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Family Memory, Photography and theFur Trade: The Sinclairs at Norway

House, 1902-1911by Peter Geller Department of History, Carleton University, Ottawa

Manitoba History , Number 28, Autumn 1994

This article was published originally in Manitoba History bythe Manitoba Historical Society on the above date. We makeit available here as a free, public service.

Please direct all inquiries to [email protected] .

The growing popularity of photography in the late nineteenth and early twentiethcenturies altered perceptions and meaning, bringing exotic peoples and places withinreach while at the same time allowing the ordinary and mundane to be arranged in newways. One prevalent use of the photographic image was through display in the familyalbum. An intriguing example is offered by the Sinclair photo-albums, which detail their experiences in northern Manitoba during the early decades of this century. While theindividual photographs offer a variety of viewpoints and perspectives, considered as acollection the albums are a valuable source for exploring the Sinclairs view of themselves and others as they reveal how these disparate memories were organized intoan ordered representation of family life.

The Sinclair photograph albums also allow for an examination of these images in other ways. As a cultural artifact, the photo-album is more than a personal document, and canbe viewed as an expression of the values of the larger culture. [ 1] Situated within thehistory of photography in Western society, the photographs that appear in the Sinclair albums were taken at a pivotal point in the development of the medium, straddling theperiod between initial mass accessibility and the later dominance of the photo-graphicimage as the way of apprehending visual reality. [ 2] Placed within the historicalcontext of the Hudsons Bay Companys participation in and mediation of the culturalexchanges between Euro-Canadians and Native people, these albums offer images andallow for interpretations of the early twentieth century fur trade experience. And viewedwithin the context of one familys experiences within this setting, the albums provide avaluable means of analyzing the way individuals and groups understood their role withinthese larger social processes.
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By the time the Sinclair family arrived at the Hudsons Bay Company (HBC) post of Norway House in 1902, the idea of photography was firmly entrenched within Westernpopular culture. The newer mode of snapshot photography augmented the alreadywidespread practice among the middle classes of collecting professional studio portraitsof family and friends and the commercially produced photographs of famous people and

faraway places. With the invention of the gelatine dry plate in the early 1880s and thesubsequent mass marketing of the Kodak camera (which came loaded with film and wasreturned to the factory for developing), photography required no special expertise andcould be undertaken anywhere. Clearly, photographs enabled a growing number of people to record their own experiences and those of others on film, and to organize thesevisual representations of their lives in a variety of personal and public ways. [ 3]

The photographs collected and arranged by the Sinclair family constitute one suchdocument of the role of photography in a particular familys life. [ 4] Charles Cuthbert (C.C.) Sinclair and Islay Mary Colcleugh, married in 1898, spent from 1902 to 1911 atNorway House, north of Lake Winnipeg. [ 5] Their daughter, Ramona, was born there,

and their son, Moray, joined the family when he was not boarding at St. Johns College inWinnipeg. C. C. Sinclair worked for the HBC from 1887 until 1931, first as Chief Accountant at Norway House, later as a District Manager based in Edmonton, and finallyas a Fur Buyer in Winnipeg and Regina. The familys movements were tied to theseemployment opportunities. [ 6]

Charles Cuthbert, Moray, Ramona, and Islay Mary Sinclair, in front of theBungalow, Norway House, circa 1908. As Ramona Sinclair later noted: I like this

solemn family group.Source: Hudson's Bay Company Archives 1981/39/224
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It is relatively easy to explain how the familys photograph albums now reside in a box inthe temperature and humidity controlled environment of the Hudsons Bay CompanyArchives. Following Ramona Sinclair McBeans death in Vancouver in 1978, her husband sent photographs related to his wifes childhood and family background toBarbara Johnstone, a history conscious relative in Selkirk, Manitoba. Recognizing their

historical interest, she donated them to the Hudsons Bay Company Archives to joinkindred documents. [ 7]

What is less easily obtainable is the meaning of these commentaries as insights into andon the past. [ 8] One useful approach for examining photography as a historical source isto consider the photographs as an expression of the picture-taker. Recognizing the built-in selectivity of the evidence, the historian needs to consider the photographers bias andthe amount of control he or she exerts over the final image, and the information andmessage it contains. For this reason the identification of the photographer is one vitalkey to unlocking meaning. [ 9]

As most of the photographs in the Sinclair albums are unattributed, one might initiallyassume that the Sinclairs themselves took the pictures, much like our own present-dayfamily photo-albums. Yet there is no evidence to support this assumption. In the NorwayHouse Post journals, for instance, there are several references to photography; it appearsthat it was still a novelty at the post at this time, and as such deserved special mention asan unusual diversion. A note was made of Sinclairs fellow employees takingphotographs, while other entries identified the resident missionary, the Indian Agent, anda member of the Royal North West Mounted Police snapping shots around the Fort. [ 10]Yet nowhere is there a reference to the Sinclairs engaging in any photographic activity.

