The Planes! The Planes!

From a plane-spotting trip to Dorval Airport, here's a row of Air Canada DC-9s ready to go...somewhere.

The jet in the foreground, fin #740, is almost brand new in this photo, having been delivered in Air Canada in March, 1969. It stayed in service with Air Canada until 1998, then served a south-east Asian airline before being scrapped in 2006.

Camera Club Girls

My dad was a member of a camera club in Montreal 1960s. I wonder what sort of craziness happened at camera club meetings in the Swinging Sixties. Probably the same thing that happens at most club meetings now: spend five minutes approving the last meeting's minutes, then spend the rest of the time talking about girls. But at least at the camera club, girls actually showed up...and here's the photographic evidence to prove it. Interestingly, all these shots were on a single negative strip, and no other shots seem to have been taken at the meeting. This, of course, highlights the difference between shooting on film then and shooting digitally now, and how every shot on film will cost you money just to see if it worked out. If I was at the meeting with my modern camera, I'd be shooting dozens if not hundreds of shots, and all of them free.

Snowscape

I have little information other than the obvious that it's a twig in the snow, other than it was taken in 1969. Is this twig the last holdout against a snowy winter onslaught? Or the first sign of an approaching spring thaw?

Fire and Ice

The aftermath of an apartment fire in Ville la Salle in 1969.

1969 Montreal West Station

This might be a picture that I took with my Dad's camera. I have two reasons for thinking this: a) I've always been drawn to receding angles and lines in my photos, and I'm always looking for that when I'm shooting buildings and objects; and b) whoever took this shot was low to the ground. I may have been tall for my age, but not as tall as my Dad, at least not at that age. Or I just made him kneel. That's not out of the question, either.

State of the Art

From a 1969 plane-spotting trip to Dorval (now Trudeau) International Airport, the state of the art of Air Canada's fleet. Well, no, not really. It's a Vickers Viscount, the last prop plane that Air Canada had in service, the last one being retired in 1974.