Favourite Foote Photo: Chris Thomas

Leisure leisure leisure leisure.

We all want it. Its allure gets us through the cold, grinding winters of Winnipeg with its promise of happiness, escape, good company or simply peace of mind. I can think of nothing better than hopping into a car and hitting the highway in search of a beach, that pervasive symbol of leisure that now dominates the global tourism industry. That is assuming, of course, that I have the means to get to the beach, the time off in order to do so and presumably somewhere to reside if I intend to stay for more than twelve hours. Yes, leisure was and continues to be a particularly class segregated component of urban life.


Grand Beach was one of the early recreation destinations to materialize in the immediate radius of early twentieth century Winnipeg. L.B. Foote captures a group of people enjoying a leisurely moment on the beach in his photo from 1914, which reinforces the image of leisure as relaxation, company and the unobstructed pursuit of happiness.

It appears to be tea time in the photo – that unmistakable British soft-spot. But if you look closely, the cups they are using appear to have chips in their paint, probably because they were metal, the forerunner to disposable plastic or Styrofoam. We can only assume then that it was merely a top up of water. This duality is also evident in the subjects of the photograph, in what it shows and what it represents. It shows a group of mostly young women enjoying a day at Grand Beach, with a Bill Murray look-a-like peering at the group from the background and some children playing further back, among others who elude the focus of Foote’s camera and exist only as blurs.

Taken in 1914, the photo captures those who could afford to depart the city in order to pursue leisure, while those who could not remain invisible, stuck at work, stuck at home – stuck in Winnipeg. This was an era that featured a growing middle class, restless and eager to breach their urban boundaries and enjoy the immensity of the Canadian landscape.

Of course the photo has been staged, indicated by the arrangement of its subjects, who are mostly looking at the camera. What is more interesting, however, is that some are not. One woman in particular, situated in the bottom left of the photo, displays a quite intriguing expression as she looks up to someone off-screen, just to Foote’s left. She is wearing a hat that is unlike any of the others, seems to have a wedding ring on, and wears an ambiguous expression that approaches but does not quite reach skepticism. The other figure who immediately catches the eye is the only person in the group standing. The middle-aged man is in the act of pouring water. Unlike many of the others, he does not convey a sense of relaxation: he looks occupied, perhaps even somewhat begrudging of Foote and his camera, and the break in action. But then he may just have been captured at a bad time, it is impossible to know.

I have spent the majority of every summer just ten minutes north of Grand Beach in Victoria Beach. Yes, the name is suggestive; and yes, it does live up to its waspy name. It was connected to its larger, more prominent southern neighbour by way of the CNR line that travelled north from Winnipeg, stopping along the way at East Selkirk, Libau and up along the east shores of Lake Winnipeg. The train winds its way into this photo in the top left corner, appearing startlingly close to the mighty freshwater lake. In the context of this era, the train served as a symbol of mobility and class intersection because it was increasingly affordable to the middle class. The train represents a more accessible form of transportation, one that enabled travel among those who otherwise could not have afforded to travel, due to either time or financial constraints. It also permitted people to travel to areas such as Grand Beach, that a generation ago had been isolated and remote. Grand Beach developed by way of attracting the middle and upper classes of booming Winnipeg, offering an appealing escape from the toils and stresses of urban life, and the train was the means by which visitors travelled to it for over fifty years. This is not to say that transportation by train was completely egalitarian, considering they were not allowed to run on Sundays until 1923, the day of the week which coincidentally was many workers’ only day off. It is difficult to determine the class of the group depicted in the photograph with any degree of certainty, but it is unlikely that they were recent immigrants or poor. Perhaps this ambiguity reveals as much about the medium of photography as it does the economic status of Foote’s subjects.