Photographs by several known active amateurs who visited Norway House during the

Sinclairs stay appear in the albums. Georgina Moodie (nee Fitzgibbon) and her husband,Royal Northwest Mounted Police Officer John Douglas Moodie, both photographedextensively during their trips to the arctic and sub-arctic, and passed through NorwayHouse in 1910. [ 11 ] Several copies of their work appear in the Sinclair Albums, [ 12] asdo two prints by A. Vernon Thomas, who accompanied Treaty Commissioner ReverendJohn Semmens 1910 trip to the Treaty Five Indian bands as a clerk. [ 13] The one of obvious interest to them is a family group (Charles Cuthbert, Islay, Ramona, Moray, andIslays mother), with RNWMP Inspector Pelletier and another Mountie. [ 14]

The vast differences in quality and style of the images in the albums indicate a variety of photographers. Given the ease of reproduction and the growing popularity of the medium,it is likely that all of the prints in the Sinclair collection were given to the family bydedicated amateurs, like the Moodies, and by the new breed of snapshooters, like thosenoted in the Norway House Journals. That these photographic images appear withoutgiving credit to their makers complicates their analysis as a reflection of thephotographers point of view. Yet if the focus is shifted to the significance of the Sinclair photo-albums as a collection, a number of interesting avenues of inquiry open up. For those interested in the study of artifacts and material culture, the process of collecting hasgarnered new interest. [ 15] This reflexive turn among anthropologists, art historians and
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museologists serves to focus attention on collections as evidence of the culture of thecollectors. In understanding and using the objects in such collections, attention must bepaid to their history and nature as constructed entities, and how they have beenmaintained and preserved. [ 16] In the case of the Sinclair albums, one can ask what kindsof photographs were collected, why, and by whom? What does this collection, as a whole

and as its constituent parts, say about the Sinclairs, and about their interactions with thepeople pictured? As a set of images that were selected, categorized, and preserved, thesefive albums reflect the popular use of the photograph as a vehicle for remembering andordering scenes and people from the past. [ 17]

Images and captions work together in the family photo-album to evoke a sense of introspection and re-visiting the past. An elderly Ramona, looking back at this picture of herself, taken around 1910 at Norway House, commented: A little girl in a garden long

ago and far away.Source: Hudson's Bay Company Archives 1981/39/306

The captions, written around and literally on the photographs, constitute the mainevidence for the identification of time, individuals and locations. They were written by
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Ramona Sinclair, with the exception of blue ball-point inked identifications andclarifications later added by Barbara Johnstone. [ 18] Despite the shifting nature of memory, and the different pencils and inks which indicate that the notations were writtenat different periods, the identifications are consistent and agree with other documentarymaterial available. [ 19]

The captions, as an integral part of the artifact, are at the same time comments on thechanging meanings attached to the albums images. While Barbara Johnstones notesdisplay an attention to detail and accuracy in preparing the albums for deposit in the HBCArchives, Ramonas notations are more layered and complex. On the first page of thefirst album, a photograph of a smiling, neatly dressed child of about four years of age isentitled Ramona. Four pages later, beneath a snapshot of the same girl, now bundled upin a winter jacket and holding on to a young womans hand, appears in the samehandwriting: My nurse and me. [ 20] The family album is at once a public display, to beshown to visiting friends and relatives, and a private document, a medium for introspection and re-living the past. A view of Gods Lake Circa 1900 is

contemplated over half a century later: How different now, 1961. [ 21] Not only imagesof places but people, especially oneself, take on an added resonance, the photographpreserving a nostalgic essence of what no longer is. Pulling out the albums for another look, a 69 year old Ramona commented on a faded image: A little girl in a garden longago and far away. [ 22]
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Studio portrait of Islay, Moray and Ramona Sinclair, circa 1911. While this photographprojects a public image of family identity, Ramonas caption, Pretty Awful! draws

attention to the artifice of the posed portrait.Source: Hudson's Bay Company Archives 1981/39/36

Family photographs, as Julia Hirsch recognizes, are stalked by death, are ghostlyreminders of dead relatives and friends, of moments long past, of ones own lost youth.[23] Images of Ramonas childhood co-exist with photographs of an elderly Ramona at afamily reunion, a vivid reminder of the passage of time. [ 24] The family album, however,also serves as a vital link between past and present, as memories merge and are reshaped.Life experiences tend to affect the construction of memory, as David Thelen observes, aswe distort, combine and reorganize details of the past in an active and subjective way.[25] Ramonas and brother Morays extensive adult participation in theatre was readretrospectively into images of them as children at play. Moray directed this becomesattached to a photograph of a young boy dressed in an oversized suit, bottle raised to hislips. Similarly, Ramona described a picture of herself dressing up as hamming, eventhen, linking different periods of the past into a coherent whole. [ 26]

In addition to these playful and informal pictures, the work of professional image-makerscontributed to the varied ways in which the Sinclairs could view their family life. This is
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especially prevalent in the first album, which more than any of the others documentsRamonas family background, childhood and adolescence. The professional studioportrait may capture its subjects fashionably dressed, yet they also appear self-consciousand detached. [ 27] These portraits appear to confirm the criticism of photographs,especially posed ones, as superficial images, torn from their contexts, that tend to screen

out social and cultural information. [ 28] Yet these images, like the group portrait of Islay, Moray and Ramona, can be read as reflections of cultural attitudes about the familyas corporate entity. Moray, as heir of family property and responsibility, stands behindhis seated mother and sister, his arms resting on both their shoulders. Islay completes thisbond of feeling, her hand touching the children she nurtures. [ 29]

Such photographs document the Sinclairs participation in this staged representation of the social rules regarding family roles and behaviour. At the same time, however, thisretouched photograph and its caption, taken as a whole, provide a context for understanding and interpreting the meaning of this commercially produced image to theSinclair family. Pretty awful, the caption of this formal family group proclaims,

subverting the symbolic meanings of the image by highlighting the artifice of the posedportrait.

