Favourite Foote Photos: Shawna Dempsey

I think I remember the night the Leland Hotel burned down.

Or at least the morning after.

But all of the fires, all of the buildings lost, run together in my mind.

In Winnipeg things vanish so quickly.

A building is demolished and then it is hard to remember exactly what it looked like.

Its edges, in memory, are blurry.

Still, we persist in naming locations by their ghost-names. "Where shall we meet?" Perhaps at William and King, which will always be "Where the Leland was" or Higgins and Main, "Where the Savoy was" or across from the CPR, "Where the Royal Alex was."

It is nice to be reminded these places actually existed through photos such as this one, rather than being mere figments of a collective dream.

- Shawna Dempsey


* * *
Shawna Dempsey is a performance artist, curator, and Co-Director of Mentoring Artists for Women's Art.

Favourite Foote Photos: Adele Perry

I find Foote’s photographs both very familiar and very strange. They are familiar in large part because of how frequently they have been used in the histories of Canada that I teach and study. The one of the young women pumping gas during the Winnipeg General Strike, trying not to laugh. The one of the poor people sitting on a bed in front of drying laundry in their north-end home. These are just some of the Foote images that historians have chosen to illustrate their books and lectures. For good reason: Foote’s images are vivid and compelling.

What is unfamiliar to me about Foote’s photographs is the city that he represents. I have lived in Winnipeg for over a decade, and in many ways, the Winnipeg I live in and the one photographed by Foote are often so different as to be regularly unrecognizable. Foote’s Winnipeg is startlingly white. Its feminists appear in black-face. Indigenous people appear rarely and in highly ritualized and stereotypical sorts of ways. There are lots of British flags and a fair number of kilts. The city in Foote’s photographs is very formal. Even when people are overturning streetcars in protest they are well-turned out, the men in ties, the women in handsome interwar suits, and everyone in hats. Sometimes I recognize the buildings or the street-corners in Foote’s photos, but my moments of unfamiliarity – where is that? – are more frequent. Winnipeg has been torn down, fallen apart, weathered by the ice and the grit and the floods, and been both rebuilt and not in ways that mean that the city in the 1920s cannot always be easily connected with the city of the present.

But amongst all this unfamiliarity there is this: the metal fare-box on the streetcar photographed by Foote in 1929. The streetcar itself is gleaming and prosperous. It signals a time and a place where public transit was valued and resourced. Winnipeg’s current public transit system looks very different and means something very different. Decades of decisions have resourced the private car and the kinds of roads and buildings that go with them. Everything in Winnipeg Begins in a Car, quipped one writer, and he was not far off. Efforts to imagine a Winnipeg again organized around public transit, bicycles and walking are happening but this is not an easy task.

But if Foote’s 1929 streetcar is unfamiliar, its fare-box is not. Winnipeg buses still use those exact fare boxes, their metal now softly worn. These fare-boxes are slated to be replaced in 2013, but for at least another year, they can stand as a reminder of the connection between Foote’s Winnipeg and mine. Winnipeg is full of things like this, odd curious objects and institutions that have survived when so much has changed. Much of what is depicted in Foote’s photographs I would be happy to consign to the past: its homogeneity, its embrace of imperial symbols and politics, its easy racism. But some of Foote’s city I would like to reinvent. I have to admit that I would be thrilled if those handsome women’s suits came back into fashion. I would keep the radicalism and protest that Foote so importantly documented. I would be happy to see a return of those streetcars, or at least the commitment to a life not dependent on the private car that they represent. Foote’s photographs prompt us to think about the connections between the past and the present, and where both might figure in the future we want to see.

 - Adele Perry


* * *
Adele Perry teaches at the University of Manitoba, where she is Canada Research Chair in Western Canadian Social History (Tier II). She contributed an essay to UMP's Finding a Way to the Heart: Feminist Writings on Aboriginal and Women's History in Canada, released this spring, and will co-edit Place and Replace: Essays on Western Canada, due out in February 2013.

Gone Swimming!

On the end of March, Dale Barbour wrote a post about one of Foote’s many photos of the beaches and resorts north of Winnipeg on Lake Manitoba. Dale talked about a shot of Winnipeg Beach from 1914.

It was a crowded scene, with people in old-fashioned bathing suits filling the beach and spilling out into the water. Despite what must have been a very hot day, looking out at us from a corner of the photo is an older man dressed in a dark, three-piece suit. Dale speculated that this might be L.B. Foote himself, sneaking into the frame.

That photo is from 1912 when Foote was under forty – certainly not a sedate, elderly gent who stands back from all the action.

