1929 - Things Were Looking Up       In 1929, these desultory conditions began to show signs of change. While the Association had been coasting along, business conditions had greatly improved and lack of activity on the part of the members themselves had for the time being become a thing of the past. In his presidential address, Mr. Townsend gave the Annual Meeting of 1929 a remarkably cheerful picture of the state of the provincial economy. "Canada is prosperous," he said, "as never before in her history, and in Alberta we have been blessed with the lion's share of that prosperity." Bank managers, railway presidents and insurance company directors were all predicting an era of unparalleled development, agriculture was thriving, the mining industry was booming, the construction business had reached a new peak of activity and all the land surveyors were busy. There was much to be thankful for and much more to come. That was at the beginning of the year when the bottom fell out of the stock market and many other human enterprises, and the Great Depression of the Dirty Thirties descended upon the land and -remained for seven lean years that made all previous hard times seem comparatively opulent. But in that happy month of January there were no clouds on the horizon, and the outlook for the surveying profession had never been better. For one thing, the arrangements for the transfer of the natural resources to the control of the provinces had just about jelled, and it was expected that this long-anticipated event would soon come to pass, and stimulate an increase in land surveying activities. The towns and cities of the province were growing at an accelerating rate, and the provincial government, having decided that a new Town Planning Act was needed, had paid the surveying profession the compliment of selecting one of its members, Mr. Horace Seymour, to draft the most progressive and up-to-date statute of that kind that could be devised. Mr. Seymour, who had been active in the province as a surveyor during the Association's earlier years, had gone off to foreign parts and had made a name for himself as a town planner at such places as Maracaibo, Venezuela, Toronto, Ontario, and Vancouver, B.C., and here he was, back in Alberta, ready to acquaint the members at this Annual Meeting with what was in store for their province. This development, too, was expected to help put the surveying profession back on its feet. Mr. Seymour, in his address to the meeting, was inclined to be cagey about the provisions of the new Act and he managed to create a certain amount of dismay among the members by telling them that since architects were the only professional men trained in design, they would have a large part to play in the future lay-out of subdivisions in Alberta, and that, of course, would revolutionize the subdivision industry. He also predicted that the intended uses of lots in new subdivisions would have to be indicated in advance and that each subdivision would have to be zoned accordingly at the time of registration. There would be a tentative approval stage and a final approval stage, and subdivisions would have to be laid out to fit the topography and not the section lines. It was evident that the subdivision industry was going to be revolutionized in more ways than one, and when the members were invited to ask questions upon the conclusion of Mr. Seymour's address, they were almost at a loss for words. At this meeting the members present were invited to study the anatomy of a 30-inch iron bar which a Calgary member had found and removed from a point at which the plan of survey indicated that a standard iron post had been planted. He wanted to know whether the use of such a post was in accordance with the provisions of the Act and the surveyor's oath on the plan, and if it was not, should disciplinary action be taken? The meeting discussed this problem at some length, and what finally emerged was a resolution to the effect that the government be requested to institute a system of inspection of surveys. This was the first occasion on which the word "inspection" appeared in the records of the Association and some of the members were not too happy about it. The question was re-opened later in the day, and a further resolution was adopted which asked the Council to consider the advisability of having all monuments established by surveyors officially recorded, regardless of whether or not a plan of survey was to be registered. The Council later held a referendum of the whole membership on this question, which resulted in a majority vote in support of the proposal contained in the resolution.   Back - 1926-1928 - Poor Attendance Forward - 1930 - Recording Monuments