March - The Alberta Land Surveyors

Army MacCrimmon
The following is a continuation
of the interview between former
business partners Army Mac-
Crimmon and Bill Wolley-Dod
which was printed in the December
2009 issue of ALS News.
Army: Where was your Dad born
Bill: In Calgary.
For some reason I thought that he was born
in the old country.
No, my grandfather came here in 1887
from Cheshire. My good wife and I
spent a night in the old family estate in
Cheshire where grandfather and his bride
lived. He came over here with a group of
young men going to Minnesota to learn
farming and the scheme sort of came
apart at the seams and all the young
men that came over spread out all over
the place and took different jobs. My
grandfather was a census taker in Minnesota
for a while and then went back to
England. He came back here and paused
in Calgary, then went to Vancouver and
didn’t like it there. He came back and
bought a fairly good sized chunk of land
south of Midnapore and then went back
to England, married my grandmother
and brought her back. That was 1887.
INTERVIEWS
They didn’t fly back and forth in those days.
No, it would have taken a little while to
journey back and forth on the ocean and
also even on the train from here to Vancouver
and back.
It was a brand new railroad then, wasn’t it
When I first went out to UBC, it was a
twenty-four hour train trip—probably
seventy-two hours back then. He joined
the Canadian Mounted Rifles as a sergeant
in the 1890s. It was shortly after the Boer
War, 1902 I believe, the 15th Alberta Light
Horse was formed by Colonel James Walker,
Calgary’s man of the century. All of the
members of the Canadian Mounted Rifles
were just absorbed into the new regiment
and he went up through the ranks. I’ve got
his whole history from the military archives
in Ottawa. He became a lieutenant and then
a captain and then a major. He was drafted
to my Dad’s infantry unit, the 31st Battalion
CEF. So Dad was in it, he was a captain and
grandfather was a major at that point. After
the war, he came back and the militia unit
was redesignated from the 15th Alberta Light
Horse to the 15th Canadian Light Horse.
He was promoted to lieutenant colonel and
was the commanding officer.
That must be a unique situation where the
father and the son were in the same regiment,
Bill Wolley-Dod
both as commissioned officers. I’ve never heard
of that—because of the age differences—your
Dad must have been a young man when he
got his commission.
Yes, well he was born in 1893.
He’d be twenty-one when the war started.
Yeah. I’ve got a picture of him. They used
to wear their pips on their sleeve. He’s
sitting there in a very formal pose in his
uniform and he just had two pips then.
Before the end of the War, he became a
captain. One interesting thing—I’ve got
a brief history of the 31st Battalion. I’ve
got a whole book on it, but I belong to
the Military Collectors Club of Canada
and they have a quarterly journal —a
very comprehensive thing that comes
out—and there was an advertisement
that the Manitoba Chapter of the organization
was compiling histories of all the
Canadian expeditionary force regiments.
So I sent away and they said for $2 you
can get a copy of this. I sent it away and
they sent back a two-page very brief history.
One thing struck me—they shipped
out, I think, from Montreal, going over
and they landed in Halifax when they
came back but it gives the names of the
ships they were on. The Carpathia was
the ship they went overseas on and I’m
sure that was the first ship to come to the
rescue of the Titanic.
There were a number of ships in the general
area when the Titanic went down. Most of
them didn’t get anywhere near in time.
No.
Back to your bio here. Just a quick question
on your SLS and CLS commissions. Where
did you go for the examinations, Bill, were
you able to take those there in Calgary You’d
have to go to Saskatchewan
Yeah, I went to Saskatoon for the SLS.
Marguerite’s family, shortly after we were
married, was transferred to Saskatoon.
He was Division Master Mechanic with
the CPR and he was sent to Saskatoon to
dieselize the division up there. So, Marguerite’s
grandmother lived in Edmonton. We
drove to Edmonton and left the car there
and took the CNR to Saskatoon and stayed
with Marguerite’s mother and father. I
wrote the exams at the university.
That’d be a nice trip for you.
Yeah, it was, except I could never go into
Saskatoon again. The only direction I knew
was straight up because I think the train
came in and we were heading east from
Edmonton but it made a big circle in the
downtown area so you were facing some
other way when you got off the train. I
didn’t know north from south.
The same thing occurs with the line between
Calgary and Edmonton. When you go
through Red Deer, it makes a complete circle
and you end up going south.
That’s wasn’t a terribly strenuous examination.
One of their past presidents, Ian
Tweddel was one of the examiners.
