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According to the University of British Columbia's Introduction to its Fire Insurance Plans of B.C. Cities website:"In 1875 Charles Edward Goade mapped Levis, Quebec, and later bought Sandborn's Canadian stock.()...() In 1917, Goade sold out to the Canadian and provincial underwriters associations. The associations amalgamated to form the Canadian Underwriters' Association in 1960 and subsequent production of fire insurance plans was centralized under the Plan Division of the Association. In 1974, the Association became the Insurers' Advisory Association. The following year, in 1975, production of fire insurance plans ceased."
The Saskatchewan Archives Board has copies of the 1911 City of Regina Fire Insurance Plans produced by civil engineer Charles E. Goade. It also has the 1913 edition. Where these two editions are extremely useful is in conducting research on the impact of the 1912 tornado, by comparing the two editions in areas that were affected by the tornado.
Theoretically, one could compare buildings in 1911 that were no longer there or shown as ruins in 1913, and figure out roughly the actual path of the tornado.
Interestingly enough, the Laird building, built in 1906, just on the east side of Smith Street, is listed as a two-storey concrete building on the 1911 Fire Insurance Plan, while by 1913, according to the updated edition of the plan, it has become a three-storey brick building. This suggests that it was quite possibly damaged by the tornado and rebuilt shortly after with an extra floor.
Above all today, the fire insurance plans constitute an accurate record of a built environment that has often disappeared from the contemporary landscape.
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Text by Claude-Jean Harel, MA, MAHIPresident and Founder of the Great Excursions Company
www.greatexcursions.com
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