Frank Goodship isn't a well known name right now, but his work is creating quite a frenzy.
Goodship is best known locally as a photographer for a local Royal City newspaper, The British Columbian, from 1949 to 1954.
Goodship was born in Revelstoke in 1926 and attended school in Port Moody and Chilliwack before joining the Royal Canadian Navy in 1944.
After his military service ended in 1945, he went to the University of British Columbia for two years. In 1948, he started working as a photographer for the Chilliwack Progress newspaper, moving to The British Columbian in 1949. He used a Graflex Speed Graphic camera, a favourite of press photographers of the day.
During his time at The Columbian, he was the first salaried staff photographer and was responsible for building their darkroom facilities.
After moving on to the CBC, Goodship started working abroad with the Ghana Broadcasting Corporation as part of a Canadian aid program to set up local broadcasting in Africa. After completing that tour in 1965, he spent the next 22 years working for UNESCO, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. He died in 1990 in Geneva, Switzerland shortly after his 64th birthday.
His photography, now in the hands of staff at the New Westminster Museum and Archives, is reaching the public through the Internet and a federal government grant.
Goodship's work, consisting of more than 2,000 negatives and a small number of colour slides, is being scanned into the museum's digital archives by registrar Allan Blair, and currently, almost 1,500 images are online.
"The photographs offer a vivid look into the New Westminster of the post-war years," said Barry Dykes, assistant archivist at the museum. "The public is now able to view the photographs by using the archives' public database, which was launched earlier this year. The information we were able to find for some of the photos has been included in their descriptions, but there are still many photographs that need to be identified. We hope now that these photos are online, the public may help provide additional information about them."
Dykes said the federal grant, through Library and Archives Canada and administered by the Canadian Council of Archives, came in at just under $5,000 and the entire cost to scan all the Goodship photos into the system will come in at approximately $12,000.
Dykes said what makes the Goodship photos interesting is that it's recent history, and many of the people in the pictures are still alive.
In fact, for one unidentified photo, Dykes received an email from longtime resident Ken Winslade telling him who the young lady in the picture was.
"I have enjoyed hours of viewing the old photos of New Westminster from Frank," writes Winslade. "The photo I was referring to is IHP9266-1073. This one is unidentified, . but (the girl) is Jean Langlands from the 1953 May Day Suite. She is now my wife."
"These photos are only 60 years old," said Dykes. "A lot of the pictures have unidentified people some of whom may still be living in the community. We have photos of children, teenagers. Someone who was 20 between 1949 and 1954 would be between 77 and 83 today. Anyway - people can retrieve these photos using our public database. Maybe they can help us identify some."
Go to http: //archives.new westcity.ca/search.aspx and put in 'Frank Goodship fonds' in the search window.
