To test the interface and potential use of the collaborative project Historypin, a small sample of historical photographs taken by staff photographers from the Toronto Telegram newspaper was used to ‘pin’ on the map interface and in some cases, place in a Streetview.
One group of images were selected by members of the Portuguese Canadian History Project (PCHP) to help illustrate the historical context of living in Toronto’s immigrant communities in the mid-twentieth century.
The other set of images were of bank robberies and crime scenes from the mid-1950s to the late 1960s.
Due to the nature of journalism and the manner in which Telegram staff managed their photograph collection, many of the most easily identifiable photographs in terms of geographic location tend to be of crime scenes. Photographers and journalists would be sent out into the field to cover a story and the easiest point of reference was the street address of the event. For crimes such as bank robberies, the branch and the major intersection was often the main piece of information used to catalogue the photographs.
Despite the gruesome context these photographs can reveal interesting aspects of community life in the city as they are often candid in nature and frequently photograph local residents who have been drawn to the scene out of curiosity or response to police presence.
For more information about the Portuguese Canadian History Project and its activities, please visit our website at: http://archives.library.yorku.ca/exhibits/show/pchp
For more historical photographs from the Toronto Telegram, please visit York University’s online digital repository YorkSpace at:http://yorkspace.library.yorku.ca/xmlui/handle/10315/580