M.P. Bridgland

Morrison Parsons Bridgland was born at Toronto, Ontario on December 20, 1878 where he received his early education.

After graduation with honours from the University of Toronto in 1903 and, in company with A.O. Wheeler, he undertook the detailed survey of the Selkirk Range of the Rocky Mountains by photographic method of surveying which had been developed by Dr. Edouard Deville, the then Surveyor General of Canada.

Mr. Bridgland gave practically his whole active field of service to this class of surveying and became recognized as a world authority in photographic surveying. He was the author of several papers dealing with optics and the mathematical solution of problems pertaining to the application of photographic information translated at scale to the flat map.

In the summer of 1997, armed with a large-format camera, Jeanine Rhemtulla (then a graduate student in the Department of Renewable Resources at the University of Alberta) and Dr. Eric Higgs, (Associate Professor in the Dept. of Anthropology at the University of Alberta) returned to a dozen of Bridgland's survey stations and rephotographed the same views. Thus began a pilot project to examine how the vegetation in the Athabasca valley has changed over the last eighty years.

Mr. Bridgland lived in Calgary until his retirement in 1935. He died in Toronto on January 15, 1948. He was survived by his wife, Mary, and two sons, Charles and Edgar.