Item - PE001567 - Photographs: [Images of First Nations communities at an Oblate mission, Buffalo Narrows, Saskatchewan]

Album (19 x 26 cm.) coil bound between green-cardboard covers. Contains [ca. 90] b/w photographs and postcards inserted in mounting corners. There are a handful of images loose in the album. Some of the photographs are accompanied by manuscript annotations.

Several photographs are noted as having been taken at Buffalo Narrows, a community in northern Saskatchewan. Two of the captions identify the person pictured as Reverend Edward Bleau, an Oblate priest. The necrology section of the Oblates communications Web site (available online at http://archive.omiworld.org/en/necrology/all/ [accessed on 10 December 2018]) lists an Eduardus Bleau as dying in the Pas in 1956.

Certainly the contents of the album appear to capture life in a missionary community. There are numerous images of First Nations children and adults in various settings. There is also a photograph of a priest celebrating mass in a small clearing in the woods, Several First Nations congregants are kneeling in the background. Also among the photographs is an image of Bishop Martin Lajeunesse arriving on the shore after a canoe trip.

Approximately half of the album's photographs appear to document life in the missionary community. Several others capture scenes related to clerical life, such as the interior of a church and a portrait of what appears to be a group of first communicants. The remaining images consist mostly of family photographs and souvenirs of a trip to Niagara Falls and other locations in southern Ontario.