One in a million: The importance of historical photographs

More often than not, these images do not have dates written on the back and people are not identified. At the time the photograph was taken, writing on the image didn’t seem important. Flash forward even 50 years and many times these details are all but forgotten.

Unfailingly, these photographs often yield small clues that we are able to recognize and these small details allow us to tell a larger and more complete story. Small details like a newspaper headline, a business in the background or a visible geological feature can help us distinguish a location or date of when the image may have been taken.

Even when we have the date and persons identified, sometimes it is hard to know what the true intent of the photograph was. What was the photographer trying to capture?

Take this particular image for instance. Although we knew that this image was taken by Wally West, we were not certain of Wally’s intent. It features a young boy holding a newspaper while posing with his bicycle. He is in front of a beautiful house surrounded by a white picket fence. The idyllic image is quite the juxtaposition from the newspaper headline that reads “Korean Capital Falls; Canada to Send Aid” and the fear that this headline brought to its readers.

Searching online through digitized editions, we found that this edition of the Vancouver Province ran on June 28th, 1950. Interestingly enough, this was hard to pinpoint because it wasn’t at all the same as the Vancouver edition. Headlines and images are completely rearranged. Perhaps this was to cater to the Prince George reader rather than those in the lower mainland?

But who was the boy that helped convey the disparity of the time?

It wasn’t until the boy, celebrating his 80th birthday reached out to us in 2015 that we knew the full story.

The boy is Walter Webster and at the time he was 13 years old. While searching our online database Mr. Webster stumbled across this photo of himself from many years earlier. He had not seen the photo since it was first taken and was excited to discover it. It brought fond memories to him and we are thankful that he was eager to share some of them with us.

Mr. Webster explained that when the photo was taken, he was posing with his brand-new bike; a bike he won for delivering newspapers in Prince George for the Vancouver Daily Province. It was taken on June 28th, 1950 on his paper route in front of his childhood home on what he remembered as the corner of Burden Street. A little digging in the Prince George Assessment Rolls told us it was the corner of Burden and 8th.

It turns out that Walter was born in 1936 to parents Bill and Hilda Webster. The youngest of three boys, Walter moved with his family from Windermere to Prince George in 1940. His dad worked for the Experimental Station Farm and the City of Prince George for many years until he retired. All three of the Webster boys, George, Ernie and Walter, graduated from Prince George High School and eventually moved away from Prince George having families of their own.

Walter expressed his joy in finding the photo and passed along his fond memories of Prince George and his childhood here.

Since then, Walter has shared this image with Canadian Korean War Veterans in the lower mainland where it was used as a cover image in a Canadian Korean War Veteran publication.

If we can learn all of this from one photo, imagine what we can learn from the collective memory of one million.

by Alyssa Tobin-Leier, Curator, The Exploration Place

One in a million: The importance of historical photographs

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