Candids and group shots, while obeying some of the conventions of formal portraitphotography, tend to reveal a different side of personality and social relationships. C. C.Sinclair strikes a handsome figure, posed in front of a Hudsons Bay Company buildingat Oxford House. Despite the sense of performing for the camera, he appears much morecomfortable and relaxed in this environment than in his studio portrait. [ 30] Thesnapshots of young Ramona with her mother and father in the garden, and of her andIslay standing in front of The Bungalow at the Norway House Post evoke a sense of spontaneity and feeling that contrasts with the studied seriousness of the professionally

taken photograph of Ramona at age six. [ 31]All the photographs of the Sinclair family, however, both amateur and professional,convey a sense of family pride and harmony. Moray, united with his parents in his firstsummer after RMC [Royal Military College], posed between them in his military jacket;Ramona as an infant in her fathers arms, both wearing fur caps; the family on a tugleaving Norway House for a trip to Winnipeg: the cumulative effect is one of connectedness and kinship. [ 32] The first album presents an orderly progression of movement, from Ramonas childhood years to her adolescence, highlighting, as well asthe scenes and people at Norway House, a visit to Battle Creek, Michigan, playmates at acottage in Selkirk, a trip down the Mackenzie River in 1921, and views of Ramona atFort McMurray, Alberta. [ 33]
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Charles Cuthbert and Ramona Sinclair, circa 1905. [Caption: Daddy and Me]Source: Hudson's Bay Company Archives 1981/39/215

There is no hint, for example, of the troubles and consequent serious loss which led toMr. Sinclairs removal from the Keewatin District in 1910, or of the uncordialrelations which R. H. Hall, the Canadian Fur Trade Commissioner, claimed existedbetween himself and Sinclair, and which probably contributed to Sinclairs temporaryretirement from the HBC in 1912. [ 34] Family albums gloss over such tensions, theimages taken and chosen in an effort to display the positive aspects of daily life. [ 35]

Also missing are interior shots of the post buildings and living quarters, and of thedwellings of others who appear in the albums. Exterior views do not provide the kind of information that could be gleaned from a reading of the cultural inventory of peoplespersonal spaces. [ 36] Certain types of outdoor work associated with the post werephotographed, but these tended to highlight mens activities, both Native and white;womens work remains largely absent from the photo-albums. This selectivity was partlya function of the technical constraints of the medium, limiting the choice of subjectsphotographed to outdoor shots and posed situations. At the same time, the highlighting of public space and the gendered representation of work as the mans domain can be readas an idealized view of social relations at the post. [ 37]

In a sense, the photo-albums create an impression of the Sinclairs experience at NorwayHouse as a life of ease, a product of the role of photography as a leisure pursuit. Theyhighlight the beautiful northern scenes and the sense of camaraderie among employees,
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these elements coming together in the photographs of outings and picnics. [ 38]Photography itself was a popular recreational activity, for the subjects as well as thephotographer. [ 39] Walter Colcleugh, Islay Sinclairs father, played the tripper, hauling aheavy cargo that is revealed in a another photograph to be an empty crate. Post membersdonned their ornately-beaded Indian leather jackets and gloves and posed in front of

Bachelors Hall in full regalia, or dressed up in womens clothing and a bizarre mask.[40] The numerous group portraits taken at the fort and environs constitute a lesselaborated form of this role playing for the camera.

Islay Sinclair with her daughter, Ramona, bundled in furs outside the Hudsons Bay

Companys post, Norway House, circa 1905.Source: Hudson's Bay Company Archives 1981/39/110

Two photographed instances of Ramona Sinclair playing Indian further document thenature of recreational photography, particularly the way in which children learned to playfor the camera. [ 41] At the same time, these images provide a commentary on the variedperception of Aboriginal peoples and how such images were formulated and transformed.Ramona, aged four, poses in front of a small, childs sized teepee, wearing a plain longdress, a blanket draped over her shoulders as a shawl. A wooden A-frame cooking standsupports a hanging pot above her make-believe fire. [ 42] This scene presents a fairlyaccurate image of Native life around the Fort in its incorporation of the material elements

of this lifestyle. [ 43] But the elaborate set-up of this play, like the unseen person behindthe camera, draws attention to the non-spontaneous, constructed nature of this moment.Another photograph, appearing in a different album, identifies one of the participants asBetsy, probably one of Ramonas governesses while at Norway House. [ 44] Betsy is, infact, dressed quite similarly to Ramonas make-believe attire, while another imagesituates her at a camp where she is visited by the Sinclair family. [ 45] These photographsof Ramona at play suggest that, as her Native nurse, Betsy took the opportunity to pass onher Aboriginal knowledge and values to her young charge. As keepsakes of Ramonas
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childhood memories, these images testify to the continuing importance of cross-culturalinteractions among the children of fur traders and their Native nurses and playmates. [ 46]

In contrast to this private, though shared, instance of play is a moment depicting an older Ramona playing Indian some six years later, in Edmonton, after the family had left

Norway House. Costumed in a beaded leather dress, decorated moccasins and aheadband, Ramona strikes a Hollywood-style Noble Savage pose. [ 47] A few yearslater, in May of 1920, Ramona would publicly recreate this Indian princess guise for the Edmonton pageant celebrating the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of incorporation of the Hudsons Bay Company. [ 48] As an adolescent, Ramona Sinclairsimage of the Indian became more stereotyped and formalized, removed from the directexperiences of her childhood in Norway House. One cannot know what images of theIndian Ramona carried with her at various times in her life. But these two photographsof a little girl and a young woman at play point to changing attitudes and influences asRamona grew up and lived in the world beyond Norway House.

