Purchasing the Future, an oil canvas by Leanne Christie. From the artist’s website:
The CPR railway station at the foot of Granville with the queue to purchase Shaughnessy Land.
Shaughnessy was named after the CPR president: Thomas Shaughnessy and was part of the land deal the CPR had struck with the Canadian government during negotiations about the railways expansion West.
Inspired by this Vancouver Archives photo by Philip Timms, September, 1909.
The Rocky Mountains, from Calgary to Vancouver by Mrs. Adelaide Langford, 1916, as seen in the lobby of Vancouver’s Waterfront Station. Born circa 1856 Adelaide Elizabeth Winyard Hurd, she passed away in 1939, living to about age 83. From The Hedley Gazette, March 29, 1917:
Review of C.P.R. Work for 1916
Important Undertakings Marked the Activities of the Company During the Year
The year 1916 was an interesting one in the history of the Canadian Pacific Railway. It has been a year of progress even though the Dominion is struggling in a great war…
…The walls of the spacious waiting hall of the new Canadian Pacific Railway Station at Vancouver have been recently beautified by a series of rural decorations representing the principal mountains from Calgary to Vancouver. The decorations are the work of Mrs. Adelaide Langford, an artist with a wide reputation…
While Mrs. Adelaide Langford may have had a wide reputation at the time of the article, she is not well remembered today. I came upon an article from 1927 when she was about 71 which provides further insights into her work. Below is a transcript of the article from 1927 seen above:
The Morning Leader - August 6, 1927
Pictures by Canadian Woman Adorn Many European Homes
Duke of Cambridge and Other Noted Collectors Have Acquired Paintings From Brush of Vancouver Artist
To have the work of one’s life adorn many of the stately mansions of the world is the proud achievement of one western woman in the person of Mrs. Adelaide Langford of Vancouver, B.C., many of whose canvases are hung in old ancestral homes in Europe, the late Duke of Cambridge, Sir Augustus Nanton and other distinguished collectors having acquired her work throughout England, Canada and the United States.
Mrs. Langford, whose pictures bear the signature “Adelaide Langford,” is the widow of the late Capt. H. Ayliffe Langford, and is a truly western artist of no mean ability. She is a student of the Slade school, London University, England, and is also a graduate of the Art Institute of Chicago, having studied under Frederick W. Freer, W. M. R. French and John H. Vanderpoel of Chicago, and has completed most of her work in the west. She inherits her artist gifts from parents and grandparents who were painters. She is the daughter of the late Thomas Gladwin Hurd, formerly of Toronto.
Mrs. Langford paints in a broad, free style, which has the distinction of the Barbizon school and marked individuality. She is a wonderful colorist and her canvases are truly decorative as well as restful. They are pictures which one can live with from day to day, finding added charm as they become more familiar. Among her recent works is an oil painting of the buffalo at Banff, Alta., completed just before the big drive when so many hundreds were extinguished. This hangs in the rotunda of the Royal Alexandra hotel in Winnipeg.
In an exhibit she is presenting now at Vancouver she is showing a painting of the Indian reserve at West Vancouver and the Indian village at North Vancouver; these are particularly attractive. She is also displaying her “Fraser Canyon,” painted at Yale, B.C., where the waters roar and tumble hundreds of feet below the railway line, and which is one of the beauty spots of the Rockies. In this Mrs. Langford has shown her knowledge and understanding of the great outdoors. The collection also includes pictures of English and continental scenery.
Mrs. Langford lost her husband during service of the late war; her son also served for several years in the motor boat patrol in the North Sea as well as Russia on special service and in the Arctic, for which he was decorated by the British and Russian governments. Mrs. Langford’s own charitable work will always remain in the minds of those who were closely associated with her during that time, and she was never at any time too engrossed in her own troubles that she could not find time to aid those less fortunate than herself.
