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Ad Rates / Articles / Classified Ads / Editorial / Home / Links / Showtime   Old family photos worth second look   List Janet Bryers Next   Taking a Second Look At Old Family Photographs   By Janet Bryers Old family photographs can be a valuable source of information. Besides preserving irreplaceable images of family members, some of them also provide a glimpse of places that have changed considerably since the time the photos were taken. Here are a few family photographs from my own collection to show you what I mean.   The two young children are Tom and Helen and the place is Dundurn Park in Hamilton, Ontario, in about 1921. At that time, the large artillery piece that appears in the photograph was a recent addition to the park. It had been brought to Canada as part of the Canadian War Trophies Collection, a huge assortment of World War One material, much of which had been captured from German forces. Besides guns, it included tanks, airplanes, gas masks, torpedoes, periscopes, war posters and a large variety of other items including a stationary tandem cycle for generating electricity and the door from the Posse Office in Ypres.   After the collection had toured a number of Canadian and U.S. cities, it was dispersed. Some items were retained for a proposed national war museum; others were given to towns, cities, institutions and organizations across Canada to serve as a memorial to the thousands of Canadian men and women who had lost their lives in the war. The large gun shown here was once a familiar sight in Dundurn Park. Today it can be found at the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa.   The girl standing in front of the flower bed is Helen. The year is now 1927, or thereabouts, and the place is Niagara Falls, Ontario, which must surely be one of the most photographed places in the world. But while the falls themselves haven't changed a great deal since this picture was taken, almost everything around them has.   The small building in the centre of the photo housed the upper end of the incline railway that took sightseers to the Maid of the Mist dock below. To the left are the tracks and trolley poles of the electric railway that carried countless numbers of visitors through the area between 1893 and 1932, when it ceased operations. The industrial buildings that appear in the background are actually located across the Niagara River in Niagara Falls, New York. Today the view from this spot is much different.   The third photograph shows Edna at the Burlington Canal, a short waterway that joins the western end of Lake Ontario and Hamilton Harbour. It was probably taken during the late 1920's. Directly behind Edna is a bascule bridge which carried road traffic across the canal. A stone lighthouse can be seen on the right. Edna's two photo albums contain a number of pictures that show her and her family and friends on outings at the canal and on the adjoining beaches; they are a reminder that, in the days before air conditioning was common, thousands of people sought relief from the summer heat by visiting Ontario's lakes and waterways. Today both of the bridges shown in this photograph are gone; the lighthouse, although long unused, remains.   Janet Bryers is an antique collector living in Hamilton.     Return to top of page   This Is Livin' Publishing © 2008 581 8th Line West, RR1 Hastings, ON, K0L 1Y0 Phone/Fax: 705-696-1833   webmaster