Picnic after church. Rossville, circa 1909. Like many of the photographs in the Sinclair albums, this image highlights the social interaction between the Euro-Canadians living

around Norway House.Source: Hudson's Bay Company Archives 1981/39/155

In addition to the recreational element of photography, then, one can discern deeper meanings. Its very prevalence suggests a power and a function of the photographic imagethat goes beyond and transforms the quest for a pictorial record of ones experience Inparticular, the photograph plays a part in determining and maintaining individual, family,
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and group identity. Viewed as part of the cultural practice of collecting, the photographalbum, like the more institutionalized museum display and art exhibit, create[s] theillusion of adequate representation of a world by first cutting objects out of specificcontexts (whether cultural, historical, or intersubjective) and making them stand forabstract wholes. [ 49] Photographic images serve as simplified, flattened, and therefore

understandable representations of the complex things they picture. As well, such imagescan function as a means for appropriating unfamiliar people and places. [ 50] The very actof photographing, of taking a picture, is described in terms of appropriation, while thefinal product becomes a possession to be treasured, traded, given away or ignored.Photography, and the family photograph collection, as a method for coping with anunfamiliar culture and surroundings undoubtedly accounts for part of its popularityamong white sojourners in the Canadian north.

Hudsons Bay Company employees, missionaries, members of the Royal NorthwestMounted Police, surveyors for the Hudson Bay Railway and the Dominion Government,Indian Department officials, excursionists and official visitors (such as the party of

Governor General Earl Grey and Lady Grey) all passed through or lived in NorwayHouse. While there, their cameras were active, and copies of their snapshots achieved awide distribution. [ 51] A reading of the Post Journals reveals Norway House as a hub of activity, as a communications and supply depot for the Keewatin District and animportant stopping point on the route from Winnipeg to Hudson Bay, both for the HBCand for various other Euro-Canadian enterprises. Photography constituted one aspect of the cultural dimension of this activity, and points to one important way in which thetraders, missionaries and government officials constructed and maintained a common setof beliefs. [ 52] The family photograph album, made up of pictures that were reproducedand then exchanged among the members of this social group, is a document of thisrepertoire of shared images.

Yet the primary use of the albums was as a cornerstone of family identity, as a repositoryof family images. There is a sense in which this family and individual identity wasdefined in contrast to what was not-family. A photograph of an unidentified Nativeman and woman, seated in front of a tent, is one of the Native views that found its wayinto the Sinclair collection. [ 53] Although this couple may have had some personalsignificance to Ramonas parents, to her they retrospectively became a typical Indianpair, as her caption states. Yet what makes them typical is not entirely clear. They donot convey the dejected and fatalistic look that was characteristic of the tragic, vanishingIndian popularized in photography during the time that the Sinclairs were at NorwayHouse, nor do they exemplify the alternate vision of the civilized Indian as beneficiaryof white contact. [ 54] What is typical, perhaps, is the contrast to the life of the whites atthe post: the Indians live in a tent, not in a permanent wooden structure; the man wears along-sleeved shirt, pants and woollen socks, his wife (we suppose) a blouse and skirt, notthe respectable clothes, the well-fitting suits, stylish dresses and variety of hats andcaps so evident in the photographs of the Sinclairs. [ 55] That this couple appearscomfortable in their surroundings, accepting of their social role and status, as captured bythe photographer and contemplated by the viewer, reinforces the differences.
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A series of photographs in Album Two, constituting the closest the collection comes to asustained narrative, offers an interesting perspective on social roles and expectations. [ 56]Along with a number of the other images in this album, this photo-essay portrays theNative as labourer. [ 57] Yet the effort and hard work of tripping, evident in a previousphotograph of a man hauling a heavy load, tump-line pressing into his forehead, is

noticeably absent. [ 58] The series begins with The Kill, in which the two subjects of this mini-drama appear in front of a dead moose, guns in hand, the posed aftermathstanding in for the actual activity. While the other images appear more natural, theyalso highlight the adventure and romance of canoe tripping. Interspersed with picturesqueshots of rapids, the two men are seen cooking, preparing to navigate a set of rapids, andpoling through a stretch of shallow water.

Caption: More silly fun. This shot captures the nature of photography as a recreationalactivity at the post at this time.

Source: Hudson's Bay Company Archives 1981/39/296

It is interesting to compare this series of photographs with A. V. Thomas visual log of anextended canoe trip during the same period. [ 59] Here, our natives haul freight, portagecanoes, prepare the meals and transport Reverend Semmens party from Selkirk to Fort

Churchill and back again. This photographic record of Native labour as the backbone of the extension of Euro-Canadian control into the north, in this case the negotiating andmaintaining of Treaty arrangements, is compelling. One photograph in the Sinclair collection is suggestive of the complexity underlying the relationships between Nativeand white that is evident throughout the A. V. Thomas Collection, and provides acommentary on the detached perspective achieved by the canoe trip series. A group of men are photographed stopped on the trail, eating a meal. The arrangement of bodies inspace is telling: the three whites, seated on wooden crates, take their repast on a cloth-
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covered table; the Native men sit on the ground, their backs to the table. On one level themen were all engaged in a common enterprise; on another they were separated by a gulf of social distance. [ 60]

