Surveyor resident in the Province on the 16th of December, 1910, was entitled to be registered under subsection 25(1) of the Act. “Mr. Cautley also read an adverse recommendation made by the Hon. Mr. Aylesworth, Minister of Justice, on complaint of the Surveyor General of Canada and communicated to the Lieutenant Governor of Alberta, with a view to demanding that the Act be changed or that it be vetoed.” Just what all the argument was about is rather obscure, but evidently there were some strong feelings on the subject. The first Annual Meeting, however, took the matter calmly, for the next paragraph of the minutes relates that upon motion of Mr. Cautley, seconded by Mr. Knight, it was agreed that this meeting do now adjourn to reconvene at the call of the chair, whereupon those present proceeded to elect the officers of the Association for the coming year. The first president so elected was Mr. William Pearce, a well-known surveyor and former Inspector of Dominion Lands who in 1875 had been appointed as one of the members of the original Board of Examiners for Dominion Land Surveyors. His pioneering work in land settlement and irrigation was outstanding and although he was even then of fairly advanced age, he remained for several years an active and prominent figure in the Alberta Land Surveyors' Association. Mr. L.C. Charlesworth, who was then provincial Director of Surveys, was elected Vice-President, and Mr. R.W. Cautley, Surveyor to the Edmonton Land Titles Office, who later made a name for himself as a member of the Alberta – British Columbia Boundary Commission, was elected Secretary-Treasurer and Registrar. The members of the Council were J.L. Cote, the first Alberta Land Surveyor to be appointed to the Canadian Senate, A.J. Latornell, City Engineer for Edmonton, A.P. Patrick, who carried on his private practice at Calgary until he was well past the age of ninety, R.H. Knight, Maurice Kimpe and B.F. Mitchell, all in private practice at Edmonton. With that and after passing a vote of thanks to the members of the provisional council for the good work done by them in organizing the Association, it was moved, seconded and carried, that this meeting do now adjourn until 8:00 p.m. this evening. What happened after 8:00 p.m. is not recorded, but no doubt a good time was had by all. That afternoon the newly-appointed Council met and devoted most of its time to the examination of applications for membership that has been received from a number of Dominion Land Surveyors. They also authorized the Secretary to invite several prominent Dominion Land Surveyors to apply for membership, among them Mr. P.R.A. Belanger, DLS, Q.L.S., and M.L.S., an Inspector of Surveys of Dominion Lands who, as it turned out, held some rigid views about his DLS status. Upon being invited to become an Alberta Land Surveyor, he exchanged some dignified correspondence with Mr. Cautley, turning down the invitation on the ground that because all Dominion Land Surveyors could not become members, neither would he. A couple of years later, he was elected as incoming president of the Dominion Land Surveyors’ Association, but he refused to take office because that Association had not accepted a proposal of his that only Dominion Land Surveyors who were not also provincial land surveyors should be admitted to membership in the DLS Association; this in spite of the fact that he himself held Quebec and Manitoba provincial commissions. Although Mr. Belanger’s attitude seems to have been unnecessarily extreme, it was typical of the umbrage taken by many Dominion Land Surveyors with regard to their status under provincial laws in Alberta and Saskatchewan. In his address to the annual dinner of the DLS Association in 1913, the Surveyor General, Dr. Deville, said “Dominion Land Surveyors had been put out of private business in the western provinces by the legislatures. That was, perhaps, unfair, but they had to put up with it because the provinces were within their rights.” Even so, all that a Dominion Land Surveyor had to do in order to qualify in either Alberta or Saskatchewan was to pass a very limited sort of final examination. Furthermore, the disgruntled Dominion Land Surveyors appear to have been seeking a one-way kind of reciprocity, for there was never any suggestion that the DLS Board of Examiners in turn should give reciprocal recognition to surveyors who held provincial commissions. The hard feelings aroused by this question hung around for a long time and it is only since the Second World War that they have finally died out. At the first Council meeting of 1911, the decision was made to impose a levy of $10.00 per member in addition to the annual membership fee to meet the costs of organizing the Association. This apparently more than served its purpose, for the records of the Council meetings of 1912 show that the Association by then had a sizable sum of money on hand and a special committee was set up to decide how it should be invested. After 1912, the levy was not imposed again until 1955. The 1911 Annual General Meeting continued after the Council had held its meeting on January 11th, but by that time the attendance had dropped to eleven members. This adjourned part of the meeting was brief. The Council reported that it had been unable to draft any by-laws in the short time available, and the meeting was adjourned to February 7th. By that time it was late in the evening and presumably those present had more convivial business on hand than the preparation of by-laws. The next day, five members of the Council met to draft a set of by-laws, a copy of which was sent to each member for study prior to the adjourned Annual Meeting of February 7th. On February 7th, thirteen members showed up, and took all day to adopt the by-laws and ratify the imposition of the $10.00 levy. Later in the year, the Council held two further meetings, dealing mainly with the admission of a number of new members.   Back - 1905 - The Birth of the Province Forward - 1912-1913 - The Urban Land Boom