To prove my theory, I thought I’d share a photo of what Foote actually looked like in a bathing suit. Taken circa 1915, a few years after Dale's beach photo, it features Foote at one of Winnipeg’s newer public baths, swimming and splashing around with his wife and two sons and some other family or friends. He is clearly a vigorous and lively fellow – not to mention someone who seems to enjoy the water.

Foote was a tall, lanky fellow with a crooked grin. In the bulky suits that men of all classes seemed to wear in those days, he could have been mistaken for someone who spent his life behind a desk. But he must have actually been an incredibly active and physical man. You can see it a bit in this swimming photo, but his energy and daring is implied throughout many of his photos well until the end of the1920s. Over and over again, he is finding some high perch to take his shots from. I imagine that often he would just clamor up ladder (probably rickety) that might be handy or balance himself on an angle off the nearest available roof. One of my favorites is the photo on the cover of Imagining Winnipeg, taken from the top of the very slanted roof of the Fort Gary Hotel. Foote is up there somehow with the workers on the hotel’s new copper roof, 14 stories off the ground, with his bulky camera. And then a few years later he somehow follows the surging crowds of the 1919 Winnipeg General Strike from spot to spot, again finding a high vantage whenever he can to get a better look.

Despite the thousands of photos he left, we really know so little about Foote or who he was. But the physical energy and the youthful daring that went into so many of his photos – plus that mischievous but shy smile – give us a hint.

- David Carr


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

SNEAK PEEK #2: ARCs!

Hey all, Cheryl Miki, UMP's Sales & Marketing Supervisor, attended the spring sales conference in Toronto this past week.

At this event, she meets with UMP's sales reps - the lovely folk at ampersand inc - and lets them know about next season's books, so they can pass along the information to bookstores.

Cheryl creates information kits about each book as well as UMP's Fall and Winter 2012 catalogue specifically for this event, but she also sometimes creates ARCs.

ARCs, for those of you not in the book business, are Advance Reading Copies.

If they're intended for reviewers, they'll be an exact replica of the finished book but with a slightly less fancy cover.

If they're intended for booksellers, as UMP's are, they include a sample chapter and/or the book's introduction with the cover as it appears in the catalogue.

Our Foote ARC had to include some photos, though of course they're nowhere near as beautiful in the ARC as they will be in the finished book.

It also includes Esyllt Jones' introduction to the book accompanied by some of the photos she discusses in her essay.

I wanted to share these pics a) because it's another step closer to holding the book in my hands and b) because ARCs are so...adorable.

Ariel Gordon
UMP Promotions/Editorial Assistant

Found Foote Photos #9: terminology

So why did a bunch of gentlemen involved in the construction trade call themselves The Mechanic’s Club?

Joanna Effler has an answer for that too:

"It is speculated by the grandson-in-law (Barry Effler) of Vernon Ferris Bolton that in the particular time frame that The Mechanic’s Club would have come into existence, automobiles were still quite new and not quite so commonly seen as now.

In today’s world, when your car or vehicle is broken or in need of maintenance, you take it to your local mechanic for service. There were no mechanics as we know them now back then. But when a builder was to put a lien on a property they were working on, it was called a mechanic’s lien. The term mechanic was originally used when referring to the construction industry."

Found Foote #9: The Mechanic's Club

Winnipeg's Johanna Effler and her mother, M. Marie McGrath (nee Bolton), compiled this article about their relative, which includes several Foote photos, including this one, damaged in the 1950s flood.

Johanna was kind enough to share it with us:

"The Mechanic’s Club was a group of eight gentlemen who worked together in the construction industry. They jointly owned a cabin at the end of North Cross Lake, in Cross Lakes, Manitoba, which was situated on parkland leased from the Province of Manitoba.

The gentlemen in the accompanying picture are:

Alonzo Simpson, a builder;

Alec McLennan, an engineer and foreman who worked for Bolton Construction and a close Bolton family friend;

Mr. Clarke, builder – electrician;

R. E. (Ed) Wright, President, Principle, and Owner of Wright Painting and Decorating, and the shortest member of The Mechanic’s Club;

Vernon Ferris Bolton, Principle, President and Owner of Bolton Construction (also known as Grandpa);

Keith Hopwood, the youngest member of The Mechanic’s Club and the only one who actually did do repair work on cars and trucks, owned his own garage and dealership.

The gentlemen were some of the members who had chosen to go on the annual post-construction season, two-week hunting trip, which took place towards the end of November each year. The one room cabin, or more correctly, the one-room hunting lodge, was known at that time as the Mechanic’s Club.

