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Archives > Private Records > Private Records Search Page > Private Records 021-030

Number Description
PR 21 Hudson W. Blake fonds. -- 1910-1923. -- ca. 400 photographs.Hudson W. Blake was born in Victoria, the son of William Alfred and Hazel B. Blake. He was crippled by a fall at the age of thirteen. Blake joined the staff of the British Columbia Government Travel Bureau in 1943, but had to resign due to ill health. After World War II he opened the B.C. Craft House in Victoria to sell crafts produced by other handicapped people.
William Alfred Blake was born in Victoria on 31 May 1883. As a young man he played lacrosse. He was a sign painter by trade and ran his own sign shop for 40 years. In 1923 he married Hazel B. Smith and had two children Hudson and Peggy (later McAllan). He died in July 1964.Fonds consists of one album and four loose photographs showing relatives and friends of Hudson Blake's father William Alfred Blake. Most photos have captions. Some individuals are identified, but their relationships are not clear. Group photos include classes at Oaklands School, lacrosse teams and Canadian Army units (World War I).
Donated in 1970 by Hudson Blake.
Location: 25 E 7, 25 G 2.
PR 22 Allwood family fonds. -- 1921-1925. -- ca. 170 photographs and 0.01 m of textual records (0.07 m).Frank Allwood was born in Spanish Town, Jamaica, in 1889. After he graduated in engineering from McGill University, he worked for the Dominion Government, the Canadian Pacific Railway and the City of Revelstoke. He served in the Canadian Army between 1914 and 1919. Frank Allwood married Eileen Barry in Cambridge, England, on 27 August 1918. Upon his discharge from the Army, he completed his training as a surveyor and in 1920 received his BCLS commission. In 1922 and 1923 he was resident engineer during construction of the Johnson Street Bridge in Victoria. Between 1919 and 1927 Frank and Eileen Allwood produced and acted in plays and musicals in the Pantages Theatre. For four of those years, Frank managed the company. He later returned to engineering and surveying, especially in the Bridge River and Revelstoke areas. As President of the Revelstoke Board of Trade, he helped organize the Big Bend Highway Association to promote completion of that vital highway link. Frank Allwood returned to national service during the Second World War but was invalided out with the rank of major in 1943. After a short period with the Department of Veterans Affairs in Vancouver, he moved to Kelowna where he opened a survey office and was appointed City Engineer of Enderby. He died in Kelowna of a heart attack on 16 October 1946. Eileen Allwood was living in Parksville in the late 1970s. The Allwoods had one son Patrick.Fonds consists of an album of photographs showing the construction of the Johnson Street Bridge 1921-1923; two leaves of a scrapbook containing programs and newspaper articles on Victoria musical revues and performers and one photograph; a poster for the comic opera The Boy; and Eileen Allwood's reminiscences of the Pantages Theatre, 1919-1927. The preliminary inventory sheet in the accession file attributes many of the bridge photographs to Howard Chapman.
Donated in 1971 by Eileen Allwood, widow of F.H. Allwood.
Copy negatives are available.
Location: 25 F 1.
PR 23 Lowe family fonds. -- 1910-1987 (predominantly 1910-1934). -- ca. 100 photographs, 2 pictures and 0.01 m of textual records (0.07 m).George Lowe was born in Australia in 1888 and came to Canada via England in 1907. In partnership with his brother, he engaged in construction. They built houses on the open land near Clover Point, including George Lowe's house on Bushby Street (1912). In 1920 he married Elsie Tucker Hodgson (1895-1987), and they had one daughter Margaret (Peggy). Lowe gave up the construction business in 1935 when he took a job as construction foreman with the Federal Department of Transport. This work, which continued until his retirement in 1951, took him to many remote locations on the British Columbia Coast. George Lowe died in 1978.Fonds consists of photographs and postcards in an album; loose prints; glass and celluloid negatives; newspaper clippings; and a leaflet for the memorial service for Elsie Tucker Lowe. The photographs include views of Victoria taken from the roof of the Parliament Buildings; Coronation Day, 1911; the Gorge; the Clover Point area; the Five Sisters Block and Spencer's Store fire, 1910; St. Mary's Hall, Oak Bay; the Pemberton Block (now the Yarrow Building) under construction 1910; the Clover Point Boathouse under construction; the Vancouver Island Life Boat Association; sports fishermen and their catches; various ships; and miscellaneous Victoria and Vancouver Island scenes.
Donated ca. 1971 by George and Elsie Lowe; 1985, 1987 and 1988 by Margaret Lowe.