Those familiar with the layout of Grand Beach will immediately recognize the location of this photo as being the primary entrance to what has since evolved into the most capacious and popular beach in Manitoba. Early infrastructure is apparent in the photo, including a rather sketchy looking dock, a track that has since been removed, and the iconic canoe, laying idle, awaiting adventure. Foote also photographed Grand Beach a decade later. Those later images captured the growth of the resort both in terms of its infrastructure and its number of users. In the age of the digital camera it’s easy to forget that early 20th century photographs were rarely taken for free or by a stray family member. While Foote may be capturing leisure, make no mistake that while doing so he is himself at work.

Yes, the depiction of leisure captured by this Foote photograph reflects those who were able to experience what was then an exotic and novel escape. In 1914 Winnipeg there were no guaranteed two day weekends, monthly statutory holidays or accrued pain vacation time, and thus not all were capable of leaving the city in search of leisure. I am thankful that this has changed, to an extent, as I consider myself extremely lucky to have been able to experience my summers at Victoria Beach. That being said, I understand that this photo, while it capture a moment in the lifestyle of the privileged, should serve to remind us who is not enjoying an afternoon on the beach, and perhaps even provoke us to ponder why.

 - Chris Thomas

* * *  
Chris Thomas is entering his fourth year at the University of Manitoba, pursuing an honours degree in history. He is currently working as a research assistant for two professors, Esyllt Jones on her forthcoming book on Canadian medicare, and Paul Earl on his book chronicling a hundred years of the Canadian grain trade.

Reprint: Spent the day with the University of Manitoba Press as they did the press check for the L.B. Foote book Imagining Winnipeg

Photo by Michael Deal.

* * *

So Winnipeg Free Press photographer Michael Deal traveled with UMP director David Carr, Stephen Rosenberg and I to Altona for the press check of Imagining Winnipeg.

He shot video and photographs (still to come!) but also took this series of black and white cell phone photos documenting the printing process that he posted to his blog Thursday night.

Have a look, would you?

Ariel Gordon
UMP Promotions/Editorial Assistant 

SNEAK PEEK #9: Press check!

My camera is full of pictures from our twelve hour day in Altona at the Friesens plant, observing UMP director David Carr and Doowah Design's Steven Rosenberg do the press check for Imagining Winnipeg.

l-r: David Carr, Randy the pressman, and Steven Rosenberg.

My clothes still have that 'new book smell.'

But more than that, my head is still full of the enormity of the place. Reams and stacks of paper...

What look like water pipes, coming down from the ceiling, specifically for ink to feed the machines...

The ancient embosser in the middle of all the machinery, including a robot arm that lifts boxes...

The art book that retails for $5,000 that Friesens printed in their trophy room...

And yet, homemade cherry pie in the cafeteria where we waited the 45 minutes or so between signatures. And the Safeway bag on a cafeteria table full of extra cucumbers. And the quilted version of the cover of Robert Munsch's Love You Forever on the wall.

I won't be able to share any of the images until Monday, when I'm back in the office, so I thought I'd throw up this pic, taken on my cell phone.

Thanks to Glenda for showing us around, for making sure we had covers and one of each of the signatures we approved to take home and for directing us to Jasmine's Tea Room, just down the street from Friesens.

Also, yay for my first press check!

Ariel Gordon
UMP Promotions/Editorial Assistant

Further to Laura Lamont's Favourite Foote Photo

Earlier this week, Laura Lamont wrote about a Foote photo that features a banquet in St. Boniface sewer.

(This photo, incidentally, will be included in Imagining Winnipeg, with the caption "Banquet to celebrate completion of underground reservoir at St. Boniface Waterworks, 552 Plinguet Street, 1912. N3012.")
 
In her post, Laura says:

"There’s an odd custom of holding banquets in subterranean structures going back to 1827 with Marc Brunel’s candelabra-lit supper in the Thames Tunnel to prove how safe it was, and continuing on to a 1994 luncheon in the Channel Tunnel attended by the Queen."

There aren't any photographs of the 1827 banquet online, but I thought I'd share this painting of the event by George Jones, entitled The Banquet in the Thames Tunnel.