The Mechanic’s Club cabin was located at the end of North Cross Lake in Manitoba.

To get to it spring through fall, you had to take the train to Caddy Lake and then take a small boat or canoe for the remaining approximately eight to ten mile long trip over two of the chain lakes. The boat trip took one through two train tunnels, the first a Canadian Pacific Rail tunnel at the north end of Caddy Lake leading into South Cross Lake, and the second a Canadian National Railways tunnel located at the north end of South Cross Lake, at a point where it narrows down to about river width, and leads into North Cross Lake. Both tunnels were blasted out of solid rock. In late summer and fall the tunnels had such reduced water flow, that Marie McGrath (nee Bolton) remembers having to get out of the boat, and in bare feet, in the small trickle of water that remained, help to push the boat over the rocks and through the tunnels. In spring the water can be so high, that you had to crouch down in your boat to avoid hitting the roof of the tunnel. In the wintertime, the hunters would take the train and then make the long cold journey, hiking to the cabin, through the snow and over the ice of Nason Lake. It may sound like getting to the cabin was a hardship and as if the conditions were much too harsh to ever be enjoyable, but Vernon Bolton absolutely loved the cabin and the companionship of the other members, and made the journey to it as often as he could.

Only Alonzo Simpson and Vernon Bolton brought their families up to the cabin for little vacations or respites in the spring, summer and/or fall. They were also the ones who took care of most of the furnishing of the cabin and the cabin as well, as they used it the most. When both families happened to be there at the same time, they would hang a blanket up between the four beds – separating then into roomettes of two and two, males on one side and females on the other, to allow for some privacy for the family members.

When the members of The Mechanic’s Club went to the cabin on their hunting trips, they always set times for which they would return to the cabin from their hunting forays. This was simply a matter of security for the members. When a member was overdue, those members already at the cabin, would go outside and fire their guns up into the air to let the missing member or members know where they and the cabin were. The missing member or members were then able to follow the sound of the guns back to the cabin. Conversely, if a member found himself lost or at least puzzled as to his location in relation to the cabin, he would simply fire his gun into the air, and wait for replying volley of gunfire from those already at or near the cabin. Again, he would then just follow the sound back to the cabin, his fellow hunters and friends. Despite the remote location, The Mechanic’s Club never lost a member."

* * *

If you're wondering what the Foote connection was, Johanna explains it like this:

"As I recall, my mother explained that Mr. Foote met my grandfather and his friends when my grandfather’s construction company won the contract to basically start the building of a large portion of Thompson, Manitoba. Foote was the photographer who took the pictures. They all became friends and on at least one occasion, possibly more, he accompanied them on their annual fall hunt."

Favourite Foote Photos: Ken Gigliotti

Lewis Benjamin Foote’s photographs are a time capsule of early Winnipeg. They are quiet, strong photos, like silent movies.

These are pictures taken at a time of great change, they are reflections of the hopes and aspirations of a new century. His photographs are significant not because of what the photographer imposes on the subjects but rather the photographer seeing clearly the greatness in the everyday people, places, and events he was present to photograph.

L.B. Foote brings expert technical execution of the very difficult task of photography. There wasn't anything easy about being a photographer in years of the early 1900s. The cameras, the process, and archiving, everything was hard, but the times were also hard.

Foote brought simplicity, order and clarity. The medium was restrictive and bulky, but his pictures are full of interest. There is nothing haphazard, almost every picture is intentional, almost mathematical.

These were optimistic years of building, creating and expanding. He defined the times and place he live in. He created living, breathing representations of the greatness of his time.

Of course, pictures can set the scene, they can tell others where you have been, and what you have seen, they can map tragedy, record greatness, chronicle failure, they can record details of time, place, personality, and changes that might other wise be lost.

Pictures tell stories, reveal character, happiness, joy, ambivalence, sadness. They verify, and quantify, justice or injustice, they can tear down or build up.

A single picture can say a thousand words or next to none at all, it is the photographer’s choice. Pictures reveal passion, THEIRS and Yours.

Pictures look into soul, it is believed they steal spirit, they can expose evil or show the very best our culture has to offer.

Pictures are personal, they are about SOMETHING, they are about SOMEONE, they are about yourself. Pictures are the connection between your brain, your eye, your shutter, and your commitment to the world around you.

We are saying I NOTICED THIS! Lewis Benjamin Foote's pictures are a testament to his time.

His pictures last, they say something about a time that would be otherwise lost.

Pictures start with a subject, but they also have background and foreground. Clothing and hairstyles and automobiles that can be dated. In time the importance of the subject will diminish and the background and foreground will gain in importance.

