1955 - A Break with Tradition

    The first two-day annual meeting, held at Calgary in 1955, with a social program for members' wives, was voted a success even by those who had been dubious about this break with tradition. The revised by-laws, including the new code of ethics and provision for the payment of an annual levy, were adopted, and a diversity of other topics got an ample airing and were assigned to the further attention of the incoming Council. The main benefit of this and subsequent annual meetings was that enough time was available for full discussion of any problems of concern to the members, and even though the discussions might be indecisive, they provided some fairly definite guidelines for the Council to follow in taking further action. This, in itself, was a healthy change from the older arrangements under which most actions had been initiated and followed through by the Council as need might arise, and the annual meeting had often been nothing much more than an occasion for the explanation and endorsement of the Council's activities.

However, the Council was still necessarily the executive arm of the organization, and during the remainder of the year it was kept busy with the problems that had been brought up at the annual meeting and with others that arose during the year. The matter of work-hours and overtime for survey fieldmen was further negotiated with the Board of Industrial Relations, arrangements were made for the retention of a legal advisor and for the nomination in advance of the annual meeting of a slate of officers representing the Council's selection of those members who were thought best fitted by experience and special interest or ability to manage the Association's affairs during the succeeding year. There were some fears that this might prove to be a means whereby the members of the Council could perpetuate themselves in office, but although the members at large subsequently tended to neglect their right to make other nominations either before or at the annual meeting, there were no indications that the Council had any desire to keep its membership static. During the next four years, the eight Council seats were filled by fifteen different members, and in 1960 only two of those elected in 1957, when this system of nomination came into effect, were still in office.

During 1955, the Council also initiated the presentation of engraved membership certificates to new members of the Association and formulated a resolution, which the 1956 Annual Meeting adopted, asking for the systematic inspection of legal surveys regardless of whether or not the existence of errors in fieldwork was suspected. This last proposal was never implemented on the basis suggested, but in subsequent years more frequent inspections were made by the Director of Surveys when the examination of plans or the findings of other surveyors indicated defects in the execution of fieldwork.

The 1955 meeting had also instructed the Council to investigate the prospects of getting the Act amended so as to restore the articling requirement for all candidates. After circulating a questionnaire to all the members and thus ascertaining that a large majority favoured this move, the Council submitted a brief to the government requesting that the Act be amended to require all candidates who had not been commissioned as land surveyors elsewhere in Canada to serve at least one year under ALS articles.

 

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