According to Wikipedia, Jones was a British painter and Keeper of the Royal Academy. He was most famous for his paintings of military subjects.

Favourite Foote Photo: Laura Lamont

In this 1912 photograph by L.B. Foote, about fifty men are assembled around a long table. They’ve finished dinner and have begun on a very English dessert course of fruit, cheese, and crackers; of the many bottles on the table, some are surely port.

The guests, some sporting doughty moustaches, are wearing their best suits. Where the jury-rigged gaslights don’t shine, the vaulted room disappears into shadow except on the left, where one solitary man looks to be neither guest nor waiter.

Did he put up the scaffolding for the dangling lamps, wrap the steadying cords around the pillars? Hands on hips, he looks like he wants this evening to be over with, to take down the wooden supports, to put away his ladder and go home to bed.

Why did Foote keep him in the frame? The photographer could have asked him to step aside, or to move to the back wall, obscured by the worthies.

It’s as if Foote is telescoping his vision seven years into the future to the Winnipeg General Strike, when the workers would move into the foreground to be recorded by Foote for their own sake.

However, this is no exclusive ballroom or gentlemen’s clubroom: it’s the new, 1-million gallon underground reservoir of the St. Boniface Waterworks on Plinguet Street.

There’s an odd custom of holding banquets in subterranean structures going back to 1827 with Marc Brunel’s candelabra-lit supper in the Thames Tunnel to prove how safe it was, and continuing on to a 1994 luncheon in the Channel Tunnel attended by the Queen.

It was a way of celebrating achievements sometimes forgotten once the guests were above ground again; indeed, though impressive at the time, the St. Boniface reservoir was overtaken in importance in 1919 by the Shoal Lake aqueduct.

While the aqueduct is still working, the reservoir has been filled in. I’m not sure what the man on the left would think of having stayed out late for that.

- Laura Lamont

* * *

Laura Lamont has published work in Descant and the Turkish Review, and can get lost for hours while wandering through digital archives.

Foresters

Catholic Order of Foresters, c. 1916. Courtesy of the Archives of Manitoba (n165).

* * *

This is the second item on this blog that touches on the Ancient Order of Foresters.

Here's a slightly longer excerpt from Esyllt's introduction to Imagining Winnipeg, which I think gives you a sense of both Foote's early history and of recruitment practices that fraternal orders such as the AOF practiced:

"For a time in PEI, Foote had sold photo coupons to families that they could reimburse at local studios, and he took this up again in Halifax and Dartmouth, selling coupons for sessions at the Cogswell Photo Company. He sold mostly to young military men and their girlfriends, and working-class families. He began to work in a team with a photographer, not in a studio, but at soldiers’ barracks and hangouts, and community events like boat races. At this time, Foote himself was a salesman, not a photographer. He purchased a cylinder phonograph, rigged it up so that twenty-four people could listen to it at once, and charged for the privilege at local fairs all over Nova Scotia. At the same time, he began taking his own photographs, of local churches and their ministers, which he would sell. He also worked as a recruiter for the Order of Foresters, playing his autoharp and hosting entertainment all along the south shore of Nova Scotia, encouraging people to join the Order."

Again, this image came to us courtesy of film editor Bob Lower.

Shooting star

Jimmie Ward's "Shooting Star", 1911. Courtesy of the Archives of Manitoba (n892).

* * *

From the Free Press archives: 

"Heading off the programme and perhaps of the most lively interest will be the aviation performance of George Mestach and Jimmie Ward. Monoplane and biplane will be seen for the first time side by side in the west. Mestach has a French machine, the very one which, driven by Jules Vedrines, took first place in the famous flight from Paris to Madrid last year. Mestach makes his specialty the delivery of letters and parcels and will no doubt oblige those who are desirous of taking advantage of the new mode of quick delivery at the fair. Ward is more of a sensationalist and his "Shooting Star" is a well known machine through the States, where he has electrified the spectators on more than one occasion by his daring." - July 6, 1912 description of the Canadian Industrial exhibition in Winnipeg.

