Making a Living in Nelson

Making a Living in Nelson

My wife and I moved to Nelson in the early 1950s. I was determined to make a living in

Nelson—no sure thing at that time. I did not have my professional registration yet. I was just

picking up little chores here and there. For example, the City of Nelson’s electrical

superintendent asked me to draw what turned out to be the first composite map of the city. I drew

up a map that we used for thirty years or more, a big map—two and a half feet wide and about

eight feet long—showing all the properties in Nelson. That map was very useful for everybody—

for the engineering department, for my work, and for everyone else in the industry.

I did odd jobs with another surveyor in Trail, Nelson, and the area. If it had to be a professional

surveying job, then he would come and check my work. But we worked as partners, which

would not be allowed today. We had a chap try and set up a partnership with his brother. He

lived in Alberta, and his brother was in Nelson, and they tried to have a loose association. Our

surveyors’ association frowned upon it, but at the time they did not challenge me for working in

a partnership without my papers.

I think the association looked the other way because I was the only one in the area. My old boss

was too old to work. There was nobody to take over. So, they felt that it was better that we have

this kind of informal association than get nothing done. That year, I studied hard during the

winter. I passed my BC Land Surveyor’s Registration.

Even that was not easy. I wrote the exams, and when I was finished writing, I told the examiners

that I knew I had passed. I asked them to give me my registration. I convinced the chap that I

could not afford to wait for the results and then travel back to Victoria to be sworn in. Getting

official results would take the better part of a month for the examiners who were all members of

the profession. It worked. I had to raise my right hand and swear that I was going to adhere to all

the rules and regulations and laws in effect.

That is how I convinced the secretary of our professional BC Land Surveyors Association that I

knew I had passed all the exams. I was a confident person. I have been confident in my work all

my life. Even though I was sworn in, I could not practice until they had marked my exams. But

nevertheless, I was now sitting up in Nelson with my licensed professional designation.

There was a recession, not quite a depression, but things were still slow. I happened to talk to a

mining man who said a surveyor was needed at Golden or Spillimacheen, another little

settlement along the highway from Invermere to Radium Junction. A mining company needed a

survey done on its mining operation. At least it was a few days’ work.

I thought I could leverage the mine work into something more substantial and stable. Surveyors

also had to be businessmen. I went to the community of Brisco in the East Kootenays and found

that nobody had been surveying up there for years. People were building houses on other

people's property!

The workload exploded. I started with the mining company and then did a couple of other little

things for people. I put the word out that I was available. My God, it expanded to the point that

for the next twenty years, I had a very well-organized operation looking after the expanding

population in the area. The Trans-Canada was being built at the time, and the whole area was

booming.

They were working on Rogers Pass (the portion of the Trans-Canada Highway between Golden

and Revelstoke). Golden was expanding. I was doing subdivisions and a lot of other work. I

made good money. I was able to pay my men for a full day of travel time when we moved to new

worksites—which was rare at the time. We would always go up to the sites for about ten days at

a time. This worked very efficiently over a good twenty years or more of travelling up there.

I was away from home a lot. My wife looked after our growing family (we had four children).

There was not a lot of work close to home in Nelson. Another surveyor moved into the Nelson

area. He took some of the work that I might have been able to do. He worked full-time in the

Nelson area and then took on a surveyor who got his ticket a year after I did. The second fellow

worked primarily in the Castlegar area. We were all making a living, but it meant taking almost

any job that came along. That was what life was like in the early 1960s. The economy was

picking up, and the East Kootenays were expanding. I was busy doing subdivisions, fairly large

ones. I worked for the Highways Department. I also did a survey of the Trans-Canada Highway.

One of the best things was the diversity of the work. For example, I was asked to figure out how

a sawmill could expand and become more efficient as it got busier. My assignment was to make

a map of the whole sawmill enterprise to help the managers figure out how to make it work

better. It was jam packed so tight that it was not functioning very well. I had a pilot take me up in

a small airplane. I took pictures of the sawmill yard with all the logs laying around and big piles

all over the place. I immediately got sicker than a dog. I was even throwing up. You are in an

airplane and trying to take pictures. The guy's wheeling over, and as I look down, I’m getting

dizzy. It was just like being on a circus ride or wheel.