Northern Visions: Aerial Surveying and the Canadian Mining Industry, 1919-1928

Abstract

In 1936, the Canadian Surveyor, journal of the Dominion Land Surveyors' Association, introduced a new cover illustration. Alongside a field surveyor, the new image depicted a floatplane rising from the surface of an isolated northern lake. The decision to identify surveying with bush planes reflected the central place that aviation occupied in Canadian surveying and the important contributions aircraft could make to mining through the practice of aerial surveying. As part of a wider growth of interest in the country's north, the Canadian mining industry had begun to pay closer attention to mineral deposits located in the heart of the Canadian Shield. Upon entering this region, the industry encountered an intricate geography of low, rolling, rocky hills, muskeg bogs, and innumerable lakes, rivers, and creeks. Encounters with the land would encourage members of the industry to look for alternate methods of obtaining information about their new environment as the difficulty of overland travel and the sheer immensity of the territory made existing methods of mapping and surveying inappropriate. Canadian mineral developers turned to aerial surveying as a means of overcoming these obstacles. Throughout the 1920s, Canadians adopted aerial surveying as a key element of mineral-development practice such that, by