Québec 1850–1950

Terry A. Crowley is a professor of history at the University of Guelph,
and the former editor of the journal, Ontario History. He is the author
of Agnes Macphail and the Politics of Equality, Canadian History to
1967, and Marriage of Minds: Isabel and Osc

This coffee-table book of wonderfully clear photographs from Quebec’s
history is the most recent example of niche book publishing from the
firm of Firefly Books. Firefly’s president, Lionel Koffler, has taken
advantage of a decade-long project by Publications du Québec (the
official publisher for the provincial government) to convey a nostalgic
look at old francophone Quebec for modern anglophone audiences.

The pictures are superb. Digital enhancement allows large
black-and-white reproductions that in many instances are crisper than
the originals. Everything else in the volume is a bit of a dog’s
breakfast. There is no coherence in selection of photographs other than
an eye for the picturesque, the quaint, the bygone, and the nostalgic.
The book is ostensibly about the century spanning 1850 to 1950, but most
of the photos come from 1910 to 1950. Rural scenes of farming and
lumbering predominate, while mining and factory work are ignored. There
are many pictures of the St. Lawrence Valley, but almost no attention is
paid to the Eastern Townships or the Far North. The focus falls squarely
on French Canadians (apart from representations of the mansions of some
wealthy anglophones), and there is only one photo of the Aboriginal
peoples of Quebec.

There are insubstantial captions for the illustrations, a failing
typical of the coffee-book genre. The date or approximate date of the
photographs themselves is always provided accurately, but commentaries
about the content of these illustrations consist largely of innocuous
statements that fail to satisfy the reader’s curiosity about things
such as exact location, region, architectural style, or relevance to
larger contexts.

That coffee-table books are primarily concerned with the pictures is
well illustrated by this volume.