Reflective Blog 5

Over the past few weeks of our Land Administration class we have covered topics discussing the history behind Canada’s settlement and land administration practices. This included topics such as water boundaries, coastal zones and indigenous lands.

Since Canada was settled by European fishermen, farmers and fur traders the different types of land systems were used to create new plots of land all over Canada. Along the St. Lawrence in Quebec early settlers from France used the Seigneurial System. This system was land divided into long narrow rectangles facing towards the waters edge in this case the St. Lawrence river. Due to the shape of the piece of land given. The owner of the land was given access to the water, good soil and timber father back from the rivers edge.  The owner of the land was also responsible for the up keep of any roads that would cross through the property. France would use these plots of land to entice French citizens to move and settle in these French colonies. The shape of these parcels of land still hold strong today, and are clearly visible when using satellite imagery software to view properties located on the St. Lawrence.

In later years of Canada's settlement other types of systems were used to plot pieces of land. On the western front of Canada, the Dominion Land Survey System was used.  This system was used in the late 1800’s. This system was used primarily for the fact that the survey systems of eastern Canada were not satisfactory to the settlers of western Canada. The Dominion Land Survey System is compromised of a series of squares. Lines running from north to south are broken up into sections and these sections were broken up into quarter sections, the quarter sections are then broken up into subdivisions. The early settlers of western Canada were aloud a piece of land that would be suitable for farming and growth to infrastructure within western Canada.

Our class has also discussed water boundaries within Canada. Water boundaries are a complex subject and should be understood that there are two types of water boundaries; inland and off shore. The off shore boundaries can cause international conflict due to the fact that recourse claims can be made on valuable areas of water. This can be noticed at the north pole where water boundaries of eight different countries coincide with one another. This can make defining the boundaries a complicated procedure but due to modern technology it is becoming easier to define the boundaries of every country.  Inland water boundaries is just as complicated as offshore, this is due to the fact that rivers can change over time thus changing the boundary of the specific parcel if it is not correctly specified or surveyed.  The rivers act as a natural boundary, if they are considered navigable. In New Brunswick a river is considered navigable if the waterway is Tidal.

As we get further into discussing all the different topics within our land administration class, it is clear to me that understanding the different types of survey systems and the different types of boundaries that co-exist within Canada will serve as valuable information and knowledge to practice as a professional Land Surveyor within Canada.