In our work we spend a lot of time with archival resources, especially photographs, in searching for particular information, studying and analyzing to see what might be found, using them in projects and then heading off to seek yet something else.
It is a never-ending process, but interesting and frequently quite exciting.
Once, after a presentation that looked at stories and how they had been located and developed, someone asked: Are there pieces of history, images, facts and collections that still exist in someone's storage room or dresser drawer that you hope to find?
This question was a logical follow up to our comments that "we just know that somebody must have taken a photo of that." That material must be somewhere.
The following is a selection of these wishes. Maybe someone reading this will remember that interesting item in the back of a desk and let us know about it. You never know.
S.B. Buchanan had a large house in Sapperton and loved to decorate with great scary effect for Halloween. We have been told of a photo album showing many years worth of images of those decorations but so far it has not shown up - lots of word pictures but no prints.
Columbian College was a large degree-granting institution that was located for years on First Street between Third and Queens avenues. The story goes that people close to the school wanted an image to remember it by that would show the overall site, grounds, buildings, interiors and a photo album (or albums) was prepared. There are photos of the college, but not this set of prints and albums - remembered by one contact as creating quite a stack on a table. Wonder where they might be?
How about photos of funerals and burial services? We have great views of the services for C.A. and Maude Welsh, Colonel Doherty, A. Wells Gray, the Williams plot, the Sillitoe plot, but we know there must be others. We've seen a few over the years, while others we have only have been told about. How about George or Albert Pittendrigh, T.R. McInnes, William Irving, Brownie Peebles, Cyrus Peck?
Irving House on Royal Avenue is a highly regarded heritage home. While we don't have a photo set or inventory from its first months as a city possession in 1950, at least four knowledgeable individuals have indicated that such a set of images was taken room by room and hall by hall. Wonder if they still exist? There was also apparently a photo club shoot in the 1950s/'60s.
And many years ago, we were shown a photograph from the fall of 1929 with Winston Churchill attending a luncheon in the Armouries. We'd love to see it again.
All this is intriguing isn't it? Can you help?