- Ken Gigliotti

* * *
Ken Gigliotti started at the Winnipeg Free Press as a staff photographer in 1979. He has won numerous awards for his work, including Canadian Press Photographer of the Year (2001), the Western Canadian News Photographers Association News Picture of the Year Award (1997) and three Canadian Press Pictures of the Month. Ken started his career shooting pictures for his high school yearbook in Thunder Bay. He studied photography for two years at Ryerson Polytechnic Institute in Toronto and worked at the Chronicle Journal in Thunder Bay as a staff photographer before joining the Free Press. Ken has contributed to several book projects, including the Free Press’ A Red Sea Rising: The Flood of the Century and The Way We Live in Manitoba, The Winnipeg Jets: a Celebration of Hockey in Winnipeg and the A Day In the Life of Canada project in 1984. Ken has worked with Canadian Press photo teams at the 1988 Olympics in Calgary, the Commonwealth Games in Victoria, and covered six Grey Cups. He is married to Sherri and has two grown children, son Jade and daughter Joelle.

SNEAK PEEK: Foote cover!

Hey all, we're busily launching this spring's titles and working on next fall's titles, but I've got two pieces of Foote-related news to share: first, the cover, designed by Steven Rosenberg of Winnipeg's Doowah Design.

We've used a detail from one of Foote's most famous photos, entitled "1912-13 Copper Sheathing of the Roof of the Hotel Fort Garry" (Manitoba Archives, Foote 1535 Q554).

The book's design harkens to that of UMP's two other photo books, All Our Changes: Images from the Sixties Generation, Photographs by Gerry Kopelow (U of M Press, 2009) and The North End: Photographs by John Paskievich (U of M Press, 2007), also designed by Rosenberg.

We've also arrived at a book description, which I've cribbed from our fall 2012 catalogue. (All eighteen boxes of which arrived at UMP yesterday...)

"In an expanding and socially fractious early twentieth-century Winnipeg, Lewis Benjamin Foote (1873-1957) rose to become the city’s pre-eminent commercial photographer. Documenting everything from royal visits to deep poverty, from the building of the landmark Fort Garry Hotel to
the riots of the 1919 General Strike, Foote’s photographs have come to be iconic representations of early Winnipeg life. They have been used to illustrate everything from academic histories to posters for rock concerts; they have influenced the work of visual artists, writers, and musicians;
and they have represented Winnipeg to the world.

But in Imagining Winnipeg, historian Esyllt W. Jones takes us beyond the iconic to reveal the complex artist behind the lens and the conflicting ways in which his photographs have been used to give credence to diverse and sometimes irreconcilable views of Winnipeg’s past. Incorporating 150 stunning photographs from the more than 2,000 images in the Archives of Manitoba Foote Collection, Imagining Winnipeg challenges our understanding of visual history and the city we thought we knew."

Yay! Fun!

Ariel Gordon
UMP Promotions/Editorial Assistant

Favourite Foote Photos: Bronwen Quarry

Foote 157 is not really my favourite. I don’t actually have one. Perhaps it is that I have seen the photographs too many times.

As an archivist at the Archives of Manitoba I have often helped clients in the Research Room with their own searches for the perfect photograph of an event or place. If they have not already heard of Foote, I will invariably direct them to (or perhaps it would be more accurate to say I insist that they look at) the Foote photos. Without fail they become distracted by the other images, slowly browsing through the rest of the files. More often than not they leave as a newly converted Foote fan, cheerfully declaring or muttering distractedly that they’ll have to come back when they have more time.

Every time I open the drawer a new Foote photo speaks to me. So why pick this one rather than any of the other 2,500 in our holdings? This photograph happens to speak to me on both a professional and on a personal level. From an archival perspective, the significance of the Foote photographs lies not in the individual images (no matter how skilfully taken the photo or how important its contents) but rather in the body of records as a whole.

Foote 157 does not depict a historically significant event such as the strike or a well-known place or group of people. It is just one of many great shots representative of what Foote was most often doing which was taking photographs of the everyday. His body of records documents several decades of life in Winnipeg. Foote 157 really doesn’t stick out and so embodies what is great about the Foote collection – that so many people find something to relate to in his photographs. Even when just browsing, researchers often find something they recognize. Sometimes it is not obvious and it is only the description that tells the viewer what they are looking at.

Foote 157 depicts Fire Station #14 at the corner of Lipton and Westminster, a building I have passed by many times on walks through Wolseley. Although admittedly the focus of this photo is the firemen, the corner featured is the very spot I have walked by countless times and it gave me a thrill when I first recognized it. I love that building and I love that the Foote collection has something that I can so personally relate to. (And yes, it is a great shot of the firemen too!)

