History
Prior to Confederation, responsibilities for hydrographic survey and chart production in British North America rested with the Royal Navy.
In 1882, the loss of the steamship SS Asia on an uncharted shoal in Georgian Bay resulted in 150 fatalities and was Canada's worst maritime disaster at the time. On August 13, 1883, the Dominion government established the Georgian Bay Survey which was empowered by legislation with the responsibility to survey and chart navigable waters of Georgian Bay and Lake Huron.
Surveying and charting was extended to Canada's Pacific coast in 1891, tidal and current metering nationwide began in 1893, surveying and charting extended to the Maritimes by 1905, and water level gauging of the Great Lakes began in 1912.
In 1904, a Privy Council order renamed the Georgian Bay Survey to the Hydrographic Survey of Canada with some modified responsibilities. In 1913 one of Canada's most famous hydrographic survey vessels, CSS Acadia was commissioned for use on the Atlantic coast. In 1928, the organization was renamed to the current name Canadian Hydrographic Service. Responsibility was extended on March 31, 1949 with the entry of Newfoundland into Confederation, with CHS taking over surveys and charting around the island of Newfoundland and the coast of Labrador from the Royal Navy.
Read more about this topic: Canadian Hydrographic Service
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—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“There is nothing truer than myth: history, in its attempt to “realize” myth, distorts it, stops halfway; when history claims to have “succeeded” this is nothing but humbug and mystification. Everything we dream is “realizable.” Reality does not have to be: it is simply what it is.”
—Eugène Ionesco (b. 1912)
“There is one great fact, characteristic of this our nineteenth century, a fact which no party dares deny. On the one hand, there have started into life industrial and scientific forces which no epoch of former human history had ever suspected. On the other hand, there exist symptoms of decay, far surpassing the horrors recorded of the latter times of the Roman empire. In our days everything seems pregnant with its contrary.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)