The very act of photographing Native people by whites is a form of cross-cultural

contact; the image it produces is, at the same time, a document of this cultural interaction.[61] As John and Malcolm Collier observe, each culture and each situation has itsdefinite established modes for handling space and other aspects of behaviour andinteraction which can be captured by the camera. [ 62] The photographs in the Sinclair albums point towards some possibilities for the further study of Aboriginal-whiteinteraction, especially in terms of identifying social roles and rules in changing situations.One image, entitled Daddy and Treaty Indians by Ramona, portrays a group in front of a teepee, the vague outline of a post or mission building visible in the background.Several dozen Indian men, many wearing dress jackets and all wearing hats, focus their attention towards the camera. Two unidentified white men lie on the ground in front of them while C. C. Sinclair and HBC District Manager D. C. McTavish stand to the right of

the group. In this case the occasion demanded an ordering of space in which both Nativeand white were involved in the photo-making as interested subjects. Yet even together,they remained apart. Sinclair, in particular, in his lightly coloured summer suit seems outof place. The white visitors, although allowed a certain access into this cultural arena,remain on the periphery. [ 63]

A figure behind C.C. Sinclair stimulates further questioning. An Aboriginal woman, her back to the camera, appears to be walking away from the scene. Where are the womenand children? The male HBC employees are portrayed, in this situation, as publiclyinteracting with only male Indians. A wedding portrait, including HBC staff and familyand Native men and women, suggests a situation in which differing rules of male-female

interaction applied. [ 64] Certainly there were others, as well as codes for the privateinteractions which photographers did not record.

In the Sinclair albums the visual representation of Natives and whites provides a windowonto the social dimensions of this inter-cultural contact at Norway House in the earlytwentieth century (as seen from the white perspective). The analysis of such photographs,then, can provide preliminary answers and help build a vocabulary and grammar of suchrelationships, including considerations of body arrangements, facial gestures, and spatialdistributions. Comparisons with other family albums of fur traders, and with collectionsof prolific fur trader photographers, [ 65] are promising sources for the investigation of Native-white patterns of interaction as they differed geographically, and over time.
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Ramona Sinclair playing Indian at Norway House, circa 1910, and at Edmonton,1916. These two photographs suggest that as Ramona Sinclair grew up, her idea of theIndian began to incorporate features of popular stereotypes, becoming removed from

the experiences of her childhood at Norway House.Source: Hudson's Bay Company Archives 1981/39/307 and 1981/39/58
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In a variety of ways, the images in the Sinclair albums are evidence of early twentiethcentury fur trade life, as glimpsed through a camera lens at particular points in time.More significantly, these albums constitute a familys efforts to build and organize avisual record of its past. Some of these images remain totally enigmatic, even to thosewho were part of the albums making. Underneath a photograph of a mission building, of a lean-to with mud piled up against it, of a group of men and a dog, Ramona can onlywonder and place a question mark. [ 66] Other images, while understandable to theSinclair family, confound the present-day observer. Yet the questioning created is one of the values of the photograph as historical source: it confronts the viewer, in its multiplepossibilities, with fresh avenues of inquiry. While ambiguities may be disquieting, theyare an important facet of historical understanding, a recognition of the complexity andshifting nature of family experience, both as lived and as remembered.

If each photograph, however, were to be considered in isolation, the confusion would beoverwhelming. Clearly, there is a need for building an appropriate context, beginningwith the cultural role of photography as a medium of popular expression. The Sinclairs

association with the Hudsons Bay Company, and their relationships with the other Euro-Canadians and Aboriginal people at Norway House, constitute the more localcircumstances of their immediate experience. And the family photo-album creates its ownframework of understanding through its portrayal of the individuals, families, and socialand cultural groups that are pictured within its pages.
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Photographs of Aboriginal people by non-Natives became implicated in the constructionof social and racial categories. Ramona Sinclair captioned this photograph: Typical

Indian pair.

Source: Hudson's Bay Company Archives 1981/39/323

This analysis of a collection of photographs, like the workings of human memory andperception which it at times addresses, has been selective. Searching through hundreds of images in an attempt to find patterns of meaning is a subjective affair, in part determinedby the questions with which the researcher approaches the material. [ 67] The Sinclair albums, a rich and varied source, invite co-existing interpretations. A resident of NorwayHouse, for instance, would bring a cultural awareness to this material which would revealother patterns.
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Two Native men navigating through rapids, from a series in the Sinclair albums.Source: Hudson's Bay Company Archives 1981/39/191

Throughout the Sinclair family albums there is a continual shifting from public to privatemoments, between the social uses of the photograph album and the personal memoriesand values which it confirms and maintains. My analysis is an attempt to recreate thismovement, to balance Ramona Sinclair McBeans shaping and reshaping of memory withthe context of family, community and social dynamics in which it was constructed. Likethe photographic principle of depth-of-field, in which the image in the lens has a defined

area of sharp focus, the varying aspects of the family photograph album are alwayspresent, but only some are clear. Yet by adjusting the lens opening and the shutter speed,the photographer can extend and manipulate the area in focus. Similarly, one way to readphoto-albums, to uncover their meaning as personal and social documents, is tomanoeuvre between shifting perspectives in the attempt to achieve a greater sensitivity of historical vision.
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Ramona Sinclair, Norway House, circa 1909.Source: Hudson's Bay Company Archives 1981/39/259

Notes

I wish to express my thanks to Barbara Johnstone for sharing her family history, as wellas her warm hospitality. Thanks are also due to Shirlee Ann Smith , formerly of theHudsons Bay Company Archives, Provincial Archives of Manitoba, and to the other reference and archival staff and to the Hudsons Bay Company for permission toreproduce material from this collection. Earlier versions of this paper were presented tothe Western Canadian Studies Conference and the Third Annual Manitoba HistoryConference; I wish to acknowledge the reviewers and editors of this journal for helpfulsuggestions, and Jennifer S. H. Brown and Pam Logan for their critical insights.

