1959 - The 50th

     At that meeting, the members discussed the proposed amendment and after making it evident that some differences of opinion existed as to how far the personal supervision requirement should be relaxed, handed the problem back to the Council for another try at a suitable amendment. Eventually, the Director of Surveys took this bull by the horns - as he was entitled to do, since he and not the Association had charge of the administration of that particular Act - and recommended to the government an amendment which was substantially the same as the Council had originally drafted. This amendment was passed by the Legislature in 1960, and the problem appears to have thus been satisfactorily solved.

The 1959 Annual Meeting, scheduled as the Association's fiftieth anniversary meeting, was not made an occasion for any special celebration, perhaps because there was some doubt about the actual date when the Association had officially come into existence; it depended on whether or not the unrecorded first meeting in 1910 should be counted as No. 1. At any rate, a record number of 66,members were in attendance at the 1959 meeting, and the occasion was marked by the election of Messrs. A.G. Stewart, W. Muir Edwards and J.F. Hamilton to life membership. Otherwise, except for the personal supervision question, no special problems or noteworthy new business arose, and the members were able to spend ample time on the pleasant task of reviewing, improving and finally adopting a revised tariff of fees that had been compiled by two committees of northern and southern surveyors in 1953.

During the rest of the year, Association affairs were not conspicuously active, but the volume of routine business requiring the attention of the Council and the Secretary maintained its steady growth, and the standing committees were kept normally busy. By this time, the general development of the province had begun to slow down a little and there had been some relaxation in the pressure of survey work. Established firms were still fairly busy, but there were fewer opportunities for new surveyors to gain a firm foothold in private practice. However, although some of the newer members had turned from land surveying to other lines of work, there were still no signs of any reduction in the intake of new members. During 1955 to 1959, an average number of nine new members were registered annually, and new pupils were entering into articles at about the same rate. In 1959, the register contained the names of 103 active members, 10 non-active members and 8 life members, and an annual net rate of about 4 per cent in membership growth seemed to be indicated for the years ahead.

The most notable development of 1959 was the deliverance by the Deputy Attorney General of an opinion on the law pertaining to water boundaries, which indicated that, notwithstanding the provisions of the Public Lands Act, the rules of the English common law still prevailed in Alberta and had been consistently upheld by the courts. This meant that the Department of Lands and Forests would have to reverse the principles by which its administrative actions in connection with riparian rights had been guided for many years. There was no little departmental concern over this because it was feared that past decisions based on those principles that were now declared to be erroneous might leave the Department open to lawsuits. A large meeting of senior government officials was held in December 1959, to consider the implications of the Deputy Attorney General's opinion, but the only conclusion that could be reached was that the Department of Lands and Forests and the Land Titles Offices and other government agencies concerned with boundary questions would have to re-adjust their administrative approach to the status of water boundaries and hope that nobody would sue them for anything they had done in the past.

That course was eventually followed, and even though all aspects of this vexatious and complicated question have not yet been finally resolved, the principles at least have been settled and most of the old difficulties that left the land surveyors in doubt about the definition of water boundaries have now been removed. The outcome of this affair was a matter of gratification for the members at the 1960 Annual Meeting, and the Association felt that it could take some credit for having prompted the study of the question which had produced that result.

Back - 1958 - Water Boundary Struggles
Forward - 1960 - A Professional Outlook