Nostalgia. Curiosity. Wonder. A simple, vintage, black and white image can evoke all of these things and more, and in an era of instant digital sharing they are a reminder of a time when we were required to be more patient, more selective, less impulsive.
We’ve always been compelled to share them, albeit in different ways prior to social media. The album of baby pictures shown to a first date. A post-dinner slideshow of the family vacation foisted upon unsuspecting guests. A precious few framed and hung for all to see.
Today, when those vintage photos get hauled out of dust-covered shoeboxes long-forgotten in the attic or old albums stashed in the basement for decades, we’re lucky if we can remember who’s in them and where they were taken. Luckier still if we had the forethought to label them. But, always, they elicit a reaction.
So perhaps it’s not surprising that both online and on display, photos from Huntsville’s past have generated sharing of memories, lively discussion, and even some disagreement.
An improbable gallery
If you missed the display of photos from Wayne Baker’s barbershop at the Huntsville Train Station, you missed a fascinating view into the lives of past residents and the town Huntsville once was.
Wayne’s father Rudy had begun hanging photos contributed by his customers in his shop in the old Empire Hotel and Wayne followed suit. His customers loved it and people often stopped in just to see the floor-to-ceiling gallery.
Over time, they had accumulated too many to display at once and many were relegated to storage boxes to be pulled out later in rotation. As a result, many survived the Empire Hotel fire in 2009 and Wayne recently donated them to the Huntsville and Area Historical Society (HAHS). He was delighted with the response to the train station display.
“A lot of people came in looking for their grandfather’s or a relative’s place. Or a place or person they recognized,” said Baker. “Things that would make them feel part of the picture. They really got excited about these pictures. I couldn’t believe the way people took to them.”
Some were adamant that they knew the person or place in the photo, only to find it wasn’t who or what they thought. On the day I visited, Ernie Holinshead was there with magnifying glass in hand to examine a photo he’d seen earlier. The man pictured wasn’t who he had hoped.
HAHS organizers of the display numbered each photo and had notebooks available for people to add what they knew about a photo. They weren’t always in agreement – several notations conflicted with what others had written.
“You really have to look closely at a photo and it can take a lot of time to orient yourself and figure out the perspective of where you’re at,” said Baker. “I’ve been fooled, too, don’t think I haven’t been.”
He’d like to see the photos he’s donated always available for everyone to see. “They are something that people really enjoy more than you might think.”
Lucille Frith, President of the Huntsville Train Station Society, agrees. “We’d like to have a large digital frame installed in the train station and have it run constantly, but first the photos need to be digitized and commented on as much as possible.” They may have a funding source to hire an intern for that process, and Frith suggested that they may share some of the photos online to glean more information about them.
She also hopes that others will step forward and donate more photos.
How many more of these are out there in the community? Often these things get destroyed because families don’t know what to do with them. There is an archive opportunity but we need to be able to use them and not just store them.
Lucille Frith, President of the Huntsville Train Station Society
New meets old
Two Facebook pages – If You Grew Up In Huntsville, You’ll Remember When… and Vintage Muskoka District – have been sharing vintage photos of the area, generating plenty of interaction from those who recognize the locations or people in the images.
Ruby Truax started the If You Grew Up In Huntsville group after she saw another hometown nostalgia page. “I loved the idea of people sharing their memories of their community: how things have changed, how they’ve stayed the same; remembering people and businesses that have left, celebrating those that have become cornerstones of their community; reconnecting with acquaintances from years ago; sharing photos and stories that generate conversations about good memories and bad.”
She correctly thought the page would appeal to both current residents like herself – Truax has lived in Huntsville for 29 years – and those who grew up here and moved away but want to keep up with what’s happening in town. “We’ve got a real diverse membership on this page and they’ve posted fascinating photos and stories about places and incidents I’d never heard of before.
“On our group page, we did a series of ‘Then and Now’ photos of buildings and places in Huntsville in the mid-1900s and today. That generated conversations ranging from, ‘I remember that’ to ‘Gee, what a shame they changed that.’ People are intrigued by the evolution of our town, by how much we’ve gained and what we’ve lost.”
The most popular photos are of people and places in Huntsville that are a shared experience over generations, added Truax. “Photos that bring to mind Rudy Baker, Mern Parker, Ray Porter or Floyd Bartlett, for example. Or places like Tasty Creem, Trickey’s, Wardell’s or the Empire, iconic places that we’ve lost. They always generate great conversations.”
The photo above generated lively conversation within the If You Grew Up In Huntsville group, including the following comments (names have been removed):
-Beautiful pictures, reminds me of grandma and grandpa’s old pictures
-Wonderful photo! Finally! I can show my kids their Great Uncle’s barn!! Thank you!
-What a super picture of another time at a familiar place. Love the car. I passed this spot every day when I went to public school and every time I went down town!
Commenters often ask questions and are sometimes rewarded with answers:
-For perspective, what is on that corner now?
-There’s a ranch style house on the north-east corner of Center & Mary that was built by Norm & Minnie Carson (daughter of Art Eastman) after the barn was demolished. When? I don’t remember for sure, seems like the late 60’s.
And some add interesting anecdotes:
-Eastman’s barn is where my grandfather got his eye kicked out by a horse, or so he told me.
Like Frith, Truax also hopes that these old photos will be preserved. “There’s been interest in putting together a DVD collection of these photos, but with copyright issues and such, I don’t really know how to go about it. So for now, the photos are collected on Facebook, and will eventually be organized by category into albums for easier access. (With a current collection of thousands of photos, it’s a daunting task!) I would love all these photographs and the accompanying comments to be archived somehow.”
Keeping track of the past
Identifying and archiving old photos is part of Sara White’s job. She’s the Collections Coordinator at Muskoka Heritage Place. The site’s Muskoka Museum has a large collection of vintage photos, many donated by community members but they often don’t come with information. White is sometimes able to use the information shared on the If You Live in Huntsville page to help in her own identifications.
The amount of discussion that comes after those photos is wonderful – people identifying things in the photo or relating their own stories in the photos. It’s a memory thing – a way of reliving your own past, reliving the past of the area, and learning new things.
Sara White, Collections Coordinator at Muskoka Heritage Place
If White learns new information about a photo that is also in the museum’s collection, she’ll add that information to their archive, too. And it’s particularly helpful when the conversation shifts to the things that were in a location even before what’s shown in the photo – it helps White to determine the location of places that no longer exist.
She still has many photos that are unidentified, with more being donated by community members all the time. “Photos and other items that are donated first go through our collections working group who make the decision about whether to add it to the museum’s collection. I complete the paperwork and digitizing from there.”
For each public display in the museum, White puts all of the relevant digitized photos in a digital photo frame. “If you stand there long enough, you’ll see every photo we have related to that topic,” she said.
In fact, the entire digital photo archive is available for viewing by appointment for anyone who’d like to see it – the originals are kept in acid-free enclosures in the dark to preserve and protect them. Reprints can be had according to the Town’s user fee bylaw. And those who have an interest in vintage photos and items are welcome to contact White about openings on the collections working group.
“I think the appeal of vintage photos is the very idea that a picture is worth a thousand words,” she said. Or perhaps a thousand memories. And that makes them priceless.
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Emmersun Austin says
Network & support these local Huntsville historical & rejuvenated sites. Building a deep legacy is wise & visionary.