Item - PE001557 - Photographs: [Images of Edmonton and surrounding area]

Album (19 x 29 cm.) bound by string between black covers. Contains 160 b/w photographs pasted down in the album. There is a single image - a portrait of a young woman - loose in the album. Most of the photographs are accompanied by manuscript annotations. Some captions include dates.

The origins of the album are unclear, but it could be the record of British immigrants to northern Alberta. The verso of the loose portrait contains a photographer's stamp that includes a Westbourne Grove address, a retail area of west London. Several of the earliest photographs appear to be taken from a ship in the Gulf of St. Lawrence (including a picture of an iceberg), which could indicate a trans-Atlantic trip.

The majority of photographs, however, are from Alberta locales: Fallis, Rexboro, Lake Wabumun, and, most commonly, Edmonton. The album contains several photographs of the Hudson's Bay Company's 250th anniversary pageant held in Edmonton on 8 May 1920. There are also Edmonton images of the University of Alberta, cutting ice from the river, and Cree and Blackfoot participants in an unnamed 1922 event.

Many of the images are of individuals - presumably family members and friends - in agricultural and other settings. The captions do not always fully identify the subjects, but several surnames are mentioned: Bennett, Cannell, Margerison, Warning, Mullett, Merryweather, and Mills.