For a more detailed discussion of Ward's history, see the 1995 article in the Minnesota Historical Society's History magazine.

(Born Jens P. Wilson, Ward changed his name to avoid a number of speeding tickets: "His affinity for speed soon caused him to take on a new last name, because his police record for speeding stood in the way of keeping his license.")

Again, this image came to us courtesy of film editor Bob Lower.

Giant horseshoe

Blacksmith with giant horseshoe, 1912. Courtesy of the Archives of Manitoba (n404).

* * *

Lately, we've been talking a LOT about the process of putting together Imagining Winnipeg, but there are thousands of Foote photos that didn't make it into the book.

So we thought we'd share this trio of images that came to us courtesy of film editor Bob Lower.

We couldn't find any more information about the people in this particular photo or the occasion that necessitated a giant horseshoe, but we were able to find advertisements from the same era that mimicked those on the wall behind the...giant horseshoe.

From the Free Press archives:

SNEAK PEEK #8: Proofing!

This week, Doowah Design's Steve Rosenberg sent the interiors of Imagining Winnipeg to Friesens.

UMP Director David Carr and I worked intensely on the proofs over the last ten days, checking for errors and omissions in addition to ensuring that that our design and layout choices were consistent.

We looked anxiously at each other and asked questions like:

"Do we have periods after all the source info in the captions?"

"Do we have hyphens between all instances of 'early-twentieth-century'?"

"Esyllt uses 'blackface' all-one-word in the introduction. Do the captions to those photos use the same spelling?"

Most of this necessary nitpickery took place at UMP's offices at the U of M, but on Tuesday afternoon, we traveled to Doowah's downtown offices for a final look-see.

This diptych shows David scanning the Esyllt W. Jones' introduction ONE LAST TIME in Doowah's board room.

(Please note all the UMP titles on Doowah's trophy wall...in addition to the eminently recognizable posters for Keanu Reeves' 1995 turn in 'the Scottish play' and the RWB' 1998 production of Dracula.)

Ariel Gordon
UMP Promotions/Editorial Assistant

SNEAK PEEK #7: The Blurb!

In publishing, there's nothing like a good blurb.

They're not so much reviews as recommendations. So it matters who you have blurb something. The person blurbing is saying "You must read this." And if you're a fan of the blurber, that recommendation means something.

As such, we were thrilled when director Guy Maddin agreed to blurb Imagining Winnipeg.

"L.B. Foote's Winnipeg is a boomtown of staggering abundance and meanest privation. His city teems with a mad sense of community—everywhere people, people and more people, throngs of new citizens forever gathering, spilling over, lining up; everyone held rapt and almost intoxicated by grand ceremony, fevered ritual or political upheaval. So much giddy newness plopped down on top of the nations that came before and on the timeless, pristine, soon-to-be-bedevilled plains. Foote honours human, city and prairie alike with his peculiar and ennobling eye." — Guy Maddin, director of My Winnipeg.

Those of you familiar with UMP's books may have noticed that we published a book on Maddin's work, entitled Playing with Memories: Essays on Guy Maddin in 2009.

The collection was edited by David Church, a PhD student at Indiana University, and while it featured many of Maddin's contemporaries and collaborators, Maddin himself wasn't directly involved.

So it's nice to come full circle, first with a book on "the aesthetics and politics behind Maddin's work" and second with a book on the aesthetics and politics behind Foote's work, as blurbed by Maddin.

 I think it's also a great reminder of the influence Foote's images have had - and hopefully will continue to have - on generations of artists.

Ariel Gordon
UMP Promotions/Editorial Assistant

Unknown men #6-15

Unknown man #13

One of the things I most appreciate about photography is the documentary sense of the everyday, the unexpected, and the unplanned it’s given us.

