1914 - "The Hoodooed Year"       In January of 1914, twenty-nine members were present at the Annual Meeting to commiserate with one another about the hard times that had descended upon them. In his presidential address, Mr. Charlesworth said “the thirteenth year of the present century has been referred to by many as the hoodooed year, and doubtless the members of this Association have all had a close acquaintance with the hoodoo. The decline in activity which occurred last year is due, not to local conditions, but to conditions which are worldwide, and I am sure we all have the utmost faith in the future right here in Edmonton.” From this distance, that sounds a lot like whistling in the dark and trying to cast the blame for the collapse of local foolishness on the machinations of the international bankers or somebody else who had nothing to do with it; for there is no doubt that the townsite land boom was an unnecessary and irrational phenomenon based on little more than the over-optimism stirred up by speculators who were out to make a killing, and while it was all very well to proclaim the utmost faith in Edmonton’s future, it took nearly a whole generation before anything much happened to prove that that faith was justified. The report of the 1914 meeting contains several items of interest which may be briefly mentioned. A resolution was passed instructing the Secretary of take up with the proper authorities the question of reciprocity as to the examinations for Dominion and Alberta Land Surveyors. There was also some discussion of a reciprocal arrangement with the Manitoba and Saskatchewan Boards of Examiners “as to the purely mathematical parts of the examinations,” but this was dropped for the reasons that it would mean getting the Alberta Land Surveyors Act amended and out of the 96 members then registered, only two had been required to write any mathematical examination at the time of entry, the other 94 having been Dominion Land Surveyors before joining the Association. The Secretary-Treasurer reported that during 1913, 490 letters had been received and 648 sent out; it is hard to tell what could have caused this extraordinary volume of correspondence, but it will probably stand as an unbeaten record for many years to come. The financial statement showed that the Association, as evidence of its faith in the future of Edmonton, had invested all its surplus funds, totalling $3,550.00, in property mortgages; the reports of later years indicate that this was not a very good stroke of business. A letter was read from one of the Calgary members complaining at length about various clauses in the new subdivision regulations and asking the Association to have them modified or rescinded. Mr. R.H. Knight read a paper, which unfortunately was not included in the annual report, entitled “A tariff of charges for Alberta Land Surveyors." This apparently generated a little heat. A motion was made that a committee be appointed to prepare a minimum tariff of fees, to be adopted by by-law, which led Mr. Charlesworth to vacate the chair and speak against the motion on the ground that there was absolutely no statutory provision which gave the Association any right to establish such a tariff. Nevertheless, the motion was carried. Mr. Charlesworth, who had been president for two successive years, was succeeded in that office by Mr. R.W. Cautley, whose brother, Mr. R.H. Cautley, replaced him as secretary-treasurer and registrar. The new Council did not hold a meeting until December, 1914. By that time, the Kaiser’s War had broken out and that event caused the Council to adopt the following resolution: “That in view of the situation created by the war, the Association’s dinner this year be made a very simple one for which participating members shall pay $1.00 per head and that the Entertainment Committee be authorized to expend not more than $75.00 of the Association’s funds to meet any additional cost; and further that the Secretary-Treasurer be authorized to pay the North and South Alberta Patriotic Funds $100.00 each in the name of the Association.”   Back - 1912-1913 - The Urban Land Boom Forward - 1915 - A Family Rift