So perhaps it would be more accurate to say that Foote 157 is my favourite today, and I am certain when I go to slip it back in the drawer I will find another.

- Bronwen Quarry


* * *
Bronwen Quarry is an archivist with the Hudson’s Bay Company Archives, Archives of Manitoba. A large part of her job involves making the photographs in the holdings of the HBC Archives available to the public. Her MA thesis at the University of Manitoba was entitled “Photo-graph/Writing with Light: The Challenge to Archivists of Reading Photographs.”

Photo #8: Boxshall Family Portrait

This photo arrived via email from Cartwright, MB:

"Hello! I read about your book in in the Free Press and was sure I'd seen Foote on a family photo.

Started going through them and found this one (not the one I'd been thinking of) that says "Foote & James" on the embossed paper frame. This is a photo of my grandparents, George and Ruth Boxshall and children, in 1923.

George Edward Boxshall was born in Tunbridge Wells, England in 1885. In 1902 he came to Canada (at age 17) and worked for farmers in the Cartwright/Holmfield, Manitoba area. He was the only one of his family to make that trip. At the age of 21 he went back to England but decided to come back and make his home in Canada. He returned to the Cartwright area where he worked on farms until joining the Winnipeg Police in February 1910. In 1911 he was married to Ruth Cantlon, who he had met while working in Cartwright.

George was promoted to Patrol Sergeant on May 1, 1916 and then to full Sergeant on January 19, 1923. He was on the first motorcycle squad. (Incidentally, his photo is in the 2012 City of Winnipeg Archives calendar, with his police motorcycle.) He was in great demand as an entertainer at police balls and other functions, where he would do imitations, recitations, and songs (with wife Ruth accompanying on the piano). He sang a lot of English music-hall type songs.

They raised 8 children (5 others were stillborn or died as infants). George was forced to retired from the police force due to health reasons. He had 'sleeping sickness' in the late 1920s which weakened him. (I'm not sure, but this may have been polio.) He retired on May 1, 1931 with a police pension and the family decided that moving back to Cartwright would make the money stretch further. Their youngest child was just a year old then.

With George and Ruth Boxshall in the 1923 photo are children: Sylvia, George Jr., Jack on his father's knee, Enid (in front), Eileen, and Dorothea. This was before the arrival of Allan and Shirley.

My mother was Sylvia, the second-eldest (1916-2005). She and her sister Eileen married brothers and lived their lives in Cartwright after moving here when Mum was 15. They were the ones who looked after their parents, and ended up with a lot of the family photos. And then I looked after them...

While I am very interested in family history, other cousins are, too, and the photos are prized - no danger of them being unwanted! Thank goodness for the digital age which makes it so easy to copy and share."

- Vicki Wallace

Found Foote Photo #7: Girls on Bikes

Winnipeg's Fred Knight emailed this photo of a group of bike-riding girls on the grounds of the Manitoba Legislature on Broadway in late January.

Now that we're (mostly) into cycling weather again, we thought it was prime time to share this photo...here's what Fred had to say about it:

"Now it is quite obvious that this is a somewhat posed picture I seem to recall a recollection by Gloria (my wife) that this gentleman stopped and asked if he could take their picture.

I don't know why they were at the Legislative grounds as no doubt these girls came from all over the city.

I only have knowledge of three girls (deceased) from the right # 2 Phyllis Hiley married Jim Armstrong (d), # 3 Gloria Chapman married Fred Knight, # 4 Marie Escaravage married William Roberts (d).

Phillys and Gloria were in the employment of the War-time Prices & Trade Board so stands to reason that this would befall on some or all of the others.

It sure is interesting to note the change in casual attire. Something has been lost over the years...

Take Care!"

- Fred Knight

Favourite Foote Photos: Katherena Vermette

Oh, Orlina, you have been loved, haven’t you?

I was drawn to this picture because I am so in love with old houses right now. I want one so bad! I am starting to look at them the way I once looked at good-looking men.

And she has a name to boot! How wonderful! We should all name our houses. She looks like an Orlina too. Something in the dark frames and striped awnings seems very Orlina-like!

Orlina looked so beautiful in 1915, I just had to see what she looked like today. 81 Luxton is also just a few blocks from where I grew up in the North End. I hadn’t been on that side of Main Street in nearly 20 years (yikes!), but I remembered the area fondly – the amazing “mansions” on Scotia Street, the creepy and magnificent Luxton School.

