On April 28, 1973 the inaugural meeting of the Manitoba Association of Landscape Architects (MALA) was held at the Westminster Motor Hotel in Winnipeg. This meeting was the result of several informal planning sessions at the home of Douglas Paterson, then Senior Design Planner with Lombard North. At the Westminster Hotel meeting an interim slate of officers was installed and asked to draft several basic documents, which would direct the business of the new association. This first executive consisted of Douglas Paterson, President; Jack Walker, Vice- President; Gunter A. Schoch, Vice-President; Kenneth Pugh, Secretary; and Garry Hilderman, Treasurer.

The first annual general meeting of MALA took place on March 19, 1974 at the Granite Curling Club. Though the new association was small with only nine charter members, the meeting was arranged with appropriate panache. Since MALA on its inauguration became a component association of the CSLA, a congratulatory telegram with bottles of champagne arrived from CSLA president Clive Justice. The telegram read, “Congratulations! You are the ‘Last Spike’. The Manitoba Association of Landscape Architects fulfills our national dream: a thin band of landscape architects from sea to sea.” Because Saskatchewan had yet to form a provincial association it was decided that MALA would invite Saskatchewan landscape architects to join the Manitoba association. This would allow Saskatchewan professionals to retain their memberships in CSLA, which through a by-law change was henceforth only available to members of a CSLA component association. The Saskatchewan Association of Landscape Architects was formed in 1980.

The early years were a struggle for the new association which was constantly preoccupied by its balance sheet. There was not even enough money to finance the president’s attendance at CSLA board meetings, and so the MALA leader had to pay his or her own way or not go at all. Since this was an untenable situation, MALA raised annual fees for professional membership to $125. Legal protection and recognition of the profession was one of the first issues that MALA addressed. An attempt in 1974 to register the name of the association with the provincial corporations branch was unsuccessful. A stipulation in the Manitoba Architects Act forbade the use of the term “architect” by anyone other than a member of the Manitoba Association of Architects. The architects were sympathetic to MALA’s aims and indicated that they would not oppose MALA’s name registration. However, the issue was clearly not a simple one and the executive of the day decided to carry on with the association’s business and wait until there were resources available to pursue the matter further.

from  Making a Place: A History of Landscape Architects and Landscape Architects in Manitoba by Catherine Macdonald

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