Ted Rippon

(On the occasion of his nomination for the Outstanding Service Award, 1979)

Ted is well known by most practicing surveyors for his work as Surveyor to the Land Titles Office to which he brought a high standard of professionalism. His knowledge and ability to find practical solutions to problems won the respect of the legal profession and the public as well.

Ted was raised and received his early education in the Gibbons area of Alberta. On being honourably discharged from the R.C.A.F. in 1945 with the rank of Warrant Officer, he articled to Mr. R. McPhillips in Winnipeg.

In 1950, he returned to Alberta and worked on legal surveys on the Hobbema Indian Reserve for the Federal Department of Mines and Technical Surveys. From 1950 to 1957, he was employed by the Alberta Department of Highways during which time he wrote the qualifying examinations for Alberta and received his registration as an Alberta Land Surveyor on June 15, 1953 and was commissioned a Dominion Land Surveyor in 1955. He was appointed Surveyor to the N.A.L.R.D. on April 1, 1957, where he remained until 1976. From 1971 to 1976 he was also a member of the Provincial Planning Board.

Ted served a record term for the Association by being on Council from 1958-1967, President in 1966 and doubling as Secretary-Treasurer from 1959 to 1963. During this same period he was a member of the Board of Examiners for Alberta Land Surveyors from 1959 to 1974. He has been an active member of the Canadian Institute of Surveying and was Chairman of the Edmonton branch in 1969.

I personally wish to add a few thoughts about our indebtedness to Ted over the years. I first met Ted in the spring of 1950 when we were both working as surveyors in Surveys Branch under Jack Holloway. Ted had just arrived from Manitoba with a pretty wife and a very young family; she is still pretty but the family is not so young. Over the years we knew each other very well, and, like everyone who knows Ted, we got along well. I think Ted's main and enduring contribution to the welfare of the Association and the individual members reached a high point in his administrative duties in the Land Titles Office. He was able in a very warm, liberal, human way to translate dry statutes, regulations, red tape, bureaucracy and frustrations into a very living, flexible and compassionate system which although never deviating from the proper solution, it always seemed to come out in a more palatable fashion. His decisions were not rigid, but were based on the merits of the particular case under consideration. He is extremely well thought of by all members of the Association and by members of the legal profession and their assistants who always received excellent advice.

Ted was also a long-time member of the Provincial Planning Board and with his great good sense of fair play and reasonableness, his well thought out attitudes to appeals, he was highly respected by his colleagues on the Board and was believed by them to be a steadying influence on their decisions. The appellants always felt they would get a fair decision from any Board of which Ted was a part.

Ted always seems to have an unruffled personality, is unfazed by emergencies and pressures, and did a voluminous amount of work in the Land Titles Office. He was also extremely knowledgeable in all aspects of legislation, the Surveys Act, The Land Titles Act, Condominium Properties Act and his input was extremely valuable to various commissions which have been in existence for examining old legislation and proposing new concepts. His counsel was sought by the law profession and the Association. He worked hard, but was everything but a bureaucrat.

Ted is a many-sided individual. He was brought up on a farm and now he looks upon farming as a hobby and still puts in some long, hard days at seeding and harvesting time. He is very capable of looking after all types of machinery. He is a very practical personal and updated and remodelled his old family home. He mixes well at all Association meetings and to know him is to know someone quite special and we are all the richer for the experience.