New Resource Canadian Photo Albums PDF 2020-07-18

Canadian Army photos on contact sheets

  1. alberk
    While doing some research on Canadian war photographers I came across a wonderful website that deals with the WW2 Canadian Film and Photo Unit (CFPU). The website is - as far as I can see - run by Dale Gervais. I quote from the site: „Dale Gervais has been actively researching and documenting the history of the Canadian Film & Photo Unit since 2006. Dale recently retired in September, 2018, after over 36 years with Library & Archives Canada. Dale now works as an independent researcher, with experience in audio visual holdings, video production and more recently doing Archival textual document searches, and photographic scanning.“


    CFPU Combat Cameramen – Welcome to the Canadian Film and Photo Unit website


    While going over his site I made a discovery which absolutely thrilled me. Dale Gervais saw to it that 107 albums with prints of contact sheets – Canadian WW2 photography - were made accessible online as PDFs. He made the announcement in April 2020. I suppose the wonderful result of his highly laudable initiative was somewhat eclipsed by the Corona crisis. Well – no more!


    Here’s what Dale Gervais has to say about the Canadian WW2 photo albums held by the Library and Archives of Canada:

    Library & Archives Canada: “Army Numerical” Series (110 Albums) Now Available Online – Welcome to the Canadian Film and Photo Unit website


    I would like to point out that the contact sheets – in some cases - show more images than the ones that were released and that are usually made available by the Library and Archives. And they present the context of certain photos that may already be known.

    Unfortunately, it is not all that easy to get to the actual PDFs - the best thing is to use the LAC search form:


    Archives Search—Advanced - Library and Archives Canada


    In the top "Any Keyword" box enter: Army numerical

    In the "Any keyword" box below enter: DND FA19


    This will produce one result - activate the link given and you will get this one result:

    „Sub-sub-series consists of - 120 lower level results“


    If you click on the link "120 lower level results" you will get to a list of the 110 albums with the coveted contact sheets - they are not in chronological order but give the the dates the albums cover. You have to go through the whole list to find the dates that my be of interest to you. Normandy landings for example are album vol. 74....


    The first on the list is album vol. 91 - click on the link provided - and you will get a new result. There you have to click on the "Online MIKAN no ...."


    The ensuing result will show you a page with an icon on the left - that's the final link to the PDF.


    Phew! As I said: Not all that easy... But try it - the effort is worth the while!


    If you made it this far: Thanks for your interest in my post!