Full list of accessions: 97101-02, 98512-03, 98706-07 and 98802-05.
Copy negatives are available.
Location: 25 F 1, 25 G 2, third floor 113 B 13.
PR 24 John Barnsley fonds. -- [ca. 1890-1916]. -- ca. 140 photographs and 0.01 m of textual records (0.09 m).John Barnsley was born in Birmingham, England, and immigrated to British Columbia in the 1880s. He ran a sporting goods store in Victoria and was later the secretary-manager of the Boscowitz Steamship Company. When that company was bought out by the Union Steamship Company in 1910, he was appointed agent at Prince Rupert, effectively the Union Steamship northern manager. He became assistant manager of the firm in 1917 and manager from 1920 to 1924 (managing director from 1922 on). John Barnsley died in Vancouver on 19 August 1924 at the age of 67. He was survived by his wife Elizabeth, sons Jack and Frank and a daughter Clara Robinson.Fonds consists of photographic prints (including copy prints from an album evidently loaned to the Archives) and glass negatives and a file of bills, cancelled cheques, receipts and correspondence belonging to John Barnsley. The photographs show family members in Victoria and Prince Rupert; the Barnsley country home Langford Lodge; early automobiles; interiors and exteriors of Barnsley's Sporting Goods and Gunsmiths; and miscellaneous views taken in the Victoria area.
Donated by A.L. Robertson, son-in-law of John Barnsley.
An item list of the copy prints is available.
Location: 25 G 2, 36 E 3.
PR 25 Roland Banyard fonds. -- 1887-[197-?]. -- ca. 50 photographs and 7 maps (0.05 m).Roland Banyard was a photographer for the Canadian Hydrographic Survey.Fonds consists of photographs and maps, most of which probably originated with the Canadian Hydrographic Service. The photographs include views of three girls on Willows Beach, including the future Alfred Banyard; a wrecked barge in Tahsis Inlet; Coast Guard ships and boats; the West Coast of Vancouver Island, including Tofino airport tower and hydrographic surveying scenes; Bamberton; early wireless radio rooms; lighthouses and light ships; and the demolition of Ripple Rock. The maps include five of the six sheets of a British military map of Greater Victoria (Maps/B0033); southwestern British Columbia (Maps/B0062); and a hydrographic chart of Pender Harbour.
Acquired from Roland Banyard in the 1970s.
Copy negatives are available.
Location: 28 C 5, 36 F 2, Map 1 E-F.
PR 26 Dennis R. Harris fonds. -- 1885-1929 (predominantly 1907-1929). -- 0.17 m of textual records and other material (0.18 m).Dennis Reginald Harris was born in England in 1851 and immigrated to Canada in 1869. As a civil engineer he took part in the survey for the Canadian Pacific Railway route in British Columbia in the 1870s. He settled in Victoria, and on 21 March 1878, he married Martha Douglas, youngest daughter of Sir James and Lady Amelia Douglas. The couple had four children Hilda, Denise Victoria (later Oland), James Chichester and Reginald William Douglas. Dennis Harris was an active surveyor and for a time sold real estate in the firm Lowenberg, Harris & Co. He was a member of the Union Club and an alderman for the City of Victoria. Harris died on 3 November 1932 at his home at 603 Superior Street.Fonds consists of diaries, letters, bills and cancelled cheques, most of which document Harris's career as a surveyor. Also included are two album pages with photographs of Hilda and Denise (later Oland) Harris, daughters of Dennis and Martha Harris; and maps of Victoria Harbour (Maps/B0092) and the Western Front in World War I.
Found in the house at Shawnigan Lake once owned by Dennis Harris and donated by the Rev. Eric Oland.
A file list is available.
Location: 25 F 2, 36 F 2, Map 1 G.
PR 27 James Slater fonds. -- [ca. 1912]. -- 10 photographs (0.06 m).James Slater was a delivery boy and horse handler for West End Grocery Co. and later Dixi H. Ross & Co. of Victoria.Fonds consists of photographs of horses and a delivery wagon belonging to West End Grocery Co. and Dixi H. Ross & Co., interior and exterior views of the latter's store and a box of prize ribbons won at horse shows, 1910-1912. Some photos show James Slater.
Donated in 1973 by James Slater's wife.
Copy negatives available.
Location: 25 F 3, 25 G 2, Vault.
