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Unidentified Farm photographs
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- Graphic material
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Physical description
12 photographs : b&w glass negatives ; 20 x 25 cm
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Archival description area
Name of creator
Biographical history
W. J. Moore was born in 1887 in Bryson, Quebec, one of eleven children of James and Elizabeth Moore. The family moved to De Winton, Alberta when Moore was in his early teens. By 1911 he had found work with commercial photographer Byron Harmon in Banff, Alberta. Harmon married Moore’s older sister Maude in 1907 and it is quite possible that Moore received his early photographic training from him.
Moore, his parents and several brothers and sisters settled in South Vancouver and Burnaby in 1912. Vancouver was then in the midst of an economic boom, but in 1913 it became a depression. Moore established a commercial photographic studio out of his home, first at East 21st Avenue and later on Sophia Street.
He bought a Kodak No. 8 Cirkut Outfit in 1913 and incorporated panoramic photographs as a specialty within his business, producing most of his work with this format in the first fifteen years of his career. After 1928, his use of this format was sporadic and production was solely by commission.
Moore worked on his own until mid-1915, when he formed a partnership with Wilfred F. McConnell, purchasing the Canadian Photo Company from O. J. Rognon and Fred P. Stevens. While in this partnership, Moore signed panoramic negatives under both his own name and the Canadian Photo Co. The partnership was dissolved in 1921, with Mr. McConnell operating his photographic business under the Canadian Photo Co. name until 1933.
In 1921, at the beginning of a decade of economic regeneration in Vancouver, Moore established his commercial studio out of the Winch Building on Hastings Street. William Read was hired as an assistant and worked with him for over thirty years, eventually purchasing the business in 1953 when Moore retired. He died in 1963.
Custodial history
The entire "W.J. Moore Collection of Negatives" was purchased by the Coquitlam Heritage Society in 2003 from Brian Wilson, who found the negatives at a garage sale near Summerland, BC. The Coquitlam Heritage Society donated a portion of the collection that related to Riverview Hospital and Colony Farm to the Riverview Hospital Historical Society in 2009. The glass negatives were housed on site at Riverview Hospital in the museum operated by the Riverview Hospital Historical Society until the museum closed in 2012. From that point until the point of transfer to the Archives, the negatives and prints were stored at the home of Anna Tremere, President of the Riverview Hospital Historical Society.
Documentation accompanying the transfer suggested that the glass negatives in this subseries depict the Dominion Experimental Farm in Agassiz BC. However, the buildings do not match the available images of the Agassiz farm and it has not been possible to confirm the location of this farm.
Scope and content
The subseries consists of photographs assumed to have been taken by W.J.Moore because of the context in which they were found, although it has not been possible to confirm. It was suggested in documentation accompanying the transfer, that the photographs depict the buildings and livestock of the Dominion Experimental Farm in Agassiz, BC; however, the buildings do not match other available photographs of the farm in Agassiz and therefore, it has not been possible to confirm the location. The glass negatives were found in Summerland, BC. It is possible that the photographs depict the Experimental Farm in Summerland; however, the buildings also do not match existing photographs of the Summerland farm, so it has not been possible to confirm either potential location.