1. Shelley Armitage and William E. Tydeman, Introduction to Thomas K. Barrow,Shelley Armitage and William E. Tydeman, eds., Reading Into Photography: Selected Essays, 1959-1980 (Albuquerque: Universityof New Mexico Press, 1982), p. 2. See alsoWarren I. Sussman, Preface to Michael Lesy, Bearing Witness: A PhotographicChronicle of American Life (New York: Pantheon Books, 1982), ix.; Margaret B.

Blackman, Visual Ethnohistory: Photographs in the Study of Culture History in DennisWeidman, ed., Ethnohistory: A Researchers Guide (Williamsburg: Department of Anthropology, College of William Mary, 1986), pp. 137-166; and J. R. Davison,Turning a Blind Eye: The Historians Use of Photographs, B.C. Studies , 52 (Winter 1981/82), pp. 16-38 for further suggestions on the possibilities for interpreting andreading photographs as social and cultural documents.
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2. Graham King, Say Cheese! Looking at Snapshots in a New Way (New York: Dodd,Mead and Company,1984), p. 16, postulates a golden age of the snapshot from 1910-1950; John Berger in Uses of Photography, About Looking (New York: PantheonBooks, 1980), p.48 places the acceptance of the photograph as the most natural way of referring to appearances in the period between World War One and Two.

3. See Colin Ford, ed., The Kodak Museum: The Story of Popular Photography (London:Century, 1989), Brian Coe and Paul Gates, The Snapshot Photograph: The Rise of Popular Photography, 1888-1939 (London: Ash and Grant, 1977), and Lily Koltun, ed.,Private Realms of Light: Amateur Photography in Canada, 1839-1940 (Markham,Ontario: Fitzhenry and Whiteside, 1984). For the standard histories of photography seeHelmut Gernsheim and Alison Gernsheim,. The History of Photography (London: OxfordUniversity Press, 1955) and Beaumont Newhall, The History of Photography from 1839to the Present Day (New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1964); on the Canadianscene see Ralph Greenhill and Andrew Birrell, Canadian Photography, 1839-1920(Toronto: The Coach House Press, 1979).

4. Held in the Provincial Archives of Manitoba (PAM), Hudsons Bay CompanyArchives (HBCA), 1981/39, containing 535 images once in the possession of RamonaSinclair McBean, 388 of which remain intact in (or can be reassembled into) fivecaptioned albums. This discussion will be concentrating on the albums, due to their preservation in the form in which they were arranged by the Sinclair family. Myreferences will follow the HBCA/s cataloguing of the photographs by individual itemsand numbered albums (in generally chronological order): Album One consists of items 1-102; Album Two, 103-200; Album Three, 201-247; Album Four, 248-308; and AlbumFive, 309-388.

5. Nearly 70% of the photographs in the Sinclair albums can be reasonably identified astaken during the Sinclairs stay at Norway House.

6. The Sinclair family was long associated with the Hudsons Bay Company, tracing itsRuperts Land origins to Chief Factor William Sinclair (1768-1818) and MargaretNahoway Norton. Barbara Johnstone, interview by Peter Geller, 6 February 1989,typescript in possession of author; family tree prepared by B. Johnstone, in possession of author; HBCA, RG3 /40/1; see also Jennifer S. H. Brown, Strangers in Blood: Fur TradeCompany Families in Indian Country (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press,1980), p. 71.

7. Barbara Johnstone was formerly assistant and then curator of the Hudsons BayCompany Museum, Winnipeg in the 1950s and 1960s; see Robert Coutts and KatherinePettipas, Mere Curiosities Are Not Required...: The Story of the HBC MuseumCollection, The Beaver (June/July 1994), p. 17. William McBean mentioned other scrapbooks dealing with Ramonas theatre participation that he sent to an unspecifiedtheatre library in Toronto (Barbara Johnstone, interview, 6 February 1989)
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8. John A. Kouwenhoven, for example, describes the photograph as historical documentas uniquely non-narrative... it is a window into the past that is open for only afossilized, unstoried instant.... See Photographs as Historical Documents, in Half aTruth is Better Than None (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1982), p. 199.

9. Howard Becker, Photography and Sociology, Studies in the Anthropology of Visual Communication , 1 (Fall 1974), p.11. See also Joanna C. Scherer, Historical Photographsof the Subarctic: A Resource for Future Research, Arctic Anthropology 18, p. 2 (1981)on the advantages of studying the photograph collections of particular image-makers;Alan Trachtenbergs approach in Reading American Photographs: Images as History:Mathew Brady to Walker Evans (New York: Hill and Wang, 1989); and for a regionalexample, Doug Smith and Michael Olito, The Best Possible Face: L. B. FootesWinnipeg (Winnipeg: Turnstone Press, 1985).

10. HBCA, B.150/a/82a, f.6 (28 August 1904); f.11 (15 November 1904); B.150/a/84 (9February 1908).

11. Lily Koltun, Art Ascendent, 1900-1914, in Koltun, Private Realms of Light , pp. 53,320.

12. HBCA, 1981 / 39, Item nos. 125; 128; 200. Though marked J. D. Moodie, it isquite possible that Georgina Moodie was the photographer; see Koltun, Private Realmsof Light , 320, for the confusion of attribution.

