Old Postcards of Canada

[Andy6]

Being a postcard collector, I thought this might be a good idea for a thread. Below are some postcards from my collection. if you want to know anything about postcards - rarity, value or whatever - please feel free to ask.

Also, anyone in the Toronto area who's interested should drop by the Japanese Canadian Cultural Centre at 6 Garamond Court (just NE of the Science Centre) tomorrow (SUNDAY FEB. 22/14) for the Toronto Postcard Club's annual sale (10AM-5PM). There are always tens of thousands of postcards for sale, at all price points. Montreal has a similar show at Brebeuf College (it was in June last year) and most large cities have a sale at some point in the year as well, often associated with a stamp dealers' show.

There are also some great postcard websites out there, such as www.prairie-towns.com and the Peel Collection of the University of Alberta (for images of the Prairies in both cases).

ST. JOHN'S HARBOUR (c. 1910)


St. John's, N'fld. par wintorbos, on ipernity

A nice lithograph card with a yellow wash over a heavily contrasted photo.

HALIFAX (VICTORIA HOSPITAL AND NORTH END, 1901)


Halifax, Nova Scotia, Can. (Victoria Hospital and North End) par wintorbos, on ipernity

The 1901 date on this is early and makes the card fairly valuable despite its poor condition. The postcard fad took off very rapidly between 1903-5, so a 1901 card is probably 100x less common than a card from five or six years later.

CHARLOTTETOWN (Market Square, c. 1907)


Market Square, Charlottetown, P.E.I. par wintorbos, on ipernity

This is an example of a real photo postcard (RPPC), which is a type of postcard that is actually a photograph, developed on to a postcard back (as opposed to the lithographed cards above, which could be mass produced on printing presses and in which the images consist of tiny dots). RPPCs are usually 5-10x more costly than the much commoner "lithos".

SAINT JOHN (Bridges and Falls, c. 1908)


Bridges and Falls, St. John N.B. par wintorbos, on ipernity

A high quality lithograph card, part of a series of similar ones.

SHERBROOKE (Bird's Eye View Looking South, c. 1907)


Bird eye view of Sherbrooke. - Looking south par wintorbos, on ipernity

A.-Z. Pinsonneault, the photographer, produced a lot of postcards down the middle part of Quebec.

MONTREAL (Johnstown Flood Attraction, Dominion Park, posted 1907)


Entrance to the Johnstown Flood, Dominion Park, Montreal. par wintorbos, on ipernity

Collecting postcards, you learn what people actually did with their time in the period leading up to the First World War. Amusement opportunities abounded.

OTTAWA (Bird's Eye View, posted 1906)


Ottawa - Birdseye View par wintorbos, on ipernity

Perhaps taken from the top of the Library of Parliament.

TORONTO (Governor General's Body Guards (c. 1906)


Governor-General's Body Guards, Toronto, Canada par wintorbos, on ipernity

This card was produced by the Canadian branch of Valentine & Sons of Dundee, which was the largest producer of postcards in the world (and in Canada). Valentine coloured their cards using a distinct colour palette -- there are probably 15,000 different Canadian postcards of theirs that have the same layout, colour palette and typography as this one. Their coverage of street scenes in Toronto is particularly impressive.

Colour lithograph cards were coloured artificially, usually in Germany where lithography was very advanced. The postcard company would send the photographs over to Germany with specifications about the colours that were to be added. In many cases, they simply didn't bother trying to colour parts that were too complicated (as with the marching guard in this shot). Also, it was common for the colours to be incorrect, so while these cards do provide nice colour images that sometimes seem quite realistic, they are not always reliable guides to the colours that things actually were. Moreover, if a scene was insufficiently interesting, the Germans could (and would) paste in extra items into it, such as fake people, horses, dogs, streetcars, clouds and flags (as the skies were often just blank white areas in the original photos).

TORONTO (Rosedale Ravine, c. 1907)


Rosedale Ravine, Toronto, Ont. Canada (106,719) par wintorbos, on ipernity

Valentine & Sons liked to milk everything they could out of their stock of photographs. One way they repackaged them was to combine postcard images into "multiview" cards such as this one. The multiviews are some of their most beautiful cards. For aesthetic effect, the sky in the middle image of the multiview cards was almost always coloured yellow ... as is the case here.

HAMILTON (King St., looking east, c. 1907)


King St., Hamilton, Ont., Looking East. par wintorbos, on ipernity

This is probably by the same manufacturer as the Saint John card.

