Extent of title as applied to the Esquimalt and Nanaimo Railway Company’s land grant By John L. Motherwell, BCLS Life Member, CLS, P.Eng
This article arises from two recent professional presentations of interest to British Columbia Land Surveyors: A dissertation given at the September 2019 meeting of the Vancouver Island BCLS Group by Jeffrey Beddoes, BCLS, of the LTSA. Mr. Beddoes provided a useful workmanlike summary of the history of the Esquimalt and Nanaimo Railway Company’s land grant, up to the registration of the railway’s first grant and the issuance of its first (absolute) title No. 9/693/7434a on 21 April 1887. An article in The Link Magazine by Cristin Schossberger, Surveyor General of British Columbia, which was founded upon a recent judicial case holding that the terms “extent of title” and “extent of ownership” are one and the same.
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pon registration of its title on 21 April 1887, the E & N was firmly of the belief that the extent of title of its grant included gold and silver, and that it extended to the low water mark, between its south boundary at the estuary of Goldstream Creek and its northern upland boundary near modern-day Campbell River. Circumstance were at work, however, to test these beliefs
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and it is the purpose of this article to discuss them.
First test The first test arose in 1895 when the E & N discovered that a free miner named Bainbridge was the holder of a placer mining claim and was mining for gold on China Creek at Port Albemi. Bainbridge was ejected by the E & N, but he sued to assert his
right to be so mining. Bainbridge or his lawyers had very sharp eyesight. The E & N claimed that the term in its grant referring to its ownership of “minerals and substances whatsoever” was sufficient to sustain its case, but Bainbridge claimed that the E & N’s grant did not include the necessary “apt and precise words” passing ownership of metals royal, which comprise gold and silver, to it. The
