18-Geom-B5 Survey Law · May 2016
Nivaar worked solution (AI-drafted; not reviewed by a licensed engineer)
National Exams — May 2016 — 04-Geom-B5 Survey Law. Three hours; CLOSED BOOK, NO CALCULATOR. NINE (9) questions constitute a complete paper; most answers require sentence-and-paragraph format, and clarity and organization are marked. All nine questions (including every lettered sub-part) are solved in full below. Content is framed in the Canadian common-law and Ontario land-registration context named by the source (Surveyor General's Instructions, the Ontario township survey systems, Registry/Land Titles, the Expropriations Act).
Reference texts: Survey Law in Canada (Canadian Council of Land Surveyors / Carswell, 1989); Brown, Robillard & Wilson, Brown's Boundary Control and Legal Principles (7th ed., Wiley, 2017); Association of Ontario Land Surveyors (AOLS) Survey Review and educational materials; the Surveys Act, R.S.O. 1990, c. S.30, the Registry Act, R.S.O. 1990, c. R.20, the Land Titles Act, R.S.O. 1990, c. L.5, the Boundaries Act, R.S.O. 1990, c. B.10, and the Expropriations Act, R.S.O. 1990, c. E.26.
Question text not reproduced: the examination questions are © Engineers and Geoscientists BC. Open the official past paper (linked at the top of this page) to read the question, then follow the worked solution below.
Successive Surveyor General's Instructions produced a family of township-subdivision patterns — some eighteen recognised systems — differing chiefly in which lines the original surveyor actually ran and monumented in the field and which were left to be established later by retracement. The governing rule for re-establishing a lost corner in any system follows directly from what was, and was not, originally run. Two of the systems are described and sketched below.
In the Single Front system the original surveyor ran and monumented only the concession lines along the front of each concession — that is, along the concession road. Posts were planted at the front angles of the lots (the front corners) on the concession line. The side lines of the lots and the rear of the concession were not run in the field; they were to be established afterward. Because only the front was monumented, a lost interior or rear corner is re-established by proportioning between the found front posts and running the side line into the lot on the governing bearing. The monuments that control are the original front posts on the concession line.
In the Double Front system the surveyor planted posts at both ends of each lot's side line — at the front angle on the near concession line and at the rear angle on the far concession line (the front of the concession behind). Each side line is therefore defined by an original monument at each end, and is re-established simply as the straight line joining the corresponding front and rear posts — there is no need to proportion its position from neighbours. The additional rear monuments give this system stronger control over the side-line direction than the Single Front system.
(The Sectional system — a roughly one-mile grid of sections with regularly spaced road allowances and monuments at section and quarter-section corners — is a third recognised pattern, offered here only for contrast; the two systems sketched above satisfy the question.)