There was an oral to it as well
There were a very limited number of papers
but at that point in my illustrious career,
I fancied myself quite knowledgeable in
photogrammetry. There was a brand new
exam on photogrammetry—they’d never
had it before. So I studied and sweated and
slaved over that thing and I could derive
any formula and you name it, I could do
it. So I get the paper and there was about
three questions on it. The first one said,
name three practical applications of aerial
surveying. Wow—so I probably aced that
one. The exams on their statutes (I’ve got
them firmly ingrained in my head) they’d
ask me a question and I’d give an answer
on the Alberta scene. They very kindly said,
well you’re close—and kind of drew it out
of my a little more—finally by the third try,
I’d get it right. The other examiner was Roy
McClellan of Underwood and McClellan.
CLS, I always think of it as DLS, at SAIT,
in the old red brick building. It’s a grand old
building. It’s nice to see the first old building
still there.
Yeah. I took wireless training there during
the war—dit, dit, dit dah.
I thought we might be able to talk about
the surveys that you’ve done and just name a
few of the companies. I’ve got about three or
four or five here—Calgary Power, Canadian
Utilities, Kelwood as good clients and I also
wonder how many plans in the Land Titles
Office have got your signature on them. I’d
bet money that you have more signatures on
them than anybody with the exception of
Allan Spence.
I remember when you retired and I had a
connection with the Director of Surveys
Office, I got them to print out a list of all
your surveys.
That’s right—I’ve got that.
I never did that for me.
Well, you should. I had something like 400.
I couldn’t believe it. If that’s the case, you’ve
got 1,400 or 2,000. There’s some people that
brought some money to us Bill—Calgary
Power, Canadian Utilities, Kelwood—I was
going to ask you, can you give me a list of
the subdivisions. Your name is on 95% of
those. Could you run through them for me as
they come to mind—starting wherever you
want—they are all over the city.
Most of them in the southwest. Kelwood
was an offshoot of Reid, Crowther
Consulting Engineers—Haddon, Davis
and Brown back in those days and Norm
Trouth, the first manager of Kelwood
was an engineer with Haddon, Davis and
Brown and he was selected to manage
this new development company they set
up. They had a subdivision on the North
Hill—it began with H and I cannot
remember the name. That was their first
one and then the subdivision where we had
our first house in Glendale was a Kelwood
subdivision. I think that was done by Ley
Harris. Anyway, those were the only two
Kelwood subdivisions that were done by
others and I can’t remember just how the
connection came about but suddenly we
had Norm Trouth on our doorstep wanting
us to do their subdivisions and there were
a lot of them over the years. It started off
with Fairview. There was Fairview residential
and Fariview Industrial which was the
further south one. Then Acadia—then, I
guess we got into Lake Bonavista which
was immediately north of Acadia. Willow
Park was before Bonavista. Then we did
industrial subdivisions for them on the
west side of MacLeod Trail—Haysboro
Industrial and Haysboro Residential—virtually
a whole section of land.
Peter Potella—his would be south of what is
now Glenmore Trail and east of the Blackfoot—that’s
a big industrial subdivision.
Then north of the Blackfoot there was a big
subdivision which was on an old landfill.
Did we do any work on the North Hill
Not in the way of subdivisions—yeah we
did. I remember you and Art Knudson
being out there.
Joe, our pal Drasden—he bought a house on
one of those subdivisions—so we did work in
there. Nothing much in the northeast part
that I can think of. Of course there wasn’t
much development at that time anyway.
We did some fairly major industrial subdivisions
in the Foothills area for the city.
Speaking of Norm Croach, he’s still in business
as far as I know; he is listed in the phone
book. I thought that he was involved in
that Eagle Lake area. I don’t think anything
developed out of it.
Ed Davis of Haddon, Davis and Brown
was the prime mover behind trying to get
something going out there. He had some
grandiose plans—golly that goes back
thirty years.
It was much later than that. It was when
Norm had the storage business that he was
telling me about this Eagle Lake thing—so
he had been fooling around with it for quite
a while. That was exaggerating a little bit,
calling Eagle Lake a lake, it was a slough,
wasn’t it
Still they were peddling lots out there.
But no building—I drove by there about
two weeks ago just to see if anything
happened. Not a thing that I could see.
I shouldn’t say it’s a slough, it’s not a bad
lake—but not too much action.
....to be continued
50 . March 2010 ALS News ALS News March 2010 . 51