Browse Items (34 total)

This album contains a collection of portraits in the format of cartes-de-visite and cabinet cards. The carte-de-visite was introduced in the 1850s by French photographer André-Adolphe-Eugène Disdéri. Since Disdéri depended on the wet collodion…

Portraits of British Americans demonstrates some of the challenges of circulating knowledge through photographs in the mid-nineteenth century. Though these albumen prints could be mass-produced, each print had to be individually pasted onto the page…

Around the same time as photography’s discovery, George Baxter developed a process of colour printing known as chromolithography, which he patented in 1835. The portraits of the Emperor and Princess of Prussia seen here employ that process in order…

This carte-de-visite of Métis leader Louis Riel provides an example of how a photograph of a political figure circulates information and ideas. Riel led the Red River Resistance in 1869-70, and then negotiated the terms of Manitoba’s entry into…

A portrait of a Fort Norman man, McCleary. Originally from Pittsburg, McCleary suffered from gangrene during a particularly long, hard and isolated winter and was forced to amputate his own toes with a jackknife. He survived alone for over four…

Portrait of a young Inuit man, Alikomiak. He was arrested, along with fellow Inuit hunter Tatimagana, for the murder of four Inuit at Coronation Gulf in 1921. Alikomiak shot and killed an RCMP officer, W.A. Doak, and an employee of the Hudson's Bay…

"Doc" Griffin, a steam wheeler cook, posing with fresh fish (though not trout as the caption suggests). According to Miriam Green Ellis, he had started a medical degree and left it for the river life. This magic lantern slide has been hand-coloured,…

A portrait of a Metis trader. This magic lantern slide has been hand-coloured.

A portrait of Laura, an Inuit woman travelling to Edmonton for trial. She is said to have beaten her husband. Miriam Green Ellis did not comment on the circumstances of the altercation, but did report that Laura was sent back home without a…

Bishop Grouard, an Oblate missionary, at the Edmonton train station, June, 1922. He oversaw the vicariate of Athabasca-Mackenzie, and was active in the North for half a century. Bishop Grouard is credited with bringing the first printing press to…