Posed photos and portraits give us a “frozen” image controlled by the artist (and often by the subject as well). But a photograph of a city street taken by a photographer who was literally ‘prowling’ looking for an interesting shot can give you an immediate sense of “ordinary” people in that place and time (think of the photos of John Paskievich, just to name one of many). My own images (perhaps largely fictional?) of cities like Paris or New York have been created by street photos of people going about their business largely unaware of the photographer.

L.B. Foote spent over 50 years taking pictures of Winnipeggers, but he took almost none of these kind of ‘random’ shots of street scenes. He was likely just too busy making a living, hustling from one commercial job to another. Most of his street shots are of a formal events like a parade, with a shot he had clearly thought through in advance, and was probably going to sell to newspapers or a wire service. While Foote is our great guide to the visual past of Winnipeg, he does so largely without spontaneous images of “everyday” life.

There is, however, a strange group of photos in the Manitoba Archives’ Foote Collection that comes close to this for me. They are a set of 14 nearly full-length portraits of unidentified men, taken outside probably taken around 1914. Each photo includes its own unique number on a chalkboard, often held by an arm coming from just off frame (probably the next person in line). Judging from the buildings in the background, this may be in the field between the old University of Manitoba Broadway campus and the Legislative Building, where Memorial Park now is.

We have no information about why Foote took these photographs or who these men are. The numbers suggest that he was taking these for a group portrait that he would later cut, edit, and re-assemble. Maybe this was a club? Several of the men seem to have medals or military ribbons in their lapels, so perhaps it was a soldier’s reunion.

These are certainly not spontaneous shots, although they are more or less on the street. In a strange way, though, they are a kind of ‘man in the street’ gallery, a grab bag of Winnipeg male citizenry, c. 1914. We have men of all ages, dressed in all manner of clothes, and with all sorts of expressions, from the grim to the frozen to the downright goofy (check out number 12 with his big grin and bowler hat). Although they are certainly dressed for some sort of occasion, this is definitely not the Board of Trade in tuxedos. It feels like these fourteen men have been yanked out of crowd, almost randomly, and told to stand still for a minute.

My favorite is number 13. Who in world is this fellow, standing at a defiant angle to the camera? With his impressive mustache, cocky look, and the jaunty tilt of his cap, if he’s not a man about town, he’s certainly someone who knows his way around a bustling city. While the other men stand stiffly, almost at attention, he seems like he’s just stopped for a minute (just enough to put his cigarette down), almost as if he’s still in motion. And to finish things off, instead of a medal in his lapel, he seems to be wearing a dandy’s boutonniere. This looks like someone who would be as much at place strolling down a metropolitan boulevard, a Parisian flaneur, as he seems to be posing for Foote’s camera.

- David Carr


* * *
David Carr is the director of the University of Manitoba Press.

Found Foote Photo #12: Diamond Anniversary

"I’m enclosing an L.B. Foote family photo taken in September 1942.

The McCowan family arrived in Manitoba from Pertheshire, Scotland in 1921.

This one of the original photos given to family members on the occasion of the diamond (60th) wedding anniversary of William and Helen McCowan.

The small photo in the corner of their oldest son, who was in the air force during WWII. Their children are sitting beside them and one son is behind Helen. The rest of the people in the photo are sons-in-law and daughters-in-law and grandchildren.

My husband is the boy in front of William.

I met Mr. Foote in the latter part of his life. The McCowans became friends of his, as they lived at 406 Wardlaw Avenue and he lived on Gertrude Avenue. They both belonged to St. Augustine Church near the corner of River and Osborne Street.

Sincerely,

Margaret McCowan"

Found Foote Photo #11: Sunday School in Elmwood

Back in January, June Sanderson brought in a photo of her father, Henry James Hunter.

He is one of the boys in this 1920s-era group photo. June didn’t know which one. She knew this was of a Sunday school in Elmwood, but didn’t know which church it was.

