Found Foote Photo #14: Labour Day, Part Two

"Late last August, just in time for Labour Day, I shared what is called a 'real photo' postcard by L. B. Foote.

The image shows some Stonewall residents, back in 1913, apparently preparing for their annual Labour Day parade. As an avid collector of Manitoba postcards, I have only occasionally come across any by Foote. While he did occasionally produce postcards, Foote was by no means prolific.

We postcard collectors, more officially known as 'deltiologists,' scour our worlds in search of items to add to our collections. Admittedly an odd lot, you’ll find us poking around garage sales, flea markets, auctions and antique shops. Nowadays we’ll often spend our evenings scouring internet sources like eBay. Egged on by the occasional thrill of acquiring a rare card, we likely have a lot in common with folks who play the slots. That Labour Day card by Foote was a “payday” for me – a rare treat.

Those of us who specialize in historic Manitoba postcards quickly become amateur detectives and 'accidental' historians. As is true of the Foote photographs of Winnipeg, the cards we acquire teach us about the past and many challenge us to discover even more. As an example; after I submitted Stonewall postcard to this blog, I noticed that the license plate on one of the automobiles was visible amidst its decorations – number 2828. I contacted a friend who has catalogued automobile license plates and vehicle owners from 1912. I learned that this vehicle was owned by William A. Williamson, born in Manitoba. In 1912, he was 26 years old, single, and employed as a clerk in a hardware store at Stonewall. That is likely William behind the wheel.

While Foote postcards are rare, lightning sometimes strikes twice. About a month ago, I encountered and acquired yet another one! Very surprisingly, it was taken in Stonewall on the same day as my earlier postcard – and shows the actual parade in progress. The parade is being led by two of the largest floats. The first, a horse-drawn canopied float is identified (by a banner in front of the lead horses) as “Presbyterian S.S.” (Sunday School?). Directly behind it is a self-propelled float in the shape of a boat, likely constructed over an automobile. Also shown in this image, on the left side, is Stonewall’s Canadian Pacific Hotel which was constructed in 1880.

Once again, a thankful salute to L. B. – for a lifetime of work that now enables us to retrace and reconstruct our own 'forgotten' history."
 
- Rob McInnes, Postcard Accumulator and Purveyor

* * *
 
Though this blog is shutting down, we thought we'd share one last 'found' Foote, again from Rob McInnes.

I will miss being able to share the contents of Rob's emails. But am consoled by things like the Manitoba Historical Maps flickr site, the Vintage Winnipeg page on Facebook, and even the sales of Imagining Winnipeg.

But do try to come out to the two final library visits, won't you? If you haven't heard Esyllt speak yet on this book and these photos, you've missed something...

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.

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.

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."

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.