Fall - Saskatchewan Land Surveyors Association

In January 1980 we were hired by SaskTel to establish theposition for a microwave dish on the roof of their buildingat Lorne Street and 12th Avenue in Regina. Up on the roofwe took a series of sun shots for azimuth and set permanentreference points. A few days later I ran into Bill Schwartzand was telling him about our survey. During our conversationI mentioned that it would be interesting to take a starshot to verify our work. That peaked Bill’s interest and hesaid, ”Let’s do it this afternoon.” Showing my inexperienceI replied, “You can’t do a star shot in broad daylight.”“Sure you can,” said Bill, “Let’s do it.”That afternoon was cool and clear without a cloud in the sky.On the roof we set up the transit on our reference line. Billchecked the time, did a quick calculation on his Sharp pocketcomputer and turned the horizontal andvertical angle to Polaris. He fiddledwith the focus for about 5 minutes andsuddenly said, “There it is, take a look.”I peered through the scope and couldn’tbelieve it. Just to the right of the verticalcross hair was a tiny pinprick of light.We took a series of star observationsand then compared the result with themean of our sun shots. They differedby only 4 seconds of angle. Pretty goodI thought.In late April of the same year, theS.L.S.A. hosted the annual meeting ofthe Canadian Institute of Surveying inRegina. It was a great convention organizedby convention chairman TomCrump.Looking Back - 1980By: W.W. (Wayne) Stockton, S.L.S., C.L.S.Kojak - Telly Savalas and Stavros - George Savalasfromwww.sitcomsonline.com/photopost/showphoto.php/photo/27995There were two things in particular I remember about theconvention. The first was that I had to take an afternoon offto set the foot plates for the SaskTel satellite dish. The basehad been constructed on our reference line. It was a steelframe and platform approximately 2.5 metres in height. Weset the transit up on the platform and from our reference linemarked the locations for the large bolts that were to anchorthe dish.As for the second memorable incident, one of the social activitiesfor the convention was a special afternoon presentationof a Stage West play starring George Savalos. Georgehad enjoyed a long and successful career on stage and screenbut was less well known than his more famous brother Telly.They were also quite opposite in appearance. While Tellywas completely bald, George sported ahead of thick, curly hair.In the course of organizing the specialStage West presentation, the ladies onthe convention committee got to knowGeorge fairly well. One afternoon, a ladies’bus tour to Fort Qu’Appelle and theQu’Appelle Valley had been arranged.Since George had a free afternoon heasked if he could go along. George piledinto Barb Bennett’s car with a couple ofother ladies and followed the bus tourout to the valley. It was reported thathe had a great time that afternoon as theonly male accompanied by 40 femaleson the scenic tour and lunch. Familiar Sayings From Past Annual Meetings Of The SLSA“Can’t hear you, speak up” “Turn up your hearing aid”“Stand up, can’t see you”“Use the mike”“Point of order, out of order”“Question”“Time to vote, ask for the question”“First time I ever agreed with you”“Nobody ever read that book”“Well I might as well speak once more”258 SLSA Corner Post Fall 2006