Who was Charles Edward Goad?
/Listed in the Dictionary of Canadian Biography, Charles Goad was a significant personality in late-19th-century Canada as a civil engineer and publisher of, amongst other things, fire insurance plans. He produced a staggering number of coloured diagrams of cities and towns around the world, including Marmora in 1893!
Charles-Edward-Goad-1879-Photo-Credit-Vancouver-Archives
Fire-insurance plans, which would become Goad’s principal field of endeavour, were diagrammatic maps of urban areas produced for the use of fire-insurance companies. The measured drawings of streets and structures helped insurers determine risk for policies and assess the extent of liability in the event of fire. The plans recorded street names, widths, and numbers; fire-protection facilities; the materials, shape, height, placement, and use of buildings; and the locations of openings, types of stored materials, and areas of high-risk activities on industrial sites. They were originally made as required by insurance companies, but the expense of surveying, other fieldwork, lithography, and stencilling with watercolours, combined with relatively limited demand and the need for frequent revisions because of rapidly changing urban morphology, meant that few copies were produced. (Dictionary of Canadian Biography - Click here for the link)
The above map indicates the placing of stores, including the hardware and post office on the site of the present BMR gift shop, and a hotel next door, one of four hotels drawn on the maps.