WINNIPEG (TRANSCONA) (Grand Trunk Pacific Yards, 1912)


[Transcona, Man.] par wintorbos, on ipernity

A real photo card showing the newly completed Grand Trunk Pacific (now C.N.) facility at Transcona, the equally new GTP company town (and now suburb of Winnipeg) that was beginning to pop up on the neighbouring patch of land.

NINGA (1908)


Main St., Ninga, Man. from the East. par wintorbos, on ipernity

The postcard craze struck at exactly the same time as hundreds and hundreds of hopeful new towns were springing up across the Prairies. The Winnipeg Photo Co. produced thousands of real photo postcards showing virtually all of the towns, villages and hamlets in southwestern Manitoba and southeastern Saskatchewan from nearly every conceivable angle. This image of the main street of Ninga, Man., is an example of their best work.

REGINA (Eleventh Ave. East, c. 1912)


Eleventh Ave. East, Regina. No. 1019. par wintorbos, on ipernity

Despite the attribution to "Van, The Camera Man", I'm pretty sure this is another Winnipeg Photo Co. effort. Sometimes writing on the front of the card actually makes it more interesting, as here, where the writer has identified various buildings, including the new post office (under construction) and his own office.

SASKATOON (Saskatoon Ferry, 1906)


Saskatoon Ferry par wintorbos, on ipernity

An early Saskatoon card, showing a cable ferry across the South Saskatchewan River.

EDMONTON (Railway and Traffic Bridge, 1906)


Saskatchewan River at Edmonton, Alta., showing Railway and Traffic Bridge par wintorbos, on ipernity

CALGARY (Looking West, Calgary, N.W.T., posted 1905)


Looking west, Calgary, N.W.T. par wintorbos, on ipernity

I keep an eye out for postcards that predate Saskatchewan and Alberta provincehood in 1905. This one is postmarked Sept. 10, 1905, just 9 days after Alberta became a province. Finding "Calgary, N.W.T." is fairly unusual since even prior to 1905 they tended to use "Calgary, Alberta" (Alberta being the name of the district of the NWT that Calgary was in -- Medicine Hat, by contrast, was actually in the Assiniboia district along with southern Saskatchewan).

VANCOUVER (Big Tree, Stanley Park, c. 1900?)


Big Tree, Stanley Park, Vancouver, B.C. par wintorbos, on ipernity

I suspect this one is quite old but I'm not sure. I don't really have all that much for Vancouver.

VICTORIA (From Parliament Buildings, c. 1902)


7203 - Victoria, B.C., from Parliament Buildings. par wintorbos, on ipernity

This is one of many Canadian postcards produced by the Detroit Photographic Co. around 1900-02, the first large series to be produced showing Canadian views.

[SignalHillHiker]

Holy crap - the Transcona one from Winnipeg is mind-blowing to me.

First, it's not really Winnipeg. Technically, it's part of the city now... but it is the neighbourhood farthest away from the core and always had its own identity, its own downtown, etc. The red brick building on the right, in the centre of the visible ground, is the Transcona Museum today. Cool spot - I've been in there! And it faces a dense, downtown Street in Transona.

This is it today:



I can't believe how fast that all filled in.

[MonctonRad]

from the McCord Canada Collection:





both images circa 1910

[someone123]

The Victoria one is interesting. It looks like Government Street used to be a causeway. It's now filled in and the Empress Hotel is behind it. The grey building with the mansard roof has also either been torn down or was renovated. Western Canada was growing so quickly back then that some of the nicest buildings only lasted for a couple of decades before being redeveloped.

[flar]

Old postcards are fascinating. There is a website with tons from Hamilton: http://hamiltonpostcards.com/

I love this one:

source: http://hamiltonpostcards.com/pages/bestofhamilton.html

[franktko]

Great stuff!
Calgary, N.W.T., wtf??

[SignalHillHiker]

As you can imagine, I've saved thousands of copies of old Newfoundland postcards over the years. Here is a very small selection of my favourites of St. John's, all from Vintage St. John's, and why...

Very few people remember what the interior of the Newfoundland Hotel used to look like. It was almost as grand as Canada's railway hotels.



I love this view of the extreme east end of Downtown St. John's, facing northwest toward Quidi Vidi Lake. It's a rarely-seen view even today, and very rarely photographed. This was almost certainly taken from the belltower of the Basilica.



I love this one because it was taken before any modern buildings were constructed in St. John's and because, at the time, Southside Road was a simple wooden walking trail. Today it's a proper road lined with some of the most industrial areas of the harbour as well as some of the more picturesque residential areas.



