more comprehensive vision of Canadian diversity.
The ‘‘official’’ photographers provided images of
an urban, expanding colonial country, often
depicting only the anglophone e ́lite, even in French
majority regions. The workaday professionals and
countless amateur photographers, on the other
hand, depicted rural peoples and their lives, as
well as the urban proletarians who constituted the
francophone majority. (According to art historian
Louise De ́sy, who surveyed phone directories from
the end of the nineteenth century, 80 percent of the
St. Lawrence Valley photographers were franco-
phones [De ́sy 1984]). These two versions of the
history of Canadian photography, the colonial
point of view reifying anglophone artists and the
post-colonial perspectives that recall the English
dominance over the francophone population al-
though lingering to the present, perhaps obscure
other histories.
In a country as vast as Canada, photographic
postcards proved a useful means of diffusing
images that contributed to the social construction
of typical Canadian scenes and folkways. Yet it
was only from December 9, 1897 that the Canadian
government authorized private enterprises to pro-
duce and sell illustrated postcards in Canada
(Beauregard, 2005). The first postcards available
most often represented typical Canadian monu-
ments or neutral images (flowers, children, ani-
mals, a lady, lovers). Yet a number of these
postcards were produced and printed in foreign
countries using photographs originally conceived
by the Studios Livernois (Que ́bec City) or by Not-
man and Son (Montre ́al), without ever mentioning
the source or the author (Poitras 1990). A golden
age of the postcard occurred in Canada between
1905 and 1915, and interest in this period supports
the collecting of old postcards and clubs for collec-
tors, such as the ‘‘Club des cartophiles que ́be ́cois.’’
Author Jacques Poitras wrote two fine books
about the emergence of postcards in Canada (Poi-
tras 1986, 1990).
Canadian photography in the early twentieth
century was very much the continuation of the
tradition initiated during the nineteenth century,
with some respected photographers and famous
institutions, such as the studios and galleries
founded by William Notman (1826–1891) in Mon-
tre ́al, or the studios of J. Ernest Livernois (1851–
1933) and his rival, Louis-Prudent Valle ́e (1837–
1905) in Que ́bec City, pursuing their work and
experiments. For instance, since the 1880s, Louis-
Prudent Valle ́e specialized in the stereoscopy,
showing panoramic views of Que ́bec City, and
that lucrative commerce carried on during the
first decades of the twentieth century. The tintype
was certainly the most popular type of photo-
graphic image in Canada until the end of the
1920s (Lessard 1987).
Some historians considered William Notman
(1826–1891) as the most influential photographer
in Canada at the end of nineteenth century. Born in
Scotland, he came to Montre ́al in 1856, after study-
ing fine arts in Glasgow. William Notman inno-
vated when his studio on Rue Bleury, Montre ́al,
offered colorized photographs beginning in 1857.
His three sons, W. McFarlane Notman (1857–
1913), George Notman (1868–1921), and Charles
F. Notman (1870–1955), continued their father’s
enterprise in the beginning of twentieth century.
An international corporation of studios and
laboratories, Notman and Sons had branches in
four Canadian provinces, (in Toronto, Ottawa,
Halifax, St. John) and in the United States (in
Boston and New York City). At the turn of twen-
tieth century, when funds were needed to finance
the construction of the Canadian National Railway
and the Canadian National Railway towards the
west side of the country, their epic photographs of
the Canadian West landscapes contributed to give
a positive image of these wild regions of Alberta,
Saskatchewan, and Manitoba.
The Studios Livernois in old Que ́bec City was
one of the longest-lived institutions in the history
of Canadian photography, and the most impor-
tant laboratory of photographers in Que ́bec City
from 1854 to 1974. It began as a family enter-
prise, la Maison Livernois, founded by Jules Isaı ̈e
Benoit de Livernois (1830–1865), known as J.B.
Livernois. His son, J. Ernest Livernois (1851–
1933), took charge of the commerce a few years
after the premature death of his father. In 1910, J.
Ernest Livernois opened a three-floor store and a
studio on the Rue de la Fabrique, near the City
Hall in Que ́bec City. An artist and businessman,
J. E. Livernois diversified his commercial activ-
ities to include laboratory services, official por-
traits, death-cards, business cards, photo-albums,
and postcards. His son, Jules Livernois (1877–
1952), pursued the family enterprise for the third
generation, before being succeeded by his sons
Victor and Maurice Livernois. But the Studio
Livernois was not just a family affair; collabora-
tors included photographers Thadde ́e Lebel,
Georges Landry, Andre ́ Laberge, Nazaire Du-
four, Alexandre Fauchon, Fernand Lamontagne,
and Livernois’ cousin E ́mile Pelchat, who was
also a photographer (Lessard, 1986). The enter-CANADA, PHOTOGRAPHY IN