#5 Tidbit- Surveying

Hello Everyone:


Welcome to our next tidbit for St. Patrick's Day. For all you Irish folk out there, I hope you had a good day yesterday.

Today I would to address Surveying. We all know it. We all see it. Usually at 5PM rush hour, construction sites are teeming with surveyors with their eyes to the instruments and further along another surveyor with a long pole for measuring.

It's always been an interest to me, figuring out how surveying works and how they can arrive at the end result. What brought me to surveying today? Through my intensive research on Dora and the Gulf Islands, I came across a different way of surveying, at least that is what the pioneers of the Gulf Islands did. They didn’t have instruments, computers, or other equipment to measure where houses, churches and other orifices should be placed. And they had to clear the land practically by hand, so they needed to be precise to the point of knowing where to place their outbuildings.

But like all pioneers of the time, they worked out a system which today would be inappropriate with our superhighways, and land extensions. But one not to be forgotten.
Our brilliant forefathers solved their problem of finding the location for a school on Saturna Island, as they did everything, with strength and agility.

When a difference of opinion arose as to where it should be, Dora's dad had the solution.
He suggested that on a given day each resident (with a population around 20) should start out to walk towards the centre of the island. Where they all met should then be the site of the school.

And so it be - no tools, no fancy computers, just leg work and a meticulous mindset and as I see this event in my mind, I picture, picnic lunches along the way and many children jumping over fallen logs.

To the early settler, this adventure would be a fun day and not even considered a work day.


LisaBri