Looking West: Photographing the Canadian Prairies, 1858-1957

David W. Leonard is the project historian (Northern Alberta) in the
Historic Sites and Archives Service, Alberta Community Development. He
is the author of Delayed Frontier: The Peace River Country to 1909 and
co-author of The Lure of the Peace River Coun

When Rupert’s Land was acquired by the young Dominion of Canada in
1870, the government almost immediately set about promoting this region
for settlement. In the years that followed, the “Last Best West” was
depicted by both government and private interests as a land rich in
mineral resources and teeming with farming potential.

Much of the publicity was conveyed through photographs, many of which
are reproduced in Looking West, a history of photography on the Canadian
prairies between 1858 and 1957. The author, an archivist, photographer,
and audio-visual historian, is interested in showing how pioneer
photographers set about capturing still images, either authentic or
staged, and how these images were presented to the public. His book
reveals the painstaking process of the early photography, which, even in
the rugged wilderness, was done with glass-plate negatives.

The first photographs were undertaken by government-sponsored survey
parties. As part of the Henry Hind expedition, Humphrey Lloyd Hime shot
the first still images in 1858. The next photographer was Charles
Horetzky, whose journeys of 1871–72 extended all the way through the
Rocky Mountains of northern British Columbia; his photographs, held by
the National Archives, constitute a remarkable and irreplaceable record
of life in the region at the time.

For Looking West, the publishers chose a paper stock which is lighter
than that used in Silversides’s other books on photography. This may
not please connoisseurs of art photography, but for the rest of us the
book remains an outstanding visual and historical essay.