WAY OT: Any Canadian (or other) members recognize this place?

lkranieri

lkranieri

VFG Member
I recently bought a ca. 1907 photograph album of a family's vacation to Yellowstone National Park and in it are photos of what I suspect are Canadian cities (so I will probaby ask for additional help later). Does anyone recognize this place in what I assume is Canada? The signs on what seems to be a train station:

--Free museum; Specimens of; BI(S?G?)...E ALONG THE C.P.R. Ly (what is "Ly"?)

--Curios; Souvenirs; Taxidermists

--(On the ground) NOR...(R?)S

A couple of photos later is a herd of bison, so I thought that top sign might say something about "BISON" but the (N?)E on the end doesn't seem to fit with that. Thanks.
 
My gut reaction is that this is a CPR station in the mountain parks, either in Alberta or British Columbia, and the bison pictures further on make me think this is at least near Banff National Park where one of the few herds of bison remained in 1907 (it was much smaller than Yellowstone's). They had a "Buffalo Paddock" in Banff until fairly recently - maybe 10 years ago?

If you have a map of the Canadian Rockies the town names I'm about to mention will be easier to follow.

Jasper National Park, which is further north of Banff, wasn't created til 1907, so I don't think it's Jasper. I think the standing CPR stations at Banff and Lake Louise were built in 1910, so the pictures of the current stations don't look very much like the one in your photo, but there must have been something there beforehand since the CPR had its luxury resorts already up and running - the Banff Springs Hotel first opened in 1888, and Chateau Lake Louise in 1890. (More on the CPR hotels: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Pacific_Hotels). It's possible that it was further south near the US border in Glacier, or west over the Rockies in Field, or Golden or someplace like that.

I found a picture of a CPR station built in 1904 (it's in Golden), I don't think it's your station, but you can see the similarities in architecture:



The mention of taxidermy also makes me think of Banff, since the first museum "Banff Park Museum" was (and still is!) full of stuffed creatures. I don't know whether the museum's original building was as grand as it is now, or if it started a little smaller like the building in your photo:



More history on the Banff Park Museum:
http://www.pc.gc.ca/eng/lhn-nhs/ab/banff/natcul.aspx
http://www.hmdb.org/marker.asp?marker=8836

Very cool!
 
Thank you so much for the photos and the links, laughingmagpie! I will read everything later tonight. My husband was in Banff and said it was one of his favorite places of the very many he has visited around the globe. I look forward to seeing more photos of it.

And, Janine, I am afraid that was a live bear cub...poor thing.
 
The CPR line runs south, from Calgary through Banff, on its way to Vancouver, while the Canadian National line ran north through Edmonton and Jasper to Vancouver, so that sign suggests its somewhere along the CPR line. If you have shots of Vancouver from 1907 I will recognize them in a split second! Calgary wasn't much in 1907 (still isn't.... sorry Bonnie)....
 
I'll take that apology too, Jonathan :P

But you're right, I was doing a bit more reading on the train stations in the mountain parks, and Jasper was first serviced by Grand Trunk Pacific Railway and then Canadian National, not the CPR, so the picture can't be Jasper.

But that's not Calgary. There was a little bit more in Calgary in 1907 than a CPR station, some taxidermy and a tame bear ;)

Here's a nice postcard of Calgary during that time:
http://www.vintagepostcards.org/calgary-alberta-eighth-saddlery-grocer-drug-store-canada-p-4270.html

The trees are also all wrong for Calgary. It's definitely in the mountains and the more I think about it, the more I think it's not just Banff, but the Banff Park Museum.

It's not much, but it's home :)


Jen
 
Originally posted by Jluthye
WOW I wanna live in canada!!! ANy good vintage there lol
Click to expand...

You aren't kidding...bears and all.

Thank you all for the help with the photos, but "bear" with me, please for a couple more images so I can try to locate these places. Here is one other view of a bit of that station/museum, in which you can see the proximity to the mountains and forest. I will see if there are any others of that station...
 
How interesting! I wouldn't be surprised if that was Banff on that old photo... I've only ever seen it in winter though (yes, I live in Switzerland, but I'm crazy enough to go skiing in the Rockies :D ). That mountain in the second photo definitely is too close for that photo to have been taken in Calgary. Hmmmm... just thinking of some of those lovely restaurants in Banff! :eureka:

Karin
 
It is a very beautiful place!

Jluthye: My part of Canada in the West is relatively new so there wasn't a whole lot of population wearing pretty dresses in the 1920s-40s and that means the vintage selection isn't as great locally as in more populous places, but people like Bonnie do a great job of finding nice vintage :)

Lynne - more pictures that show the mountains would be ideal! Man-made stuff changes but the mountains don't and many of them are familiar "faces" to people.

I found a cool virtual tour that has a panoramic view from the front of the Banff Park Museum, and it makes me wonder whether the mountain in your photo is the slope of Cascade Mountain??

Here's the virtual tour:
http://www.b2vt.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=143

And here's a screengrab I took that tries to show the slope of Cascade that I'm wondering about.

banffparkmuseum_screengrab.jpg


This is a lot of fun, Lynne! I can't wait to see more pictures!

Jen
 
Jen et. al., Thank you again for the help. I don't want to burden this thread with an album full of photos (but they are great images!), so I will gladly e-mail any of them to interested viewers if you will U2U me your e-mail address.

Jen, your last image struck me immediately, as that <u>really</u> looks like the same mountain on the right. I was also struck by the fact that the side of the building on your photo is finished in exactly the same way as you can see in my close photo of the bear. I realize that many or most train stations along a line can look nearly identical because they were likely designed and built by the same people around the same time, but I noted that in the middle of the side of your building, Jen, is a long, big window...right where a door is in my close shot.

I am including here one last photo of the intrepid travelers, just to invite any comments on my dating. Because of the following factors, I dated the album to ca. 1907-08:

--The Gibson Girl look to the women

--The length and style of the women's clothing

--The doughnut hair style on the women

--The touristy Yellowstone postcards in the album have a divided back, which did not appear until 1907

Thanks...and do you believe how tiny those waists are...
 
GReat shot! I don't know about the rest of the album but this photo is 1907-08, I don't think it could even be 1909 so it's right after the postcard division is introduced.

OH MY GOD - I just looked at those two images and they are same place - the poles on the side of the building even match. Obviously a second story was added at some point, but even the telephone pole is in more or less the same spot - they just replaced it over the years. If the modern day photographer took a couple of steps to their left, they would have been in exactly the same spot.
 
Beautiful picture, Lynne!

I'm glad you and Jonathan think the mountain and the building look similar too - I was worrying that maybe I was projecting what I wanted to see on top of what I was actually seeing.

Just to clarify the building in the screengrab I posted: it's not actually the CPR station itself (that's in a different place in Banff) it's the Banff Park Museum, and so far as I can tell it was built as a Museum from the very beginning. So I think that's the building in your photo rather than a CPR station.

It's not surprising that the museum has a sign proclaiming the "CPRly" since the CPR as a company was spear-heading tourism in the mountains - building not just railways and stations but also hotels and attractions like museums and National Parks too. As a bonus, they were also building Canada! The story of the CPR is all tied up in politics and nation-building, and its history is studied in Canadian grade schools much like I'm sure the American War of Independence is in the US :-)

Jen
 
LOL!! I love it! :clapping:

Further confirmation, by the way, that's definitely Banff. The mountain in background is Cascade Mountain again, this time from another angle.

Here's a recent flickr picture of the area the Buffalo Paddock used to be in:



Jen
 
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