[the original article incorrectly named John D. Vanderpoel instead of John H. Vanderpoel, and the Barbizon school was misspelled as the Barbazon school; these two errors are shown corrected in the text above]
According to Gary Sim’s British Columbia Artists:
An article “The Fine Arts”, published June 9, 1923 in the Western Women’s Weekly, noted that Langford was a critic of the Studio Club. The Vancouver Studio Club and School of Art was a predecessor organization to the B.C. Society of Fine Arts, and began exhibiting in Vancouver as early as 1904. Founding members of the group included T.W. Fripp and Spencer Perceval Judge.
And according to National Soul: Canadian Mural Painting, 1860s - 1930s, “Langford’s brother-in-law was general superintendent of the Pacific Division of the Canadian Pacific Railway and likely was helpful in securing the commission for her.”
Ironically, the placement of these paintings at Waterfront Station so far from our line of sight has probably helped to preserve them. At the time of writing, it is not clear if any of her other paintings have survived. The Royal Alexandra Hotel in Winnipeg was demolished in 1971, though the dining room from the hotel has been preserved and rebuilt in Cranbrook at the Canadian Museum of Rail Travel. An email to the museum has determined that no paintings were included in the reconstructed hotel dining room. The CPR Archives has no record of the painting’s whereabouts either. It is unknown if paintings from the collection of Prince George, the late Duke of Cambridge, or Sir Augustus Nanton have survived. Just to be sure, I’ve sent a letter to the senior archivist at Windsor Castle…perhaps one of Adelaide Langford’s paintings has been passed down to the Royal family and remains in their collection to this day. I’ll keep you posted if I receive a reply…
Canadian Pacific Railway Station, Vancouver BC, a souvenir plate made in Austria in the very early 1900s. Seen at Horseshoe Coins & Antiques in Blaine, WA, just over the border, a great little antiques shop full of Northwest lore. This item however, was for display only, part of the proprietor’s collection. Changing Vancouver covers the building’s story here; the building only lasted for about 10 years on account of poor quality bricks. Film footage of the station survives in the 1907 film by William Harbeck which you can learn much more about in the City Reflections DVD. Thanks for the photo, Derek!
SS Princess Mary 1958 placemat on Flickr. Technically, this is a special Illustrated Victoria feature, starring the former CPR steamship, the SS Princess Mary. From wikipedia:
On March 14, 1911, the Princess Mary made her first trip on the Nanaimo-Comox-Vancouver service.
Among the highlights of Princess Mary’s service was February 15, 1915 when the 30th Battalion of the Canadian Expeditionary Force (CEF) embarked from Victoria, British Columbia sailing to the War in Europe…
She may have lived the end of her life as a restaurant in downtown Victoria, but this 1915 W.J. Moore panoramic photograph at Pier D in Vancouver by brings back the romance of the era. The end of the line for the restaurant is documented in this online thread. And speaking of nautical themed restaurants, many Vancouverites will fondly remember the North Vancouver Ferry # 5 Seven Seas Restaurant. I salvaged something of a historical gemstone last year when I uncovered a videotape featuring a full tour of the Seven Seas Restaurant at the end of its life. Stay tuned; I hope to post it on YouTube some day soon…
A fantastic souvenir knife for the CPR showing the steamship docks, “the Sleeping Beauty” (Crown Mountain) from Stanley Park (which may be based on this postcard), and the Empress. Exactly which Empress steamship is undetermined. From the item description:
This is a great early souvenir knife from Canada. It has great scales with different images on both sides. The knife was made by Griffon from Germany. The image of the Empress ship that was owned by the Canadian Pacific Railway is great. The Empress of Ireland sank in 1914 killing 1012 people, and became the deadliest Maritime disaster in Canadian history. The blades have never been sharpened and are tight with great snap. This knife measures 3-1/16” long when closed.