June didn’t see these photos until after her mother’s death in 1985…so she couldn’t ask which little boy was her father.

Henry James – Jim to his friends – was a salesman for 3M before the war. June said she heard that he sold the first roll of tape in Winnipeg.

He joined the air force in 1942 and was in training all over Canada. He went overseas in March of 1945, toward the end of WWII. June was born while her father was away, though she notes he was there for her christening.

Post-war, Jim was a foreman in the baggage department for CPR and lived at 689 Moncton Avenue in East Kildonan. He died in 1956 at the age of 45.

A few months after our meeting, June contacted me again. Though she’d initially been leaning towards John Black Memorial United on Henderson Highway, she was now quite certain it was Gordon-King Memorial United.

Located on on Cobourg Avenue in Elmwood, the church was named in honour of Rev. Dr. Charles W. Gordon (also known as writer Ralph Connor), and his father-in-law, John Mark King. King was the first principal of Manitoba College (now the University of Winnipeg).

This supposition was confirmed by a search of the website for Gordon-King Memorial, which contains images of their meeting hall, which looks very similar to the room in June’s photo.

Thanks to June for sharing her photo…and her mystery!

Can any readers identify any of the other people in the photo? If Jim wound up with one, it makes me wonder how many other copies are in people’s attics and spare rooms in a box of old photos…

Further to Caitlyn Carson's Favourite Foote Photo

Last week, education student Caitlyn Carson wrote about a Foote photo entitled Mr. and Mrs. Andre Nault, Diamond Anniversary Party, St. Vital, Manitoba, 19 October 1910.

For those of you who might be interested, Foote also shot a group photo at that same event.

This photo will be included in Imagining Winnipeg. It will be the fourth photo.

The caption (I can't get captions off my brain...) for the photo is currently:

 "The diamond wedding anniversary party for André Nault, a cousin of Louis Riel and a member of Riel's Provisional Government, and his wife Anastasie, St. Vital, 1910. N2397."

SNEAK PEEK #5: Duotones!

Friesens in Altona, MB, prints the majority of UMP's books. Last week, they sent duotone tests for some of the images in Imagining Winnipeg: History through the Photographs of L.B. Foote.

According to Wikipedia, a duotone is "a halftone reproduction of an image using the superimposition of one contrasting colour halftone (traditionally black) over another color halftone. This is most often used to bring out middle tones and highlights of an image."

For Imagining Winnipeg - like with John Paskievitch's The North End and Gerry Kopelow's All Our Changes - we'll be using "warm grey" along with black.

In Winnipeg Modern: Architecture 1945-1975, on the other hand, we opted for "cool grey."

The three sheets  you see on the floor of UMP's offices represent different amounts of each ink.

Steven Rosenberg of Doowah Design, who is the graphic designer for this project, selected a range of photographs for the test. He then took each of those photos and sent both the original as we received it from the Archives of Manitoba (and other sources) and a version that he'd processed in Photoshop.

Apparently, one of the issues with this book is that Foote used a variety of cameras over the course of the four decades he was photographing the city and its people. Which means that the images, though all black and white, are all a little bit different...

Ariel Gordon
UMP Promotions/Editorial Assistant

Found Foote Photos #10: Foote's Neighbour

"This is my father, who is standing in our front yard at 494 Gertrude Avenue.

The house to the left is where the Footes lived. Their daughter Norma was brides-maid in my sister’s wedding party in April 1953.

My father, Martin Toth, was in the army reserve during WWII. This picture, I assume, was taken somewhere during WWII.

My father always kept a beautiful garden and many people would compliment him on his gardening talent.

If you look closely, you’ll see no. 492 above the door of the Footes’ front door.

Yours truly,

Barbara McDowall
Pinawa, MB

p.s. This photo was taken from an elevated position. What would he have used to do this? Just wondering…."

