Lett's Expedition from Edmonton to Victoria

This album was assembled by a man named R. C. W. Lett, who is described in the album’s pages as a “colonization agent” of the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway. The album thus makes visible and explicit the ways that photography was used as a tool of colonization. 

The album also contains some surprises. Three loose photographs found among the album’s pages offer views of Mount Robson. Look closely. In each print, a man sits at an easel in the foreground, dwarfed by the size of the mountain while painting the scenery around him. Paint has also been applied to the surface of the photographs in an apparent effort to transform these documentary prints into works of art.