1940-1942 - Difficult to Believe

    In 1939 the Second World War had broken out, but unlike the earlier unpleasantness of 1914-1918, it did not result in any extensive enlistment of Association-members in the armed forces. A majority of the members were in any case beyond enlistment age, nearly half still being members who had first become registered in 1911. Only two, Messrs. McCutcheon and Inkster, both of whom joined the RCAF, saw active service, while the rest remained on the home front and did their best to cope with the tremendous demands for survey work which were generated principally by wartime needs and military projects that materialized in Alberta and more northern areas, especially after the United States entered the war.

Nevertheless, although the members suddenly found themselves very busy, the Association as a body remained almost as inert during the first years of the war as it had been during the thirties. Nothing of note happened in Association affairs in 1940, except the presentation at the Annual Meeting of a paper entitled "The Coming of the Dominion Land Surveyor," by Mr. J.N. Wallace, which was subsequently published in the April, 1940, issue of The Canadian Surveyor and contained much interesting information and opinion on the early development of the western land survey system and the careers and capabilities of several of the more prominent surveyors who were associated with it in its infancy.

In 1941, the rationing of gasoline and tires for civilian use was instituted, which seriously hampered the mobility of land surveyors, and at the 1942 meeting, the members of the Association were glad to avail themselves of the good offices of the Institute which interceded to some effect with the authorities in Ottawa in that connection.

In 1942, it had become evident that the Red Army was not going to fold up under Hitler's onslaught and there was a growing conviction that the war would somehow be ultimately won, which gave rise to thoughts about ways and means of bringing veterans into the surveying profession as they returned to civil life. It was recognized that many men in the armed forces were getting training in survey technology and that this would attract some of them towards subsequent careers as land surveyors. It was felt that the Association should prepare itself to offer them every encouragement but, on the other hand, there was some fear that after the war the economy would sag as it had done after the first war and that the prospective need for many more surveyors at that time was doubtful. As the President of the Association put it as the 1942 meeting: "The past year has been more prosperous for the members of our profession than for many years previously. This activity arises largely from the vast expenditures of public funds occasioned by the war but, while taking advantage of it, the prudent man will reflect that such prosperity, founded as it is upon the destruction of wealth, cannot endure. A period of exhaustion will certainly follow these years of unusual exertion.

At the time, this seemed logical enough, and the severity of the Depression during the thirties had made it difficult for many people to believe that any noticeable prosperity could be long sustained in peacetime. However, it was obvious that the members of the Association were not getting any younger and that the profession ought to have an infusion of new blood as soon as trained men became available to enter it and, from that time on, the education and recruitment of new land surveyors became a matter of primary concern to the Association.

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