Ontario (Page 7)

When it comes to projects like this one, there is always an anchor subject, a building or a place that I want to capture on silver in large format in case something happens to that building. A slice of time preserved in some level of permanence. My project on Milton was the old P.L. Robertson plant, and for Oakville, it is the Oakville High School. The education system in Upper Canada followed the patterns of the English education system. But that should not be a surprise. If you grew up reading stories of Laura Ingalls Wilder or visited a living history museum, often a showpieceRead More →

The central railways offered long-distance travel but lacked the local service that many in Oakville and around Ontario needed. Personal automobiles were not a thing, and most roads were still dirt, with only a few paved in any meaningful way. Enter the Interurban railways, also known as radial railways. These small-scale services travelled out from a central station, radiating into surrounding communities. And provided some of the earliest forms of mass transit in the province. The earliest radial railway operators began services in 1890; these systems were used to steam or electrical motive power. Running small, often single carriage trails along a preset route fromRead More →

Last year I completed a project about Ontario’s railway heritage. Still, one location I had sadly missed was Oakville, as there is no historic railway station in the community, as both Oakville and Bronte had been replaced in the 20th century. But this massive railway viaduct over the Sixteen Mile Creek caught my eye, not only because I’ve travelled over it many times, but because it looked old. The railway was both a boost and a problem for the growing community of Oakville by the mid-century. The railway would open up a faster means of moving both people, mostly goods, across the province. And aRead More →

Canada, despite being mainly an Anglo-European construct, today, our country is a rich tapestry of many cultures that had all come and called Canada home. And not just as a melting pot; each culture adds more to the whole. But this certainly has accelerated in the post-World War II world, but even in the earliest days of Upper Canada, many who sought freedom made the arduous journey north. In 1791, Sir John Graves Simcoe, the first Lieuteant-Governor of Upper Canada, signed the Act to Reduce Slavery in Upper Canada. In the British Empire, slavery was still a thing, and the slave trade was alive andRead More →