Life as a Surveyor
Camp Life
Negotiating Identity
Modes of Transport
Life as a Surveyor
“I am in the Engineering Offices and glory! am to go up the Peace River if I show any talent as a topographer.”[8] [1]
Norman Jacobs succeeded at showing his talent and became a field topographer for the Canadian Transcontinental Survey. As a topographer, he described what it was like to travel over virgin country where dropped trees were piled up like matchsticks 12-16 feet deep and temperatures were well below zero degrees Fahrenheit; sometimes 60 degrees below zero. Teams of surveyors could be out of communication for long periods of time and had to be capable of finding their way anywhere and have no fear of being lost. At one point there were over 800 men scattered over half of Canada plotting the path for the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway.
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From Saskatchewan Jacobs wrote:
There are about six big construction camps covering a line of about 154 miles. At first the snow being still shifting was very treacherous, slides on the hills or swampy ground hurling men and horses in rolling heaps and with the recklessness of the West we were continually mis-judging the thickness of the ice with resulting cold baths and much profanity...To drop suddenly through rotten ice at 60 below zero is rather a startling sensation and doesn’t leave one much room to swim in.[9] [7]
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Jacobs continued:
As to the forest of all this work I love the bush work most handling an axe....It is glorious fighting your way inch by inch
[11]through great stretches of giant trees crawling on your tummy and slashing up at dense bush or waist deep in water struggling with the most difficult thing, roots under water. You know that in running a trial line it has to go absolutely straight well through thick forest it would be impossible to see any sign put up to guide us so on the cry ‘All men forward!’ we all take our direction with our compass off the transit and get in anywhere you hear no sound but the ring of the axe the short cry of warning ‘ware left!’ or ‘ware half right!’ or then the crash of the fallen giant.[10] [12]
[13]Our parties covered the Rockies from Fort George to the Pine pass (scaling Robson’s peak a thing never done before) following the Fraser Canyon from the Pass to the American border. Explored the Peace Valley to the Attabasca both sides of Hudson’s Bay and Keewatan Territory. Pushed up into the north of Quebec and opened up the whole of the Arbitibi district eventually coming out on James Bay.[11] [14]
The surveyor’s quest was to find the desired grade for the railway which was 4/10 of 1%, or 21.12 feet per mile for the Grand Trunk Pacific; curves were to be 4 degrees or greater. These specifications gave locomotives a gross hauling capacity seven times that of the Canadian Pacific Railway and the degree of curvature affected the speed of the train. The desired grade was achieved except in parts of the Rockies (elev. 3,723’) where the descent in the Yellowhead Pass followed the Fraser River and a section of 1% grade had to be used. An additional engine was stationed at these points to help the train over these “pusher grades.”
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Boredom could be staved off by reading. Surveyors re-read whatever books and magazines were available and were always grateful for new material. The subject matter and timeliness were secondary concerns: a Royal Northwest Mounted Policeman swapped a copy of History of a Crime for a bundle of old newspapers collected by Jacobs’s survey team.[12] [19]
The "clean minded and healthy bodied"[13 [20]] [20] members of the survey teams found other ways to amuse themselves in the field.
The favorite game is to sit in a circle & toast bread with home made toasting forks cut from willow. Now the reason of the circle is thus each man keeps his eye on the cookery outfit of the man sitting opposite and the bread having reached a desirable brown yells “Let her go!” A man who accidentally shot another whilst out hunting you be considered clumsy and might has some local trouble with the corpse’s relatives but the affair would blow over but the man who allows his companion’s toast to burn is an outcast forever.[14] [21]
Close to our tents were a great many Gopher holes & it used to be great fun to pour a basin of water down one hole & see the occupant come charging out at the other end to see what in the world has happened. One evening however instead of a gopher out popped right in our midst—a skunk! With a cry of “To your tents oh Israel”! we fled but not altogether in time and we hated ourselves for a week. The game of Gopher & the wash basin became suddenly unpopular.[15] [22]
“Creed is not a thing we bother about up here,” Jacobs asserted. Nondenominational services, lead by each man in turn, were the mode of worship in the field. This tolerance may have been uneasy, however: Jacobs was quite certain he was the only Jew (despite claiming to not know the religion of anyone but the Chief, a Quaker) and that his companions did not know he was Jewish.[16] [23]
Concealing his Jewish identity must minimally have involved self-censorship, but such a tactic may have seemed prudent. At the time Jacobs began his work on the railway, the Dreyfus Affair was in the news. The soon-to-be-exonerated Dreyfus, a French military officer convicted of spying, was widely believed to be innocent, and the scandal was a focal point for antisemitic and anti-French sentiments. Actress Sarah Bernhardt fled Montreal when confronted by a mob incensed by alleged anti-French comments.[17] [24]Though the most explicit antisemitism was found in Quebec and the French press, Canada’s western press was not immune.[18] [25]Emphasizing a connection to a distant and often suspect community, at the possible expense of his relationship with co-workers, may have seemed an unacceptable social, financial, and physical risk.
Racial exclusion was more explicit: “There is a saying in the West. “He’s white I’d ride the plains with him.” The saying is too terse & expressive to need explanation.”[19] [26] The statement is indeed terse, but hints at complicated issues of personal and group identity. Despite discriminatory practices, complete exclusion was not possible. Surveyors may have been “white,” but several letters make reference to the interactions with and contributions of First Nations peoples.
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[31]The coexistence of multiple forms of transportation is a theme in Norman Jacobs’s letters. Involved in the construction of a railroad—one of the most advanced transportation systems of the era—the survey teams relied upon animals: cats, sled dogs, and horses.
A camp attracted unwanted vermin, such as field mice. Protection of food stores was not a domestic nicety, but a matter of life and death. Jacobs’s survey team requested and received a cat through official channels. The cat, Pa-Waka-Manito-itchee-pahawat (The White Spirit with a Noise Like a Kettle), travelled 600 miles to the team’s camp.[20] [32]
[33]Though they were unsatisfactory mousers, dogs were an integral part of camp life. They provided companionship and curled up to sleep with members of the survey team. An English Setter named Punch was a particularly welcome companion on nights when wolves howled. The death of a puppy was cause for sorrow.[21] [34]Jacobs could not imagine a home without a “frantic noise mass of fur & wary tails to greet you on the threshold.”[22] [35]The most important canine contribution was as transportation. Dog teams pulled the sleds bearing survey teams' supplies.
[36]Horses were a necessary part of the railway project. Surveyors rode on horseback, drove wagon teams, and relied upon riders for message delivery.[23] [37] In recognition of the importance of horses, when given authority in the field Jacobs ensured that horses ate before men. Horses were also ubiquitous in Canadian cities. Jacobs was entranced by the vitality of Winnipeg streets, where “shaggy horses,” “half-broken teams,” and “vehicles of all kinds careen wildly up & down.”[24] [38]
[39]Despite his professional commitment to advancing transportation systems and his familiarity with mixed transit systems, Jacobs could not immediately reconcile the effect of technological changes upon familiar settings. He expressed some skepticism when Edmonton installed trolley lines in 1908: “Considering that absolutely everyone owns horses out here & even the bricklayers & plumbers & school children go to work on wicked little cayuses tearing up & down like race horses I fail to see how it is going to pay.”[25] [40]
But the investment did in fact pay: Edmonton’s rail system expanded until 1930 and remained in operation until 1951, when buses and automobiles replaced streetcars.[26] [41]
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