This is the seventh post in a series about the Great Acceleration as a framework and reconnaissance for Canadian environmental history. The posts in this series are cross-posted with Active History.
It is fundamentally about change; constant, rapid change. J. R. McNeill and Peter Engelke described the Great Acceleration, in part, as “what is certainly the most anomalous and unrepresentative period in the 200,000-year-long history of relations between our species and the biosphere.”1 The Great Acceleration appears to mark a true rupture, and if McNeill and Engelke’s predictions are right, a moment which does not last.2 What value then does centring this potentially ephemeral, exponentially unstable, and measurably unprecedented period bring to the development of a framework for Canadian environmental history? It provides perspective. The concept, applied as part of a frame for historical thinking, establishes a kind of exceptionalism of the present that leads to questions around how current conditions came about, what triggered the acceleration, and whether the future might look more like the past than the present. Equally exceptional is the level of personal access to technological resources enjoyed by those living in the Digital Age. Individuals, as well as institutions, rely daily on abundant and available technologies of measurement and administration that permeate our relationships with the physical world. Meteorological forecasts, regulations, maps, and statistical products (including those measuring the acceleration itself) exist as facts in our lives, making it easy to forget that they are interpretive tools.
In this context, a historical framework centred on the Great Acceleration must be grounded in a firm understanding of how systems, tools, and structures for knowing the environment have developed with reference to the acceleration. What is novel and what is a continuity with the past? Have developments in these systems come in response to the acceleration; are they made conscious of accelerating circumstances? Where can causal links be made to the acceleration and what is coincidental? As a point of departure for these inquiries in the environmental history of Canada, scholars might look to the Canada Lands Survey System as both a resource of pertinent information and a key, relevant subject for these historical questions.
As a repository of historical survey plans and surveyor’s notes, the Canada Lands Survey Records and other Canada Lands datasets represent a valuable and constantly evolving inventory (as of 2010 expanding by 2,000 new documents each year) of records capturing how a variety of lands have been viewed within the lens of rights-bearing parcels and the experiences of those completing the work on the ground.3 Moreover, barriers to accessing the information are minimal. The Canada Lands Survey System’s interface and services provide direct and easy access targeting a variety of current day needs for the community of Canada Lands Surveyors. This active role in the ongoing surveying of Canada Lands means that inquiring historians can easily and freely access detailed sources generated by historical and current surveying activities.
As a historical subject, the Canada Lands Survey System is addressed only thinly by existing literature. It was established in 1951 as an update to the preceding Dominion Lands Survey System (governed by the Dominion Lands Surveys Act which became inoperative when the Dominion Lands Act was replaced with the Territorial Lands Act the year prior).4 It is tempting to view the alignment between this date with the beginning of the acceleration as merely coincidental. One of the most comprehensive sources addressing the system, a handbook for the Canada Lands produced by Natural Resources Canada itself in 2010 called Surveys, Parcels and Tenure on Canada Lands provides little to challenge that conclusion, merely reporting the advent of the Canada Lands Surveys Act in 1951 with little further discussion of the reasons or inciting circumstances which triggered the change.5 Likewise, George Prudham, then Minister of Mines and Technical Surveys, described the Canada Lands Surveys Act as “entirely technical in nature” when he introduced the new act to the House of Commons.6 In fact, language indicating the mundane nature of this change abounds when it was first introduced and again when subsequent amendments were considered in later years.7 In the same discussions, however, the House Members demonstrate a keen awareness of being within a moment of distinct change. Minister Prudham’s statements when discussing the bill in the House of Commons recognized the need for update in light of changed conditions and reorganizations of government occurring at that time.8 The change of name from ‘Dominion’ to ‘Canada’ sparked heated debates that engaged members’ sense of this time and the legislation being passed within it as a historical point of transition for Canada, particularly detaching from Britain towards a more independent stance.9
None of this detracts from a clear sense at the time that this legislation was fundamentally a continuity with the previous surveying legislation and system for federal Crown lands. However, these points do appear to obscure the fact that this legislation and the post-1951 system presented real changes. Following the transfer of western federal Crown lands to provincial control in the 1930s, surveying of remaining Canada Lands had to contend with the participation of new provincial surveying partners and potential boundary disputes.10 Additionally, in the years following the passage of the Canada Lands Surveys Act, discussions around amendments to the legislation indicate an understanding that the federal surveying administration was leading the standards for high quality survey work, including influencing expectations for the growing community of provincial surveyors.11 Changes continued in subsequent decades in the face of the expansion of offshore resource development, the diversification of surveying contexts and technologies (including increased emphasis on marine, air, and satellite tools), and divesting roles to new territorial and non-government regulatory partners.12
Scholars have recognized for some time that the act of surveying – gridding lands to produce places – is a mechanism through which power is expressed.13 This mechanism of power has been a key tool in driving processes of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries including industrial development, colonization, and urbanization, which have contributed to the Great Acceleration.14 The surveying of Canada did not end with the transition to new legislation in 1951. In fact, for its part in the overall spectrum of surveying bodies and processes in Canada, the Canada Lands Survey System’s creation focused federal government surveying efforts into some of the areas at the forefront of environmental considerations and complexities in the age of the Great Acceleration: the arctic environment of Canada’s northern Territories, First Nations’ lands, National Parks, and the marine environments of Canada’s coastal waters.15 The surveying of these places in the era of the Great Acceleration is routine, regulated, and technical, but it is not clear that it should be considered mundane. Surveying remains an important technology of administration that is utilized to engage with land and environment (with considerations increasingly moving beyond pure economic development and settlement to encompass broader land management and conservation objectives in varying contexts).16 The administrators of the Canada Lands Survey System appear to recognize their own importance in the ongoing making of place in Canada with Surveys, Parcels and Tenure on Canada Lands acknowledging the ongoing frenetic pace of their survey work and expressing an understanding of the importance of surveying on Canada Lands as a mechanism for establishing rights in the interests of supporting economic viability and community well-being.17 There is a need for more systematic scholarly study of the developments in this system from 1951 to present; a period that is relatively obscure in the historical narrative in part, seemingly, due to an erroneous sense that developments in this period were mundane or unimpactful.18 These investigations would seek to reveal insightful lessons about how a core administrative institution has responded to the evolving conditions of the Great Acceleration, including the evolving needs and challenges present in administering and making knowable a variety of land contexts often at the forefront of present-day environmental issues.