13. PAM, Photographic Division, A. V. Thomas Collection, contains 210 photographsarranged in an album, including newspaper clippings written by Thomas on the TreatyCommission trip.

14. HBCA, 1981 /39, Item no. 249 and PAM, A.V. Thomas Collection, Item no. 171. Theother, according to Thomas description, is of a Whale laying off Hudson Bay Co.wharf, Churchill. (HBCA, 1981/39, Item no. 372 and Thomas Collection, Item no. 205.)

15. See Shepard Krech III and Barbara A. Hail, eds., Art and Material Culture on theNorth American Subarctic and Adjacent Regions, Arctic Anthropology 28,1(1991),especially the section on Collecting in the North, pp. 6-56.

16. William C. Sturtevant, Comment in Krech and Hail, Art and Material Culture, p.53. Sturtevant defines a reflexive study, in this context, as one that deals with the

acquisition of data, rather than with studying the data itself.17. See David Thelen, Memory and American History, The Journal of AmericanHistory 75, 4 (March 1989), p. 1122 on photography and memory.

18. One comment, on HBCA, 1981 /39, Item no.473, is dated September 29, 1981.


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19. In particular, the HBC Norway House Post Journals corroborate the existence of employees and others named in the captions, and dates of events, such as the visit of Lordand Lady Grey (see HBCA, B. 154/a/ 85 f.70 and 1981/39, 15, 37).

20. HBCA, 1981/39, Item nos. 2, 11.

21. Ibid ., Item no. 284.

22. Ibid ., Item no. 306, caption dated 1974.

23. Family Photographs: Content, Meaning and Effect (New York: Oxford UniversityPress, 1981), p. 124.

24. HBCA, 1981 /39, Item nos. 96-102, of Ramona Sinclair and other women of theSinclair family, fill up the last two pages of the first album.

25. Thelen, Memory and American History, 1120.

26. HBCA, 1981/39, Item nos. 41, 12. Ramona Sinclair McBean was involved inWinnipegs Little Theatre and other amateur companies; Moray Sinclair was a player inEatons drama presentations (where he worked in advertising) and other productions.Barbara Johnstone, personal interview, 6 February 1989 and 30 March 1989; see alsoRamona Sinclair McBeans obituary, Winnipeg Tribune , August 19, 1978.

27. See, for example, the portrait of Islay and Charles Sinclair, HBCA, 1981/39, Item no.4.

28. Willard Walker, Photographic Documentation in ZuniEthnohistory, The Masterkey57, 2 (1983), p. 55.

29. HBCA, 1981 /39, Item no. 36; Davison, Turning a Blind Eye, p. 24. Hirsch, FamilyPhotographs , 15-32 discusses the images and metaphors of the family in photography.

30. HBCA, 1981/39, Item no. 5, dated c. 1886; compare with Item no. 4.

31. Ibid ., Item nos. 24, 27, 37.

32. Ibid ., Item nos. 11, 8, 222.

33. Ibid ., Item nos. 49-52 (Battle Creek), 43-46 (Selkirk cottage), 66-68 (MackenzieRiver), 77-84 (Fort McMurray); Islay took Ramona with her to William Kellogs healthspa at Battle Creek (Barbara Johnstone interview, 30 March 1989); for further on C. C.Sinclairs 1921 Inspection Trip of the Mackenzie-Athabasca District see 1981 /39, Itemnos. 389-489.


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34. HBCA, A.12/FT 340/2, f. 197, F. C. Ingram, Secretary of the Hudsons BayCompany to R. H. Hall, Canadian Fur Trade Commissioner, 5 June 1912; A.12/FT 340/5Misc, f.8, Hall to Ingram, 7 December 1912; see also A.12/ FT340/2, f. 187-88 and 202-203 for further correspondence between the London Committee and the CanadianCommissioner on C. C. Sinclair. Part of the difficulties likely stem from discrepancies

noted in the fur shipments from Keewatin District upon arrival in London (A. 12/FT326/1, f.17).

35. See Madelyn Moeller, Photography and History: Using Photographs in Interpretingour Cultural Past, Journal of American Culture 6, 1 (1983), p. 4.

36. The cultural inventory consists of the artifacts in a dwelling, their relationships toeach other, and the style of placement; in short, the way people use their space andpossessions. John Collier, Jr. and Malcolm Collier, Visual Anthropology: Photographyas a Research Method (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1986), p. 45.

37. Ruth Swan, Visual Images in Native History: Island Lake, Manitoba, WilliamCowan, ed., Proceedings from the 18 th Algonquian Conference , (Ottawa: CarletonUniversity Press,1987), pp. 346-47, discusses similar omissions in Rev. R. T. Chapinspictures of Island Lake (dating from 1922 to 1930 and held at the Western CanadaPictorial Index, University of Winnipeg) as indicators of the priorities and values of theimage-makers and collectors.

38. See for example, HBCA, 1981 /39, Item nos. 103, 233, 248 for representative scenicviews; 30, 107, 116, 239 for group shots of post employees; 31,132, 154-56 of picnicsand outings of the Sinclairs and their social group.

39. See Moeller, Photography and History, pp. 3 and 15, on the new social rolecreated by the act of being photographed, and an example of role playing for the camera.

