Calgary's Grand Old Man
Allan Poyntz Patrick is considered to be Calgary’s first Land Surveyor. He marked the boundaries of Fish Creek Farm in the fall of 1879 for Edgar Dewdney, the new Indian Commissioner. A.P.’s last survey in Calgary was 64 years later! Born in Montreal in 1849, raised in Toronto, Quebec City and Ottawa, A.P. was schooled at Galt Grammar School, Upper Canada College and Royal Military College in Kingston. His early survey career started in 1869 in Ottawa, continued under the direction of Sandford Fleming on the CPR route in 1871, and flourished under the Surveyor-General of Canada in the Northwest Territories starting in 1874.
Allan Patrick was interested in many things during his 98-year lifetime: soldiering; surveying; ranching; drilling for oil; prospecting for coal and silver; farming; promoting irrigation; Calgary politics; World War I military tribunals; hunting; and developing land. The house he built in the late 1880s is still standing in Calgary! His wife Maggie McPherson, who he met in about 1882 near Morleyville, descended from Hudson’s Bay Company employees. She was related to Lord Strathcona’s wife Isabella Sophia Hardisty Smith, Senator Richard Charles Hardisty, and Lady Isabella Clarke Hardisty Lougheed. Patrick’s Calgary survey company was located in downtown Calgary from about 1888 to 1948, during which time his company registered almost 600 new survey plans.
“Calgary’s Grand Old Man” tells A.P.’s story in the context of the times. He was a true pioneer, able to survive rough weather on the prairies or in the mountains. Surveying in all the provinces west of Quebec, Patrick was commissioned as a Land Surveyor in Ontario, Alberta, British Columbia and for the Dominion of Canada. The book wraps up with a discussion of Allan and Maggie’s family and the legacy he left for them to enjoy.
Almost a year ago, Chinook Country Historical Society sponsored my online presentation hosted by Calgary Public Library. Later this month the book that was promised during that June 2021 presentation will be available for purchase. It includes many pictures, maps, newspaper clippings, illustrations and even two paintings. Fifty of them are in colour! You’ll learn about the Dominion Lands Survey System that is the foundation of our modern land ownership. There is a chapter on Oil City in Waterton Lakes National Park where A.P. discovered oil shows in 1879. And a chapter on Mount Royal Ranche, his 22,000-acre grazing lease west of Cochrane. To secure your copy of this biography by this new author, contact Glen R. Belbeck at outofsocks@gmail.com or at +1-403-909-2992.
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