The views expressed in this work are my own and are based on analysis of scholarly sources and publicly available information. This work does not utilize any information obtained as a consequence of my employment with, has not been endorsed by, and does not represent the views of the Government of Canada.
Notes
1. John Robert McNeill and Peter Engelke, The Great Acceleration: An Environmental History of the Anthropocene since 1945 (Harvard University Press, 2016), 4.
2. McNeill and Engelke, The Great Acceleration, 4–5, 41.
3. Dr. Brian Ballantyne, “Context,” in Surveys, Parcels and Tenure on Canada Lands, ed. Dr. Brian Ballantyne (Natural Resources Canada, 2010), 3, 5–6. DOI: https://doi.org/10.4095/288961.
4. Steve Rogers, “History of the Surveyor General Branch,” in Surveys, Parcels and Tenure on Canada Lands, ed. Dr. Brian Ballantyne (Natural Resources Canada, 2010), 24. DOI: https://doi.org/10.4095/288961; Canada. Parliament. House of Commons. Edited Hansard. 21st Parliament, 4th Session. 25 June 1951 (George Prudham) “Canada Lands Surveys Act,” Retrieved from LiPaD: The Linked Parliamentary Data Project website: https://www.lipad.ca/full/permalink/1653358/; see Beelen, K., Thijm, T. A., Cochrane, C., Halvemaan, K., Hirst, G., Kimmins, M., Lijbrink, S., Marx, M., Naderi, N., Rheault, L., Polyanovsky, R., and Whyte, T. (2017). “Digitization of the Canadian Parliamentary Debates.” Canadian Journal of Political Science, 50(3), 849–864. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0008423916001165 for further information on the LiPaD database.
5. Rogers, “History of the Surveyor General Branch,” in Surveys, Parcels and Tenure on Canada Lands, 24.
6. Canada. House of Commons. Edited Hansard. 21st Parliament, 4th Session. 25 June 1951 (George Prudham) “Canada Lands Surveys Act,” Retrieved from LiPaD: https://www.lipad.ca/full/permalink/1653358/.
7. Canada. Parliament. House of Commons. Edited Hansard. 21st Parliament, 4th Session. 5 June 1951 (Alphonse Fournier) “Business of the House,” Retrieved from LiPaD: The Linked Parliamentary Data Project website: https://www.lipad.ca/full/permalink/1645900/ identified the bill as one of several “non-contentious matters”; Canada. Parliament. House of Commons. Edited Hansard. 22nd Parliament, 3rd Session. 11 June 1956 (George Clyde Nowlan) “Canada Lands Surveys Act,” Retrieved from LiPaD: The Linked Parliamentary Data Project website: https://www.lipad.ca/full/permalink/1857509/ described an amending bill as something that “simply deals with the licensing of land surveyors under the act in question. It is therefore somewhat technical in its nature and is not one which requires any protracted debate”; Canada. Parliament. House of Commons. Edited Hansard. 27th Parliament, 1st Session. 6 December 1966 (Jean-Luc Pepin) “Canada Land Surveys Act,” Retrieved from LiPaD: The Linked Parliamentary Data Project website: https://www.lipad.ca/full/permalink/2454947 describes amendments as “a housekeeping type of bill” in response to questions and debate; Canada. Parliament. House of Commons. Edited Hansard. 30th Parliament, 2nd Session. 6 December 1976 (William Hillary (Bill) Clarke) “Government Expenditures Restraint Act,” Retrieved from LiPaD: The Linked Parliamentary Data Project website: https://www.lipad.ca/full/permalink/3062874/ referred to amendments to the Canada Land Surveys Act in the prior session as a housekeeping bill among others in a legislative program presented as lacking a firm direction.
