1947 - Oil and the Land Surveyor       Although the problem of recruiting new surveyors was undiminished, it received little attention and no specific action at the 1947 Annual Meeting. The topic of chief interest at that meeting was a proposal, which the meeting adopted, to amend the Alberta Surveys Act by authorizing the Director of Surveys to require that block corners in townsite subdivisions be additionally marked by reference posts where the Director considered this necessary to facilitate the future re-establishment of block boundaries in the event of the posts at the corners becoming lost or destroyed. This action was stimulated by the wholesale loss of posts which usually occurred as a result of contractors' grading operations in the large-scale housing developments which had recently become a feature of the urban scene in the larger cities. The Act was subsequently amended accordingly, but it appears that this method of preserving the positions of block corners was little used. The meeting also went on record as being of the opinion that more frequent inspections of surveys were desirable. The members also passed a resolution stating that much haphazard and uneconomical development of land was evident and that since there existed a widespread need for the sound and orderly planning of urban growth, the provincial government was urged to step up its town planning advisory services and aid the municipalities in preparing and administering suitable planning controls. The first of these laudable suggestions brought forth no early results, but in 1948 the Association learned that the Town Planning Act was being strengthened in certain respects and that the staff of the Town Planning Branch, then combined with the Surveys Branch, had been increased. What brought this about was not so much the Association's exhortation as a momentous event that occurred soon after the 1947 meeting, which not only stimulated town planning activity but also had effects that soon jolted the land surveying profession out of the unprogressive rut from which it had ineffectually been trying to remove itself during the preceding decade. That event was the discovery of the Leduc oilfield in March, 1947, which, along with later discoveries of other major fields, opened up a vast new sphere of work for land surveyors and precipitated a rapid growth of demand for surveys in more familiar fields such as townsite subdivision. Between 1947 and 1957, the oil industry's capital investment on exploration and development in Alberta averaged nearly $150,000,000.00 annually. Edmonton became the major servicing centre and Calgary the principal administrative centre for these new developments, both soon becoming the fastest growing cities in Canada, with Edmonton almost doubling its 1946 population figure of 113,000 during the succeeding ten years. But in 1947, the land surveying profession was far from ready to cope with the demands which these phenomena were to impose upon it, and it was not until four years later, when the provincial government took action to ease entry into several of the professions, that the Association began to respond to the survey needs of the province's new industrial era. Not that it was any more unprepared in that respect than most other organizations; other professions, as well as provincial and municipal governmental agencies and many private corporations, were caught napping by the events of 1947, and the rapidity with which development and change subsequently took place in the economy of the province made it as difficult for them to adjust themselves to the situation as it was for the Association to do so.   Back - 1946 - Beyond Capacity Forward - 1948 - New Members