1956 - New Grist for the Mill

    The 1956 Annual Meeting heard reports on these and other matters that the Council had dealt with and also managed to find some new grist for the Council's mill. The meeting passed a resolution disbanding the dormant committee on public relations and instructing the Council itself to take over that function and devise means of instilling a favourable image of the land surveying profession in the minds of the public. In conjunction with this, it was felt that some publicity eulogizing the role of land surveyors in the development of western Canada should be indulged in, particularly in view of the fact that the Association would soon be celebrating the fiftieth year of its existence. With that in view, the existing biographical committee was reconstituted as the Historical and Biographical Committee, and those members whom the Council might see fit to appoint to it were asked to undertake such research as might be desirable in order to maintain the traditions of the Association and inform the public about the pioneering efforts of the land surveyor and the social and economic importance of his activities. The meeting also asked that a standing committee on town planning be set up and that a special committee be appointed to cooperate, if necessary, with representatives of other organizations in a concerted effort to obtain more expeditious processing of plans by the Edmonton Land Titles Office, where understaffing and a rapidly growing volume of work had reduced operations to a level of inefficiency that was causing serious public concern.

The leading feature of this meeting was a paper on "A Proposed Triangulation Net for the City of Edmonton" which was presented by Mr. C.W. Youngs and had been prepared by him in collaboration with Mr. Ilmar Pals. This paper outlined a proposed survey scheme designed to overcome some of the problems that Edmonton and other cities had to face in attempting to utilize compilations of registered subdivision plans in the planning of future growth and new projects. The meeting instructed the Council to appoint a committee to investigate this scheme more fully and to consider the feasibility of applying similar survey methods in other parts of the province. Unfortunately, the unavailability of funds afterwards proved to be an obstacle to its implementation in the City of Edmonton, but an extensive triangulation network on the lines suggested by this paper, although with other objectives in mind, was established by the Surveys Branch throughout the eastern foothills of the Rockies during 1959-1961, Mr. Pals being in charge of the fieldwork.

During 1956, the Council had several projects in hand. Arrangements were made with the Director of Surveys and the Registrar of the Edmonton Land Titles Office to have pipeline and other right-of -way plans examined in the Surveys Branch before their submission to the Land Titles Office, which helped to reduce the backlog of unexamined plans awaiting registration. Negotiations with the Board of Industrial Relations were satisfactorily concluded. A committee on planning was set up, and its members met with provincial and district planning officials and managed to resolve some of the problems relating to subdivision approval procedures. The lack of basic survey data for the purpose of establishing wellsite locations in the unsubdivided northern areas of the province came to the fore as a new problem, and a committee of the Council prepared a brief on this subject which was sent to the Canadian Petroleum Association and provided a basis for subsequent arrangements whereby the provincial government undertook to establish horizontal and vertical control points in unsubdivided areas where new discoveries were made. An understanding was also reached with the Oil and Gas Conservation Board that wellsite surveys in unsubdivided territory should only be performed by registered Alberta Land Surveyors. A committee on practice was set up to find or standardize solutions for technical and operational problems that surveyors encountered in their work and for which insufficient guidance was provided by the Act and the instructions in the Manual. A study was made of the training given to survey students at the Calgary Institute of Technology and Art, with the result that the Council recommended and the Board of Examiners agreed that, in future, graduates of this course be allowed to serve a two-year period of articles including a minimum of eight months' field practice.

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