I have to confess though, as I drove around St John’s Park and cemetery, I felt myself bracing for Orlina’s possible deterioration. It is the North End after all. I love my old ‘hood, but of these once beautiful houses show the effects of age and abuse. I thought Orlina could have been mistreated, poorly kept, or worse of all fates – vinyl sided! I didn’t know what to expect. But, as I pulled up beside her, I was pleasantly surprised.

Oh Orlina, I thought, you have been loved, haven’t you?

Like a lovely elder, Orlina wears her age well. Her brick refinished, her stone banister in amazing shape, only her iron fence shows the slightest of bends.

This made me feel so happy, to know that she has been looked after. There are many like her, gorgeous old houses that have been loved and cherished. We don’t know their girlish names, but I bet somewhere in their woodwork they have one – a secret name that makes them feel pretty.

If I ever get one, I think I will call her Beth! (I hope she looks like a Beth...)

- Katherena Vermette


* * *
Katherena Vermette is a Metis writer of poetry and fiction. Her work has appeared in several literary magazines and compilations, most recently Manitoapow: Stories from the Land of Water (Debwe Series). Vermette is a member of the Aboriginal Writers’ Collective of Manitoba, and currently completing her Master of Fine Arts (UBC). Her first collection of poetry is set for release in the fall of 2012 (The Muses’ Company).

Favourite Foote Photos: Brett Lougheed

Winnipeg seems to be enjoying a sort of renaissance these days. Construction projects downtown spurred on by the return of the Winnipeg Jets promises a booming cultural centre in the heart of the city within a few years. It harkens one back to Winnipeg’s glory days of the 1920s.

This photograph taken by L.B. Foote on February 21, 1923, to me, perfectly illustrates the Winnipeg we are striving to become once again. Suspended 30 feet above the Winnipeg Free Press building on Carlton Street, Harry Houdini, arguably the biggest name in entertainment at the time, wriggled his way out of a straitjacket in front of what was reported to be four or five thousand awestruck onlookers. This publicity stunt was intended to generate interest for his week-long show at the Orpheum Theatre. Houdini’s opening act at the show was a young comedian named Jack Benny. It was not uncommon for performers of this calibre to make regular appearances in Winnipeg during this time.

Now let’s take a moment to break this down. Here was one of the more famous pop culture icons in the world at the time performing his most popular trick in the dead of winter in Winnipeg in front of 5,000 people to promote his upcoming show. His opening act was an up and coming comedian who would become the most popular variety program host in America a decade later. Because magicians and escape artists have admittedly declined in popularity over the years, it is hard to conceive of a comparable scenario these days. But it might look something like this: Lady Gaga, backed by a full stage show, performs for free in front of 20,000 Winnipeggers in -20 temperatures to promote her show at the MTS Centre, where the stand-up stylings of Conan O’Brien would be the opening act.

Kind of hard to imagine, isn’t it?

As an aside, the Winnipeg Free Press offered cash prizes to the three amateur photographers who best captured the performance on film. They would be hard pressed to top the work of Foote, who not only captured the performance, but the excitement of the crowd, and the energy of a city.

I think Winnipeg has a long way to go before we’re as cool as we once were. Thankfully we have the photos of L.B. Foote to use as a measure of Winnipeg’s vitality.

- Brett Lougheed


* * *
Brett Lougheed is Digital Curator/Archivist at the University of Manitoba Archives & Special Collections. He is responsible for digitizing and managing the University’s archival material, including a few Foote photos. He is also a life-long Manitoban, a pop culture junkie, and the author of the Archives’ slightly warped photo blog, What the Fonds?

Favourite Foote Photos: Dale Barbour

I was drawn to this picture because the crowd is so delightfully relaxed. So often in beach pictures from the turn of the century, it seems as if the people have stepped out for an evening at the opera. They wear dresses or suits and ties. The men always have a hat. They clearly saw a journey to the lakeside as a special event; it was far more often a place to promenade than it was a place to swim. Proper decorum reigned supreme.

But promenading seems like the last thing on the minds of this group; though the figures walking the boardwalk behind them suggest that there was still much promenading to be had. Some people are dressed in suits, but others are decked out in bathing suits and showing a healthy amount of skin. Most of them have doffed their hats, some have even thrown on a casual robe and there’s a young man with a cigarettes hanging out of his mouth.

To me, this picture captures a moment of transition at Winnipeg Beach when the upper-middle class character of the beach, a character that Foote has captured with other pictures of cabins and regattas, was giving way to a more mixed class experience and when the boundaries between how and when men and women could get together were starting to shift. Snapped in 1912, this picture captures the dawn of the free wheeling Winnipeg Beach that people would know in the 1920s and into the early 1950s.