A bit more about Griffon Cutlery Works from the web:
The Griffon Cutlery Works was founded in 1888 by Albert L. Silberstein (1866-?)…Originally located on Broadway (until around 1915), then at 74-76 Fifth Avenue, they moved into [a] building on West 19th Street in 1920 and remained [t]here until 1968. They also had a factory and branch outlet in Solingen, Germany.
The CPR actually had 16 steamships with the “Empress” moniker, about half of which saw service in the Pacific (the other half traversed the Atlantic). These ships included the Empress of Asia, Australia, Britain, Canada, China, France, India, Ireland, Japan, Russia, and Scotland. You can probably guess which ships sailed in the Pacific and which were in the Atlantic based on their names.
According to wikipedia & the web, here are the ships of the Pacific: Empress of Asia, Australia, China, India, Japan, and Russia. And these ships sailed the Atlantic: Empress of Britain, Canada, France, Ireland, and Scotland (though the second ship to bear the name Empress of Scotland was actually the Empress of Japan before 1942).
We can try to deduce which Empress is depicted on the knife if we narrow down the number of Pacific ships with just two smoke stacks. Process of elimination leaves the Empress of China, India, or Japan, but to confuse things further, there were more than one vessel using each one of these names. Actually, I think this image depicts TWO ships, with just tail end of the second ship at the right. Determined nautical enthusiasts might be able to make a more precise response, and a special prize goes to anyone who locates a photograph of the same image.
The CPR’s SS Princess Marguerite passing under the Lions Gate Bridge, another postcard by Edward Goodall. Here’s a handsome colour image of the ship taken June 30, 1973. You can hear the sounds of her final voyage in this video clip as she pulls into Seattle on September 17, 1989: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nzHtRgtupss
More from Historylink.org:
The SS Princess Marguerite, built in 1925, and the SS Princess Marguerite II, built in 1948, were the most famous of these small luxury liners. Tragically, in 1942, the Princess Marguerite, serving as a troop ship during World War II, was torpedoed and sunk in the Mediterranean Sea by a German U-boat. Her successor, the Princess Marguerite II, was in service for 60 years under four different owners. At the end of her career, efforts to save the historic steamship for posterity proved unsuccessful and in 1996 she was sold for scrap metal. In March 1997, a former B.C. ferry, the M/V Queen of Burnaby, was renamed the Princess Marguerite III and put on the run between Seattle and Victoria, but the service was discontinued after three seasons. Ships carrying the name Princess Marguerite plied the waters between Seattle and Victoria for 74 years, becoming a part of Seattle’s waterfront scene. Her name has a permanent place in Pacific Northwest maritime history, evoking fond memories of favorite summertime cruises and vacations.
The ad where she was sold for scrap can be seen here.
The Old Waterfront, Vancouver, 1898, painted by John M. Horton in 1991. Seen at the Vancouver Maritime Museum.
In 1884 it was announced that the Canadian Pacific Railway’s western terminus would be located on the south shore of Burrard Inlet, at Vancouver. This news sounded the death knell for Moodyville’s position as the inlet’s leading community. The first passenger locomotive arrived in May of 1887. Vancouver rapidly outgrew other communities in the region, and land speculation replaced timber exporting as the primary regional activity. By the 1890s, Moodyville’s industry was suffering the effects of that decade’s worldwide depression. Voracious logging had also depleted the area’s famous trees, and the larger mills on the Fraser River were more competitive due to rail access. As this painted view from Vancouver illustrates, by the last decade of the 19th century, Moodyville’s relevance and status in the region was rapidly diminishing.
- What
This painting of “The Old Vancouver Waterfront” shows Hastings Mill and the bustling rail and steamship terminals at Vancouver.
- Where
This aerial oblique view from the south shore of Burrard Inlet looks northeast. Moodyville is but a wisp of smoke on the distant shore.
- When
The painting depicts the Vancouver and south shore waterfront in 1898, but it was painted almost a century later, in 1991.
- Who
This work is by the well-known contemporary Canadian painter John Horton, who trained at art schools in Britain and specializes in historical maritime scenes.
