Then and Now: The Postcard Shot

The Empress Hotel 1971 as taken by dad:
The Empress Hotel 2014 as taken by me:

Then and Now: Mile 0

In 1971, not long after we moved to Victoria, Dad snapped this shot of the Mile 0 marker. This marker designates the Pacific terminus of the 8,000 km long Trans-Canada Highway. Sometime between then and now, the maker has been replaced. I took a picture of the new marker this past summer: And if you're dying to know what the backside of the marker looks like... Eagle-eyed viewers will notice that something has been added directly behind the Mile 0 marker.

Then and Now: Victoria Harbour 1971

This is a shot my dad took of Victoria's Inner Harbour in 1971, and below it is a shot of the harbour I took a few weeks ago. My, how things have changed.

In the foreground, the most obvious change is the rearrangement of the docks. Seaplanes still come into the harbour, but they don't dock in this part of it anymore. In the background, well, nothing's the same. All the buildings are gone, and the big piers jutting out into the harbour are gone. The MV Coho that dominates my photo docked on the other side of the harbour in 1971. The only building that remains is the old CPR Steamship Terminal building in the top left corner. In 1971, it was the Victoria Royal London Wax Museum; after recent renovations and seismic upgrading it's now the Robert Bateman Centre. Missing entirely now is the Undersea Garden (seen behind the seaplane in dad's photo). The Undersea Gardens was a long-time tourist attraction in the harbour. It's a 150-foot purpose built vessel where, according to Wikipedia, visitors "....descended 15 feet (4.6 m) beneath the ocean surface to look through the many viewing windows of the aquariums that surrounded the vessel and see the various marine life of coastal British Columbia, in their natural and protected environment." It was originally opened at the Oak Bay Marina in 1964, then it was towed to the Inner Harbour in 1969, but closed last year. We saw it this past January while kayaking in the harbour. It was towed to a shipyard where it sat waiting to be scrapped or sold.

Camera Club Girls III

Another session with a model at Dad's camera club in the 1960s in Montreal.

Dad

Dad would have been 91 today.

Then and Now: Across the Harbour

A 1971 shot looking across Victoria's Inner Harbour taken by my dad.
As we can see from a recent photo that I took below, from this angle the harbour looks like it hasn't changed much with the exception of the addition of the looming Grand Pacific Hotel. But looks can be deceiving; this is probably the one view, towards the Legislature whose blue domes you can see in the trees, that hasn't changed radically through the years.

Camera Club Girls II

Here's another assortment of pictures that Dad took of a model at a camera club meeting in the late 1960s in Montréal.

Ann

My sister Ann would have turned 69 this week. Here she is at 18. Dig that beehive!

Bee Fly

This is a bee fly. Not a bee, but a bee fly. A bombyliidae, if you like big-sounding words. They are not particularly well-known or understood and are often mistaken for, well, bees. Dad snapped this shot in the backyard in Victoria some time in the 1980s. We were stumped as to the identity of this creature for a while, until dad showed the picture to an insect expert at the Royal British Columbia Museum who supplied us with the answer.

Jacques Cartier Bridge

The Jacques Cartier Bridge spanning the St. Lawrence River along the south shore of Montreal.

Then and Now: St. Joseph's Oratory

Here's a picture my dad took of St.Joseph's Oratory of Mount Royal in Montréal. It began life as a small chapel in 1904, but has grown and been rebuilt throughout the 20th century. The current configuration was completed in 1967. According to Dad's records, this shot would have been taken on Avenue de Somerled looking North-ish towards St. Joseph's in 1970.
Or was it? Below is the modern Google Maps view. This is Somerled looking North-ish, just south of Oxford. I'm fairly certain I'm in the correct spot. The cross street ahead is a one-street crossing left-to-right in both pictures, there's a brick house on the right corner that look similar (red brick with white windows, grey at ground level, with a small window in the grey area), and the street ends in just a couple of blocks. The only thing missing in the Google Maps view is, of course, St. Joseph's.
So either Dad got his street wrong, or a super-villain has kidnapped the largest Church in Canada. But Somerled is the only street that points directly at the side of St. Joseph's like that. And it's hard to imagine that the entire hill has disappeared. What is going on here?
There may be another explanation other than the nefarious machinations of Lex Luthor. First, the height of the Google Street View car picture is higher than the height of my Dad, so that may have affected the angle of view of the Google pic. I also wonder if Dad was using a telephoto lens which may have resulted in some foreshortening of the image, making St.Joseph's appear closer than it is. If I've got the right spot, St. Joseph's is still about 2 km away. And the Google folks would have been using a wide angle lens, making St.Joseph's appear even further away. An interesting illustration of how an image can be manipulated by the lens you choose.
On the other hand, that's a lot of missing hill and church to account for. I may just have to go back there one day to solve the mystery!




Addendum:
Reader Stephanie found this Google Map image from a little further up the street where you can see St. Joseph's poking up. The angle is nothing like my father got, but at least one can see the Oratory.

Then reader Blair found this image with a better view of the oratory which when cropped gives a view of the oratory remarkably similar to what dad shot. It is an interesting study of perspective and lenses. All the photos were taken within a couple of blocks of each other, and yet each have different views of the church.