Grades 4 and 5: European Exploration and "Settlement" in British Columbia, 1787-1867

Student Handout - How Do We Know Where We Are?

Making a map of a large area depends on the help of many people. It is difficult work. It demands knowledge of science and good drawing abilities. You can certainly make a fairly good map of your neighbourhood. Drawing a map of your town would be a much bigger job. Mapping a province or a country is a huge job and takes many years.

A detailed map of British Columbia will have your home town on it. It will also have the names of mountains and the shapes of rivers. How did we get this knowledge? Who put it together?

Early Exploration and Mapping

The first known European explorer of British Columbia was the Danish navigator Vitus Bering. He arrived off the coast in 1741. The Spanish explorer Juan Perez followed in 1774. But surveying truly began with the arrival of the British seaman Captain James Cook. He charted Nootka Sound in 1778. The next important European mapping occurred in 1792. Spanish and British explorers met in Georgia Strait and charted much of the Strait and Puget Sound together.

Mapping in the 1800s

Captain George Richards and Captain Daniel Pender also helped map the area in the 1850s and 1860s. (If you live in Vancouver, you probably know the streets named after them.) The two most famous explorers and geographers in the early mapping of the British Columbia interior are probably Alexander MacKenzie and David Thompson. Their work was difficult, adventurous, and dangerous.

In 1851, the government appointed the first Colonial Surveyor for the Colony of Vancouver Island. Since then the government has organized mapping the province. In 1858, Sir James Douglas, the colony's first governor, asked for a company of Royal Engineers from England to do engineering works connected to the Fraser River gold rush. Some of these men made surveys of the mainland.

Before 1891, the Surveyor General gave surveyors the right to practice. In 1891, the provincial legislature passed a law that required anyone wanting to be a surveyor to pass an exam.

Surveying the Province Today

Today, a land surveyor in British Columbia must have a "commission," a kind of diploma from the government saying that he or she has the knowledge to do mapping and surveying. And, yes, surveying and mapping do still go on because the landscape is always changing.

Surveyors once used a staff compass, open plate transit, and Gunters chain. Today, high tech instruments have replaced these. Satellite receivers, electronic instruments, and data recorders help in this challenging work. Computers are used to calculate measurements made in the field.

The exciting early work of mapping the province was finished long ago. Surveyors and map-makers today are still busy, though, and help us to know where we are.