IMAGE CITATION
Date: 1899
Subject:
Orignal Work:
Place: Lake Jolly, N.S.
Source: Nova Scotia Archives and Records Management
Reference Number: N-2501/ Album 43, #1
Please contact Nova Scotia Archives and Records Management for use of this image.
IMAGE INFORMATION
Left to right, top row: Louis Peters, John Peters, John McEwan, John Louis; left to right, below: John Labrador, Malti Pictou, Eli Pictou. These men guided a group of sports fishermen into the interior of Digby County, presumably in early May, as the leaves are not yet showing on the trees and bushes, yet there is no snow on the ground. Late April and early May are the best times for going after trout in this area. This picture, one of a series documenting the expedition, was taken at the beginning of the trip, which most likely took place in 1899. Another photo in the set shows Boundary Rock with the year '98 carved in its side, and members of the expedition standing on or around it.
Within the two albums, however, a third photo shows a building, Collège Ste. Anne, which burned in January of 1899, according to Margaret Campbell of the Public Archives of Nova Scotia, indicating that it and perhaps others in the albums date from prior to 1899. Campbell suggests the photographer for these two albums (43 #1 and 43 #2) of superb photographs could have been J. A. Irvine.
"He was a good amateur photographer who was active in Halifax at that time. There is a photograph in his collection which was very probably taken by him and which is very similar to some of the photographs in the albums awkwardly numbered 43, parts l and 2. The people in the above-mentioned photo appear to be members of "Major Daly's expedition" who appear in those albums. (It may also be significant that Albums 35-42 came from J. A. Irvine's Collection. Perhaps 43 was part of the collection and an error was made in the original record-keeping?)" [Margaret Campbell to R. H. Whitehead, 6 February 1991.]One of these guides, John Louis, was a Mohawk who, with his brother, snowshoed to Nova Scotia in winter, looking for a bride. His brother went to Pictou. John ended up in Bear River and married a Mi'kmaq girl, Mary Charlotte Glode, who had run away from her home in Queens County to stay with her sister, Hannah Michael, in the first house at Bear River which John Louis reached. [Ellen Louis Robinson to R. H. Whitehead, personal communication, 1987.]
The photographer has identified one of these guides as "Malti Pictou," not only on this photo, but on subsequent shots taken during the same expedition. Sarah Harlow, however, says that "the picture of the guides [shows] her father Simeon Pictou, not Malti (his brother). Richard [McEwan] agreed it was Simeon...." [Bonnie McEwan to R. H. Whitehead, 18 November 1987?]
KEYWORDS
Mohawk; Mi'kmaq; men; guides; guiding; hunting; fishing; Peters, Louis; Peters, John; McEwan, John; Louis, John; Labrador, John; Pictou, Malti; Pictou, Eli; Lake Jolly; Nova Scotia