But this seems to me to be still a moment of transition. Men and women are scattered together on the beach in comfortable camaraderie. And yet, very few of them are holding hands. They are together and yet apart. Indeed, our most demonstrative couple is a pair of women at the front of the picture—one smiles for the camera as the other drapes an arm on her shoulder. But there does appear to be a woman in a white dress with her hand wrapped around a man in a hat just behind them. (Or is the woman in the white dress really a man in white robe? Further playing with our view of the picture.)

Finally, where is Foote in all of this? I desperately want to believe that the man on the left side of the picture is really Foote; that he was so enthralled with the scene in front of him that he couldn’t resist including himself within it. I’m wrong, of course; the man in the photo is too old to be Foote, who was not yet 40 in 1912. Still, I’ll choose to believe that after he snapped the picture, Foote waded into the crowd; unable to resist enjoying his own day at the beach.

- Dale Barbour


* * *
Dale Barbour grew up on a farm in Balmoral, Manitoba and made a few trips of his own to Winnipeg Beach as a youth. A former journalist, he is currently completing a PhD in history at the University of Toronto. His first book, Winnipeg Beach: Leisure and Courtship in a Resort Town, 1900-1967 (UMP, 2011), was recently nominated for the McNally Robinson Book of the Year Award and the Carol Shields Winnipeg Book Award at the Manitoba Book Awards. It was also nominated in the Local History category in the MHS' Margaret McWilliams Awards.

Favourite Foote Photo: Danna Slessor-Cobb

1914 Soldier Saying Goodbye to his Mother has become one of my favourites for all the things I don’t know about it. It remains a puzzle that I would like to solve. The style of this photo is not typical of Foote and it is that very difference that drew me to it in the archives. It was the composition that focuses the viewer’s attention on the figures and highlights the face of the woman within the embrace that struck me initially. After learning that Foote worked for a short time in Hollywood doing film stills and publicity shots I realized that that is why I wanted to learn more. This is photo was staged but it looks as though it was personal. There was more going on underneath the surface that made me come back.

In the archives the label on the photograph reads Soldier in Embrace. The card catalog reads 1914 soldier saying goodbye to his mother. Which is the correct title? Perhaps a better question to ask is: Is there a correct title? Imposed categorizations on photographs often shift the intended meaning and present very different images of wartime Winnipeg. A soldier in embrace explains what he is doing but not the significance of the photograph. Soldier saying goodbye to his mother elicits a far different response from a viewer. It has become personal rather than a normalized stock shot. Appealing to the personal can be the most effective means of advertising. The identity of the woman and soldier are unknown they therefore have the ability to appeal to a wide audience, which would have been essential during the ever present fundraising drives of the First World War. The fact that the soldier is dressed in full highland regalia cemented the fact for me that this photo was meant as an advertisement or recruitment photo. Foote was a technical wonder but he was a master at using visual communication to express what was going on at the time. This photo quickly and effortlessly appeals to Winnipeggers' British roots and commonwealth identity at the outbreak of the war.

The ability of photography to act as propaganda is well established but I was so excited to see it in a Winnipeg context! The magic of the archives for all students and researchers is the puzzles that await for you to solve them. I am glad that there is such a wealth of photographs to study, confuse and ultimately challenge me within the Foote fond and tell me more about Winnipeg than I ever knew before.

- Danna Slessor-Cobb


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Danna Slessor-Cobb is (almost!) finished the first year of an MA in Archival Studies at the University of Manitoba. She is pursuing a thesis in Photographic archives with a focus on curatorial standards and education. Slessor-Cobb has an undergraduate degree in history and art history and has been involved in art and art education in Winnipeg for the past 10 years.

Found Foote Photo #6: Postcards!

I was excited when this email arrived in my inbox from a vintage postcard collector:

"I just acquired this Foote & James portrait postcard. (It has 'Foote & James, Winnipeg' embossed in the lower left corner.)

It makes sense that they would offer postcards of their portrait photos - as postal rates for postcards were cheaper than for letter mail. Images on postcards were the most cost-effective way to send your fiends/relatives an image of yourself.

Several companies sold photographic paper with pre-printed postcard imprinting on the reverse side to photographers.

This is helpful for us postcard collectors to approximate the age of postcards, like this one, which were never mailed. This particular one has an AZO Stamp Box - with four squares in the corners.

Using online resources (like this site: http://www.the2buds.com/rp.htm), we can come up at least with date ranges for cards produced on the more popular photographic postcard papers.

In this case, the Foote & James portrait card was made sometime after 1926 through to the 1940s."