Favourite Foote Photos: Caitlyn Carson

Some suggest that Lewis Benjamin Foote was a commercial photographer and just that. Yes, a man has to make a living. But I largely disagree with this assertion. What the lens captured was Foote’s vision and perspective and this photograph is one example.

Modest and simple; not much else can be said about this particular Foote photograph. Yet, inexplicably, I was attracted to this image above all others. Perhaps it was the setting, rustic and outdoorsy. But as I thought about it more and more, my attention kept on being drawn to the faces of the individuals in the picture. I found myself wondering; “What is it about this man and woman that Foote captures in such an endearing manner?”

“Mr. and Mrs. Andre Nault, Diamond Anniversary Party, St. Vital, Manitoba, 19 October 1910” reads the caption. So our man and woman were husband and wife! Perhaps the positioning already suggested that, but evidence-to-support is always a good thing when it comes to history. This piece of information, provided by the caption, may suggest an answer for the endearing quality of this Foote photograph; a husband and wife, having spent many years together, celebrating the accumulation of ___ years of accomplishment. Makes sense, such accomplishment is generally respected and revered. But wait…how many years exactly is a diamond anniversary?

Thanks to Queen Victoria and her Diamond Jubilee, this question wasn’t easily answered. Pre-1897 a diamond anniversary would have been 75 years. However, when Queen Victoria reached 60 years of accession to the throne, she decided to term the monumental achievement her Diamond Jubilee. Ergo, some discretion would exist in the classification of a diamond anniversary circa that time period. Since Mr. and Mrs. Nault’s anniversary was only 13 years later, it is hard to discern exactly how many years they were celebrating. Neither 60 nor 75 years seems farfetched. To support this, a clipping titled “Wedding Anniversaries” from The Brandon Daily Sun dated December 10, 1909 lists “Seventy-fifth year – Diamond.” (There is no listing for a sixtieth year.)

Yes, we are on a bit of a side track. However, 60 and 75 years prior, although overlapping, can produce very different histories depending. In aims to end this chase, I typed the caption of this photograph into the Google search engine. A returned search reads, “NAULT, ANDRÉ, buffalo hunter, farmer, and captain of the Métis.”

Hmm. Next time I’ll just start with the names! The returned search, quoted above, is from the Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online. It continues by detailing Nault’s participation in the Métis community, although he himself was of French-Canadian descent. Key in Métis activism since his late teens, Nault participated as a leader in the Métis Resistance of 1869-1870, and actually commanded the firing squad that executed Thomas Scott. Of course, this was done under the guidance of his first cousin, Louis Riel. For one year, Nault was imprisoned on account of Scott’s murder, but was eventually acquitted.

Perhaps there were some visual clues to André’s significance in L. B. Foote’s photograph. Across the background of the photograph, we see horizontal lines dominate the page...except for behind Mr. Nault. There, we see vertical lines positioned across the background façade, against the grain, if you will. Furthermore, the angle from which Foote took the photograph seems to accentuate the tools to the left of the photograph. Lanterns, materials, an old shovel and metal machinery seat compose this part of the photograph. It is interesting that both Foote and/or his customers chose not to exclude this area from the photograph. To me it suggests an industrious character, proud of hard work, perseverance, and overcoming hardship. Is this symbolism possibly representative of André Nault’s accomplishments in the Métis community, farm life on River Lot 12 or his relationship with his wife?

With the help of Google Translate (everything was in French,) I discovered some information about André Nault’s wife, Anastasie. Daughter of an Acadian fur trader, Joseph Landry, she was one of twelve children; her mother was Geneviève Lalonde. It is interesting to note that Anastasie along with five of her siblings married into the same two families, the Nault and Bruneau families (both prominent Métis and French-Canadian families).

Back to a question posed earlier. How many years were Mr. and Mrs. Nault celebrating? Sixty years, as it turns out. André Nault and Anastasie Landry were married January 11, 1850. (Though the celebration in the photograph took place nine months after their actual 60th anniversary....)

