Frank Swannell, Surveyor Extraordinaire

Canada’s iconic explorers and the builders of the Canadian Pacific Railway aside, we don’t have many land surveyors who have achieved national stature.

In his day, Victoria-based Frank Swannell was the exception, nationally recognized for his incredible feats with both a transit level and a camera. On foot, on horseback and by canoe, he probably covered more British Columbia terrain than any other man before or since.

What now can be done by aircraft in hours he, and those who worked with him, had to do the hard way, by battling mountains and streams, weather, mosquitoes and black flies and every manner of hardship as a daily fact of life; the cost of doing business, so to speak.

But Swannell’s legacy is greater than his hard-won surveys—he added to his daily struggles in the wilds by lugging along a camera and portable darkroom equipment. The result is a priceless legacy now in possession of the BC Archives—5000 quality photographs.

These black and white images not only capture the day-to-day life of a survey party at work (and sometimes at play) but record landscapes as they were and, in many cases, are no longer.

An introduction to the legendary Frank Swannell and a glimpse into his magnificent photo gallery in next week’s Chronicles.

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PHOTO: Frank Swannell on his way to work. And we complain about commuter traffic? —BC Archives