PR 28 Walls family fonds. -- [ca. 1890-1945]. -- ca. 1000 photographs and 72 prints.John Patmore Walls was born in Old Windsor, England, in July 1842, and attended Eton. He immigrated to California in the 1870s and moved to Victoria in 1879. He practiced law in Victoria as head of the firm of Walls, Walls and Sedger. He also served for many years as secretary of the Victoria Law Society. In Victoria he married Fanny Georgina Orlebar Nunn, daughter of Captain George Elphinstone Nunn, on 12 March 1881. They made their home at 657 Superior Street. When he died on 17 August 1925, he left his widow, three daughters and five sons, one of whom, John Percival Walls, was a partner in the law firm.Fonds consists of photographs and prints (including postcards) in four albums and loose in six files. Subjects include Victoria and Vancouver Island scenes, the Walls family (groups and individuals), World War I soldiers and travels in California and England. Of note are photographs of Florence Nunn Rattenbury, Fanny Walls's sister. A number of the postcards are by Trio Photographers, and many of the photos may be by the same photographer. Orlebar C. Walls, son of J.P. Walls, was employed by Trio.
Acquired in 1974.
Copy negatives of some images are available. A list of the copy negatives is in the PR file.
Location: 25 F 3-4.
PR 29 Janet Bowden fonds. -- 1904-[192-?] (predominantly 1904-1912). -- 64 photographs and 0.04 m of textual records (0.07 m).Janet Bowden was born Janet Wilde in England. While on a visit there in 1896 or 1897 Mabel Higgs (later the wife of Martin Allerdale Grainger) and her sister Winifred (later Grey) persuaded Janet's mother, a struggling widow with three children, to let them take Janet, then about ten or eleven years old, to British Columbia to educate and raise her. About 1900 Janet was sent to The Cliffs, a private school in Duncan, where she made friends with Judith Phillipps-Wolley, daughter of the writer and well-known imperialist Sir Clive Phillipps-Wolley. She later became a stenographer in Seattle and then Kelowna. She followed the same occupation with the British Columbia Government in Victoria and lived on Lampson Street from the 1930s until about 1970. About 1941 or 1942 she married J.L. Bowden, but was widowed only a few years later. Janet Bowden died at Sandringham Hospital in Victoria on 29 September 1976.
Martin Allerdale Grainger was born in London in 1874 and spent his childhood in Australia. He graduated in 1896 from Cambridge, where he excelled in mathematics. He spent a number of years in northern British Columbia, fought in the Boer War and worked at placer mining, logging and journalism back in B.C. In 1908 while in England he wrote Woodsmen of the West based on his own experiences. He returned to the forest industry of British Columbia in 1910 where he held successive positions as secretary to the Royal Commission on Forestry, Deputy Chief Forester and Chief Forester. After 1920 he ran his own lumbering firm. Grainger died in Vancouver in 1941.Fonds consists of an album (inscribed to Janet "from Judith Phillipps-Wolley, Xmas 1906") containing photographs and a copy of Martin Allerdale Grainger's Woodsmen of the West (London: Arnold, 1908). Photographs include individuals and groups; houses on Samuel Island, Eburne, Vancouver; Martin Grainger's house on Lampson Street, Esquimalt; views of the coast of British Columbia, including the Gulf Islands. One of the photographs is reproduced in Woodsmen of the West.
Donated by Heather Brown, 12 May 1975.
Location: 25 F 5.
PR 30 F. Morran Waller fonds. -- 1872-1917. -- 0.02 m of textual records and 4 photographs (0.02 m).Frederick Morran Waller was born on 2 November 1916 and was raised in Victoria. From about 1935 to 1938 he worked for Lemon, Gonnason Co. Ltd. In 1938 he took up an appointment with the City of Victoria. After returning from military service during World War II, Waller advanced from junior clerk to paymaster, bookkeeper, Secretary to Committees, Assistant Clerk and finally City Clerk in 1965. He held this latter position until his retirement on 30 November 1976. Waller was a member of a number of social and professional organizations. When he died in Victoria on 23 October 1987, F. Morran Waller was survived by his wife Gladys and his sons Kitt and Ian.Fonds consists of correspondence, bills, receipts and other documents in connection with the estate of Henry Waller, which was administered by his son Frederick William Waller; marriage certificate of (1) Henry Waller and Jane Harriet Ellis [?] and (2) Frederick William Waller and Jeanie Bell McMorran; agreement for sale of a lot in Victoria by Leopold Loewenberg to Elisabeth Hamilton; and photographs of children, William Craft's store on Yates Street and H.M.S. Triumph.
Donated to the Archives when it was found in Mr. Waller's office in City Hall after he retired in 1976.
Location: 25 F 5.

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