Knowing how long they’d been married doesn’t contribute much to our understanding of these two people now. But these pieces of information are a starting point for analysis. We now know that these two people were part of the crucial activism that led to the founding of the province of Manitoba.

What was life like during that time for them? In this photograph, André Nault’s facial expression is steadfast, while Anastasie Nault’s is pensive. Which might suggest something of their personalities and relationship, shaped by sixty years of marriage, fourteen children and one rebellion.

I believe that Foote recognized the character of his customers. His interpretation and portrayal of their personalities and relationship not only provides us with information about the subjects, but it exposes Foote himself. A photographer captures intangibles but his perception of these qualities is largely subjective. Accentuating certain aspects of a frame is not only artistic, it’s his job.

Once his lens met his eye, Foote opened a gateway to Winnipeg’s local history…as he saw it.

- Caitlyn Carson


* * *
Caitlyn Carson is pursuing a Bachelor of Education at the University of Manitoba, with a major in history. She looks forward to sharing Winnipeg's heritage (including Foote's photography!) with her students.

SNEAK PEEK #4: Captioning!

Writing captions for Imagining Winnipeg - the book's proper title, as opposed to my usual "Foote book" - was a two week project.

UMP Director David Carr and I split up the 150+ images and set out to write comprehensive captions for each of them.

Most - but not all - of the images came with captions, written either by Foote himself or by an Archives of Manitoba staff person.

In some cases, the captions were cursory, likely intended to jog Foote's memory when he searched his extensive library of images.

We were after captions that more closely resembled those in a newspaper: at the very least, they had to provide a where and a what.

And so, we tried to attach proper names to the photos if possible, which meant names and/or affiliations for the subjects of photos. We also tried to pinpoint the location of each photo.

The goal was to provide enough information to readers that if they wanted to, they could easily do further research on the person/place/thing.

Sometimes, it was a matter of removing incorrect information from the captions. Foote was human and so made human errors over the course of his long career.

We consulted Google maps, archival maps and the Winnipeg Free Press archives...as well as authorities in a variety of fields.

There were also often subtle clues in the photos themselves - such as the shingle of a small business that included its address - all of which meant we were able to add more information to the images.

When we'd made radical changes to the Foote/Archives captions, we printed out evidence to support the changes to share with author Esyllt Jones.

She spent several long stretches with us, verifying the captions, which were then copy-edited for consistency's sake and sent to the graphic designer.

We expect to edit them a final time, depending on how the captions fit on the page...

Next comes a compiling of all the people who contributed photos to the book and/or contributions to this blog.

It's a big list, let me tell you...for which we are immensely grateful.

Ariel Gordon
UMP Promotions/Editorial Assistant 

SNEEK PEAK #3: Page proofs!

I hate offering yet another excuse as to why the blog has gone dormant, especially as we've got a storehouse of such very good material just waiting to be posted...but. But.

By way of apology, I'm sharing this diptych of photos that shows the very early stages of ordering the photos that will be used in Imagining Winnipeg: History Through the Photographs of L.B. Foote.

These photos were taken in Managing Editor Glenn Bergen's office and feature Glenn and Director David Carr comparing the Excel spreadsheet they'd built with the page proofs created by Doowah Design's Steven Rosenberg.

The arrangement of photos is roughly chronological and then also by subject. Which is to say, sports. Or men's clubs. Or family portraits.

It's difficult to keep the details of approximately 150 photos straight, hence the need for a spreadsheet. Or as it turns out, a week or so later, several spreadsheets.

Once the order was more or less set, we moved on to writing captions. The last week has been ALL CAPTIONS, ALL THE TIME.

The trick is to provide just enough information to situate readers, so: identifying the people in the picture and the place where they're standing. Or what group, organization or business they represent.

Suffice to say, we've been googling and consulting the Winnipeg Free Press archives like nobody's business... but more on that later!

Ariel Gordon
UMP Promotions/Editorial Assistant