- Rob McInnes, Postcard Accumulator and Purveyor

Favourite Foote Photo: Erna Buffie

My grandfather, like these men, was a railway worker and a musician - a machinist and a violinist, to be precise. But you won’t find him in this photograph. I suspect that the color bar of the 1920s was much too powerful an obstruction to allow a white musician to play in a black band, let alone the reverse.

How sad.

And yet I see no sadness in the faces of the porters and musicians in this wonderful Foote photograph. I see only joy, dignity and the same intelligent intensity that I saw on my grandfather’s face, when he held his violin and stared at a camera.

I find myself wondering what tunes this band would have played. "Tiger Rag?" Louis Armstrong's “St James Infirmary?” Maybe "Frankie and Johnny" or the iconic "After You've Gone." Songs that I still love to sing with my family. I also find myself wondering whether or not my grandfather heard these men play at one of their 50 cent matinees or evening concerts at The Dominion Theatre. Did he and his own dance band, like so many other white bands in history, steal songs from the repertoire of these minstrels?

Minstrels. It’s a loaded term when used in this context, and yet it’s original medieval meaning is completely benign – “a singer, musician or poet who traveled from place to place giving performances.” And in that sense, these men and my grandfather were minstrels, traveling performers who, despite the vast divide of racism that separated them, shared at least one thing in common – their love of music.

- Erna Buffie


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An award-winning filmmaker and writer, Erna Buffie lived for twenty years in Montreal, spent seven years in Halifax and returned to her hometown, Winnipeg, in December 2010. Sometimes, when it's -32 in the sun, she asks herself why she returned, but most of the time she's quite happy about it. Her British-born grandfather, George Leach, emigrated to Winnipeg in 1912 and died at the age of 82, when Erna was eleven. She'd give anything to talk to him, even for just a few hours, so she could ask all the questions she had neither the knowledge, nor the inclination to ask, when she was a child. Erna's next documentary, "Smarty Plants: Uncovering the Secret Wolrd of Plant Behaviour" airs Thursday, March 22 on CBC TV's The Nature of Things.

Losing...and Finding

Hey all,

This is just a brief note to say that production for the University of Manitoba Press' spring titles has recently put a crimp in Lost Foote Photos' style.

If you're curious, UMP's reprints of Jennifer Reid's Louis Riel and the Creation of Modern Canada and Erika Dyck's Psychedelic Psychiatry: LSD on the Canadian Prairies are both available.

The last few weeks have been spent putting the finishing touches on Robin Jarvis Brownlie & Valerie J. Korinek's Finding a Way to the Heart: Feminist Writings on Aboriginal and Women’s History in Canada, which will be due out in April and Larry Krotz' Piecing the Puzzle: The Genesis of AIDS Research in Africa, which will come out in May.

But we've got lots of found photos to share and several favourite Foote photo columns from archivists and artists and historians on the way.

David Carr, U of M Press' director, even has a story to tell about another visit to a small archive where he uncovered Foote photos.

So be patient with us, this week and next, and come back!

Thanks!

Ariel Gordon
UMP Promotions/Editorial Assistant

Countours: Two Visions of Early Winnipeg

As you'll recall, filmmaker Jeff McKay contributed a Favourite Foote Photo to this blog.

In it, he talks about how he and his partner Laszlo Markovics selected photos for what would become the documentary, Contours: Two Visions of Early Winnipeg (2009).



"L.B Foote and L.L. FitzGerald both lived in worked in Winnipeg at the turn of the 20th century when Winnipeg was one of the fastest-growing cities in North America. Foote was a commercial photographer and FitzGerald a painter who often depicted the same scenes, yet they represent two completely different ways of seeing the city they called their home. Both Foote and FitzGerald left a legacy of thousands of evocative images with the city as their muse as they experienced its development first hand."

Jeff was kind enough to allow us to share this clip from Contours, which features a voiceover by historian Doug Smith.

A film by Jeff McKay and Laszlo Markovics
New Projects Inc. © 2009

Further to Colin Corneau's Favourite Foote Photo

Last week, Brandon-based photographer Colin Corneau wrote about a Foote photo entitled The King and Queen of Siam.

For those of you who might be interested, specifically, they were King Prajadhipok and Queen Rambhai Barni.

According to Wikipedia, Prajadhipok was crowned King of Siam in February 1926 at the age of thirty-two.

He abdicated in 1935 after political turmoil in what was to become Thailand.

This helps to date the Foote photo, as does a similar photo taken in Germany in 1934.

Thanks to UMP director David Carr for the research on Thailand's last absolute monarch!