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By Rebecca Murray

Library and Archives Canada (LAC) holds over 30 million images in various formats, including born digital images, negatives and photographic prints. A single archival photograph can tell us much about the fashion, weather, technology, customs and culture of an era! Yet, much of these secondary, but important, themes found in imagery are often ignored in the archival description process, with more attention given to the primary subjects or those captured by the photographer’s gaze. The popular saying “a picture is worth 1000 words” rings true every time I look at an image from the holdings. Even in this relatively simple image of two figures with little to no visible background, there is a wealth of detail and history to explore. What can the uniforms worn by the two men tell us? If there was a building or landscape in the background, what could we learn about where this image was taken?

1967-052, item Z-6244-4 “Arrival of RCRs at Fort Lewis: Units of the Canadian Army Special Force having completed their move to Fort Lewis, Wash., will shortly commence training at brigade strength. Among the recent arrivals with the Royal Canadian Regiment was one of many Halifax men serving with the Special Force. He is Pte. Harry Adams, above, seen being wished “Best of luck” by Porter Jim Jones of Calgary. (e011871942)

I first came across this image while reviewing others from the Department of National Defence (DND) accession 1967-052 for servicewomen, none of whom are pictured here. Though my main focus was the depiction of servicewomen, a minority group in these photographs, there are many other secondary or non-traditional narratives that are reflected in visual records, including those of sleeping car porters. Despite holding a degree in Canadian history, I had only recently been introduced to these men and their experiences through various books, including Genevieve Graham’s Bluebird and Suzette Mayr’s The sleeping car porter.

If you were to come to LAC looking for photographs of railway porters, you likely wouldn’t start in the DND photographs. Instead, you’d be drawn to those found in the Department of Transport (RG12) or the Canadian National Railways (RG30) fonds archives. In this instance, neither the porters nor the railway (nor the War in Korea) are mentioned in the description of the “Z prefix – CA” sub-sub-series. This is not entirely surprising, as it’s a large set of photographs — approximately 7 500 images — covering several decades worth of events, including the Second World War. Fewer than 15% of the images in this sub-sub-series are described at the item (photograph) level in the database, but most are described to varying levels of detail in digitized finding aids (item lists) that are attached to the sub-sub-series level description. The full caption for image Z-6244-4, which is available only on the original envelope and must be ordered for in-person consultation, mentions the presence of the porter and — surprisingly to this researcher — identifies him by name: Porter Jim Jones of Calgary. This is a stark contrast to most of the other images identified as part of my research. I wondered why this photograph had been so well described relative to others. Without a complete listing of captions and photographer’s notes, there is only so much we can infer from the limited data that we do have.

Coming across these images and working to pair them with their full descriptions, especially when they include the names of individuals and other identifiers, is an opportunity to press pause on one’s research intentions. The relatively hidden history in these images merits well more than a thousand-word description.

We call this process reparative description: the remediation of practices or data that have excluded, silenced or mischaracterized people or histories in archival records. Whether on a large scale or one photograph at a time, this is an ongoing process. So, when I came across these images of porters and other Black railway staff from the Second World War era, I kept notes and shared them with my colleagues who were working on the Discover Library and Archives podcast, Voices Revealed: “Porter Talk.” We were then able to work with other colleagues who are interested in this period, the presence of porters in the DND photographs and their representation in the collection as a whole.

Keep an eye out for the next piece in this series.

Rebecca Murray is a Literary Programs Advisor in the Outreach and Engagement Branch at Library and Archives Canada.