Annapolis Community Mapping April 13 at COGS
1866: a twenty three year old blacksmith from rural Annapolis County who could neither read nor write.
1888: a five year old in India, having lost both parents to cholera, finds himself living in Scotland with relatives.
By age 34 the blacksmith had earned a BA from Acadia University, and an MA and a PhD from Boston University, both degrees in a single year.
By age 34, the five year-old has studied at Glasgow Technical School, emigrated to Canada, been a prospector and mining engineer in Alberta, joined the Canadian Army and finds himself tunneling under 1ST World War German trenches.
J.B. Hall, born in Lawrencetown in 1843, and Major James Church, who “retired” there in 1931 and stayed the rest of his life, never met.
Life-long educator Hall, having high regard for German vocational schools, upon his death in 1928 left a $25,000 legacy for the eventual building of a vocational school in Annapolis County.
Major Church, during the 2nd World War, taught soldiers surveying in Halifax. Parlaying that experience by graduating his last surveying class as civilians,in 1946, Church lobbied politicians for a Provincial survey school for veterans. For the next decade and a half, Church taught surveying in a variety of Lawrencetown buildings, and persevered in his unrelenting campaign of persuasion.
By 1961, and using $80,000 of the Hall legacy, the Nova Scotia Land Survey Institute (NSLSI) was built in Lawrencetown. By 1975 “The Centre for Geographic Sciences” (as it was renamed in 1986) was built to meet increasing demand for skilled NSLSI graduates. In the 70s and 80s the Institute became synonymous with Geomatics training excellence nationally and internationally.
The Annapolis Community Mapping Project celebrates this singular Nova Scotian innovation and achievement at COGS, April 13 as a grateful recipient of a 150 Forward grant from the Department of Community, Heritage and Culture.
For more information: contact@mapannapolis.ca Heather LeBlanc, Projects manager 902.532.5836