40. HBCA, 1981 /39, Item nos. 231, 243, 253, 357.

41. On the history and meaning of playing Indian as part of a larger complex of NorthAmerican popular culture see Rayna Green, The Indian in Popular American Culture,in Wilcomb E. Washburn, ed., Handbook of North American Italians: History of Indian-White Relations (Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1988), pp. 587-606 and R.Green, The Tribe Called Wannabee: Playing Indian in America and Europe, Folklore ,99, 1 (1988), pp. 30-55.

42. HBCA, 1981 /39, Item nos. 12,13.

43. Compare Ramonas costume to the clothes worn by the Native women in ibid ., Itemnos. 207, 209, and 217.


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44. Ibid ., Item no. 326, captioned Betsy and me after make-believe; Ramona, in thesame dress and shawl, is with an older woman. The other nurses or governessesappearing in the photo-albums are Dora (11, 309, 312) and Miss LeRoy (20, 318, 341).


46. As Little Mary, the Native nurse of missionary son Egerton R. Young did in the1870s. See Jennifer S. H. Brown, A Cree Nurse in A Cradle of Methodism: Little Maryand the Egerton R. Young Family at Norway House and Berens River in Mary Kinnear,ed., First Days, Fighting Days: Women in Manitoba History (Regina: Canadian PlainsResearch Centre, 1987), pp. 18-40. As for Betsys identity, Ramona clearly consideredher an Indian in retrospect (see HBCA, 1981/39, Item no. 386, comment on photographincluding Betsys daughter and Ramonas comment: Indian girls are so pretty.)

47. HBCA, 1981 /39, Item no. 58; Barbara Johnstone, in recalling these photographs,commented on their Hollywood nature (Interview, 30 March 1989).

48. H. L. Warren, The Warp and Woof of Time, Agricultural Alberta , July 1920, 6-7and 30, in HBCA, RG2 /13 /5, book of clippings on the HBCs 1920 anniversarycelebrations; for a description of the anniversary celebrations in Edmonton see Echoesof the May Celebrations, The Beaver (October 1920), pp. 2-3.

49. James Clifford, On Collecting Art and Culture, in The Predicament of Culture:Twentieth Century Ethnography, Literature and Art (Cambridge: Harvard UniversityPress, 1988), p. 220. The existence of the Sinclair collection itself in the Hudsons BayCompany Archives can be viewed as part of this history of collecting in the West, of theway in which documents become classified as such, and of how their classifications

change over time.

50. Ibid ., pp. 220-221.

51. HBCA, B.154/a/82a, f.6; f.11; B.154/a/84 (9 February 1908). The Sinclair Collectioncontains several photographs of people with cameras; see, for example, ibid ., 1981 /39,Item no. 339 of Lady Grey with camera, tripod in the background.

52. The Norway House Post Journals provide other clues to the cohesion (and tension)within this social group. Materially, the HBC supplies and provisions guaranteed contactand interdependence amongst the Euro-Canadians at Norway House. Dances, football

games, skating, churchgoing, holiday celebrations, visiting and picnicking are re-cordedaspects of this cultural dimension; see B.154/a/83 (14 November 1907, 31 October 1907,23 December 1907, 4 February 1908); B.154 / a/84,f.58 (17May 1909), f.83 (11December 1910); B.154 /a /85, f.40 (25 December 1909), f.79 (31 October 1910); andespecially B.154/a/84, where the consciously journalistic conventions of the writer (aseditor of the Norway House News) provide insightful (and amusing) commentary onNorway House social occasions and the interactions between HBC employees and other whites situated around the Fort and the Rossville Mission.


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53. HBCA, 1981 /39, Item no. 323; 59 photographs (15% of the photographs in thealbums), either of Native groups, Native scenes (ie., a deserted Indian camp, 183 and184), or Native and white groups, were classified by this researcher as Native views.

54. See Fraser J. Pakes, Seeing With the Stereotypic Eye: The Visual Image of the

Plains Indian, Native Studies Review 1, 2 (1985), pp. 9-11. The most widely known andstudied portrayer of the vanishing Indian is discussed and illustrated in Christopher Lyman, The Vanishing Race and Other Illusions: Photographs of Indians by Edward S.Curtis (Washington: The Smithsonian Institution Press, 1982). The civilized Indianwas a prominent subject in the photographs of Edward H. Latham; see Mick Gidley, WithOne Sky Above Us: Life on an Indian Reservation at the Turn of the Century (Seattle:University of Washington Press, 1985).

55. See, for example, HBCA, 1981 /39, Item no. 23 (Ramona and mother in fur robes);224; 324.

56. Ibid ., Item nos. 189-196.

57. See, for example, ibid ., Item nos. 138, 172, 173, 174; of the Native views 40, or over 65%, portray Natives as labourers.


59. PAM, A. Vernon Thomas Collection.

60. HBCA, 1981/39, Item no. 187.

61. Blackman, Visual Ethnohistory, p. 156, on the camera as unwitting documener of contact and conflict between divergent ways of life.

62. Visual Anthropology , p. 94.

63. HBCA, 1981/39, Item no. 187.


65. The HBCA holds a number of such collections; see, for example, those of J. W.Anderson (1920s to 1950s) and Hugh Conn (1910-30).

66. Ibid ., Item nos. 279, 281, 293. Another, 308, is annotated ????!!!.

67. Clearly, this is an issue which touches upon all types of historical research, whether using visual, textual or quantitative records. Collier, in Visual Anthropology , p. 195,welcomes the creative approach of the search for patterns and definitions of their significance. Davison, in Turning a Blind Eye, p. 34, is more cautious, calling for anawareness of the subjective and cultural viewpoint of the interpreter of visual images.


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