8. Canada. House of Commons. Edited Hansard. 21st Parliament, 4th Session. 25 June 1951 (George Prudham) “Canada Lands Surveys Act,” Retrieved from LiPaD: https://www.lipad.ca/full/permalink/1653358/; Canada. Parliament. House of Commons. Edited Hansard. 21st Parliament, 5th Session. 8 November 1951 (George Prudham) “Canada Lands Surveys Act,” Retrieved from LiPaD: The Linked Parliamentary Data Project website: https://www.lipad.ca/full/permalink/1661242/.
9. Canada. Parliament. House of Commons. Edited Hansard. 21st Parliament, 5th Session. 8 November 1951 (Edmund Davie Fulton) “Canada Lands Surveys Act,” Retrieved from LiPaD: The Linked Parliamentary Data Project website: https://www.lipad.ca/full/permalink/1661245; Ibid., (Alfred Johnson Brooks) “Canada Lands Surveys Act,” Retrieved from LiPaD: https://www.lipad.ca/full/permalink/1661250; Ibid., (Donald MacInnis) “Canada Lands Surveys Act,” Retreived from LiPaD: https://www.lipad.ca/full/permalink/1661258 & https://www.lipad.ca/full/permalink/1661260; Ibid., (Louis Stephen St-Laurent) “Canada Lands Surveys Act,” Retreived from LiPaD: https://www.lipad.ca/full/permalink/1661272/; Ibid., (Major James William Coldwell) “Canada Lands Surveys Act,” Retreived from LiPaD: https://www.lipad.ca/full/permalink/1661278 & https://www.lipad.ca/full/permalink/1661280; Ibid., (George Prudham) “Canada Lands Surveys Act,” Retreived from LiPaD: https://www.lipad.ca/full/permalink/1661281.
10. Canada. House of Commons. Edited Hansard. 21st Parliament, 5th Session. 8 November 1951 (George Prudham) “Canada Lands Surveys Act,” Retrieved from LiPaD: https://www.lipad.ca/full/permalink/1661281/, https://www.lipad.ca/full/permalink/1663462/ & https://www.lipad.ca/full/permalink/1842313/ .
11. Canada. Parliament. House of Commons. Edited Hansard. 22nd Parliament, 3rd Session. 26 April 1956 (George Prudham) “Canada Lands Surveys Act,” Retrieved from LiPaD: The Linked Parliamentary Data Project website: https://www.lipad.ca/full/permalink/1842315/ & https://www.lipad.ca/full/permalink/1842329/.
12. Canada. Parliament. House of Commons. Edited Hansard. 30th Parliament, 2nd Session. 14 June 1977 (Maurice Dupras) “Canada Lands Surveys Act,” Retrieved from LiPaD: The Linked Parliamentary Data Project website: https://www.lipad.ca/full/permalink/3102514; Canada. Parliament. House of Commons. Edited Hansard. 36th Parliament, 1st Session. 6 May 1998 (Dave Chatters) “Canada Lands Surveyors Act,” Retrieved from LiPaD: The Linked Parliamentary Data Project website: https://www.lipad.ca/full/permalink/4087209
13. Kate Brown, “Gridded Lives: Why Kazakhstan and Montana Are Nearly the Same Place,” The American Historical Review 106, no. 1 (2001): 19, 22–23, https://doi.org/10.2307/2652223.
14. Brown, “Gridded Lives,” 27, 30–33.
15. Ballantyne, “Context,” in Surveys, Parcels and Tenure on Canada Lands, 3–4.
16. Ibid., 7–8.
17. Ballantyne, “Context,” in Surveys, Parcels and Tenure on Canada Lands, 1, 7–8; Gord Olsson, “First Nations Reserves,” in Surveys, Parcels and Tenure on Canada Lands, ed. Dr. Brian Ballantyne (Natural Resources Canada, 2010), 46-47. DOI: https://doi.org/10.4095/288961 outlines that 13,500 survey monuments were being established and 5,000km of boundaries were being surveyed yearly (presumably, as of the time of publication in 2010).
18. Surveys, Parcels and Tenure on Canada Lands provides an overview of current surveying realities across a variety of Canada Lands contexts. Its discussions focus on the current state of the system while referencing, where relevant, preceding developments of novel legislation, regulations, jurisprudence, surveying standards, and the establishment of new jurisdictional entities at different times and in different places across this period. Focused historical studies might look to chart more systematically and comprehensively the step-by-step development of the Canada Lands administration in the face of the Great Acceleration. In doing so, they would have the opportunity to examine the evolving relationships between individual communities and the environment, as well as the rapidly evolving national context to which the Canada Lands Survey System was responding
Feature image: Excerpt of “National Map of Canada Lands May 2024 Edition” published by Surveyor General Branch, Natural Resources Canada here. It provides a recent idea of the extent of the lands subject to the Canada Lands Survey System. This inset is a copy of an official Government of Canada publication. This reproduction has not been produced in affiliation with, or with the endorsement of the Government of Canada.”
Andrew Burke