Vision of an Ordered Land : The Story of the Dominion Land Survey

Card covers, 202 pages, 6x9 in - 15x22.5 cm, B&W maps and photographs. Originally published in 1981 - this copy a 1999 printing, facilitated by the Alberta Land Surveyors' Association.

Front cover bumped at bottom and creased at top corner, back cover scratched and rubbed at bottom. Spine lightly rubbed at heel.

Reprinted ten years after author James G. MacGregor’s passing, this volume offers a history of the Dominion Land Survey from the 1869 acceptance of J. S. Dennis’ proposed method of dividing Canada’s North-West into townships and sections to marking boundary lines in northern Canada in the 1920s. MacGregor depicts the survey as a simultaneously technical and adventurous task occurring amidst broader political currents. While he describes the specifics of surveying techniques and tools, his stories of the survey also involve adventure, exploration, and overcoming difficulties. Pieced together from government records and surveyor journals, MacGregor’s account of the Dominion Land Survey combines the conflict and ingenuity of discovery and settlement in the North-West with Canada’s growing bureaucracy and governance in the nineteenth century.

0888330715