Pictorial Bird's Eye Map of Banff

Here is a really nice pictorial map of Banff, showing the mountains, rivers, railroads and hotels. 

 Mountains are listed with their elevations.

A quiet corner at the end of Lake Minnewanka,

and some sky above the ice field.

Browse the whole map here.

Canadian Checkerboard-Part 2

Last week's post featured a map of Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba showing lands available for homesteaders in 1918. Here is a much more detailed map of Northern Alberta, beginning a bit south of Edmonton. Grid cells are 1 mile square sections.

Here are some detailed views.

The meanings of the categories in the legend are a bit unclear to me but the lightest orange are lands reserved for soldiers. These are mostly in the northern and western parts of the province. The middle orange are lands the are "finally disposed of" meaning they have been claimed and are being actively used as homesteads, schools or other. The red squares are "unpatented (entered for, sold or reserved)" - possibly meaning that a claimant is working on establishing a homestead. The uncolored (white-ish with some yellowing of the paper) areas were surveyed and available (my assumption) to be entered as homesteads.

These maps also show parks, timber berths, coal seams, tar sands, borings for oil and gas and grazing leases.

As seen below, most of the land in and around Edmonton has been transferred to private owners.

There is a lot of unsurveyed land (another assumption based on no grid lines) but the map comments seem to be trying to sell people on the virtues of these lands with comments about the high quality of the water, soil and potential for industry.

I'm ready to move here!

Canadian Checkerboard - Part 1

In the past year I've accumulated dozens of maps. A friend had grandparents who tried homesteading on the Canadian Prairies and gave me some remarkable maps showing lands that were available via the Dominion Lands Act. Here is a 1917 map showing lands in Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta.

The map is 3 ft x 2 ft. I was able to scan it at a high resolution. Here are some readable details.

The Dominion Lands Act of 1872 was based on the Homestead Act in the United States. Square shaped 160-acre parcels of land (much of it taken from indigenous tribes without compensation) were made available to settlers in return for a small registration fee. They had to establish farms and build permanent dwellings in return. Immigrants from Europe were encouraged to settle on these lands, partially out of fear of the United States (where most of the good land had been taken by then) trying to lay claim to them. Some of the land was set aside for soldiers.

Red numbers indicate the number of quarter sections available in each 6 x 6 mile township. The green area is Palliser's Traingle, an arid region where exemptions were made so farmers could buy adjacent lots and double the size of their homesteads, increasing their chances at successful agriculture.  Railroad companies owned the land within 20 miles of their tracks so townships adjacent to the tracks had no numbers while nearby ones had smaller numbers. Here is the legend.

I'm not sure what part of the act was discontinued or what "O. in C." refers to.

For contrast here is a more sparse area along the Peace River in northern Alberta.

I have more of these maps and will show them in another post or two. Stay tuned!

Canada's 1955 future

Macleans magazine bought this map from the Canadian government. It is from 1955 and details "100 Important New Resources That Will Help Make Canada's Future Bright And Prosperous" - 1950's booster-ism at its finest.

Here is a close-up view showing details such as petro-chemical and nickel leaching plants near Edmonton, a nationwide microwave net for TV, far-reaching rural electrification, gas turbine locomotives and a money tug of war with the United States.  

Sample text from the title block

"Yesterday many of the places shown here were barren rock, desolate tundra or virgin forest. Tomorrow they will pour out a swelling flood of nearly all the materials needed by modern man...."

I'm not sure if the colors (green, yellow and red-ish) mean anything (elevation?) or if that's just an artistic effect. Also, the leaf-like channels within the Great Lakes are a strange touch.

The Macleans article has a nice selection of items from the map showing which predictions were good (tar sands oil) and which were overly optimistic (potash.) Some other interesting items not covered in the article:

• "Flying laboratory” carries ½ ton of electronic equipment in simultaneous search for many minerals.
• Latest rust-resistant wheat developed at government lab in Fort Garry, Man.
• Continent’s first turbo-prop airline service.
• 2,250-mile gas pipeline from Alberta to Toronto-Montreal at cost of $300 million.
• 19 new river valley conservation programs in Ontario.
• $60 million for world’s largest transatlantic telephone cable built by Canada, U.S.A., U.K.
• Atomic reactor at Chalk River for research into peaceful uses of atomic energy.

 I included that last item because I spent time in Chalk River as a graduate student and got to know some of the nuclear plant workers.

A complete list of all 100 resources can be found here, while a larger version of the map is here.