I love this shot of the Military Road area because it's the edge of the preserved part of the Old Town area. This area looks all but identical today, as do most of the neighbourhoods to the left of this view.



Our last few years as an unspoiled European-style capital. This was before the piers were destroyed and the harbour filled in partially to allow the construction of Harbour Drive.



And an old postcard from prior to us joining Canada. I love it because we actually led with our climate as a selling point back then.

[Black Star]

Awesome Thread

[Andy6]

Originally Posted by someone123

The Victoria one is interesting. It looks like Government Street used to be a causeway. It's now filled in and the Empress Hotel is behind it. The grey building with the mansard roof has also either been torn down or was renovated. Western Canada was growing so quickly back then that some of the nicest buildings only lasted for a couple of decades before being redeveloped.

I thought you'd like the Halifax one, in which the American tourist is lamenting the lack of alcoholic beverages...

[Andy6]

Originally Posted by SignalHillHiker

And an old postcard from prior to us joining Canada. I love it because we actually led with our climate as a selling point back then.

Pre-air conditioning, being hot was at best a two-edged sword for tourism. A lot of people were conditioned to consider the cooler and fresher air of the seaside to have health benefits, so the warm-cool combination would have been more sellable than it is now.

In fact, you can see that on the Halifax card I included above: the writer, Bertha Dunn, calls the city "delightfully cool" and is sending the card to an address in Manhattan, where she presumably lived. It is July, the heat in New York could well have been barely bearable and the goal of anyone with a bit of money would have been to find somewhere cool to go.

[SignalHillHiker]

Oh my God... my face is blood red. I did read the postcard, but interpreted cool as being hip, groovy, etc.

[bulliver]

Originally Posted by franktko

Great stuff!
Calgary, N.W.T., wtf??

The Northwest Territories encompassed a huge portion of Canada originally. Here's a map of it's boundaries from 1870-1871:



Alberta was not established as a Province until 1905, so prior to that, Calgary was indeed located in the Northwest Territories.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Histor...st_Territories

[SignalHillHiker]

My God, no wonder the province-level attachment is higher out east.

I like how Manitoba is this little bubble of province in the middle of the NWT.

[1ajs]

ive got a glass slide that andy has as a post card witch when he got it he didn't know till i pointed that out

[Architype]

Thanks Andy 6 for the great thread; too bad there wasn't more of Vancouver in their selections though. However, the postcard view of St. John's is one of the best I've seen from that era.

SignalHillHiker - That is one of the best interior views of the old Newfoundland Hotel, it was a great building. If it were still there today I'm pretty sure it would never get torn down; what an unfortunate shortsighted loss to the city, the result of what could be called a conspiracy of disrespect by CN.

[Cyro]

Here's an excellent collection of historic postcards fom alittle1.
Re-Posted form the:
Winnipeg and Manitoba (ALL Purpose Photo Thread)
Post # 103/ page 6

Originally Posted by alittle1

[IMG] [/IMG]

[VANRIDERFAN]

Originally Posted by Andy6

NINGA (1908)


Main St., Ninga, Man. from the East. par wintorbos, on ipernity

The postcard craze struck at exactly the same time as hundreds and hundreds of hopeful new towns were springing up across the Prairies. The Winnipeg Photo Co. produced thousands of real photo postcards showing virtually all of the towns, villages and hamlets in southwestern Manitoba and southeastern Saskatchewan from nearly every conceivable angle. This image of the main street of Ninga, Man., is an example of their best work.

.

Ninga! Home of the NHL!
I'm amazed you chose this small town that is only 7 miles from where I grew up!
Not much of her left now. But there is still the curling and hockey rink (natural ice) an elevator (owned and operated by a local Hutterite Colony) one machine shop and small resturarant.
19 years previously this area was still part of the North-West Territories.

[Architype]

Vancouver's West End, showing Davie Street, when it was just a sleepy residential area (undated), but probably between 1905-1915.



Source

[MonctonRad]

Here's another one from Moncton.

The old Intercolonial Railway Station, circa turn of the 20th century. Sadly this building and the adjacent ICR headquarters building (a grand old building) are long since gone.


source - Vintage Moncton website.

[Andy6]

Originally Posted by Architype

Vancouver's West End, showing Davie Street, when it was just a sleepy residential area (undated), but probably between 1905-1915.



Source

The Valentine & Sons cards numbered in the 110,xxx range are usually from about 1914 (see serial number on the lower right of the front of the card).