Accession Number

2012.007.001.088

Description

One sepia-toned photograph of two girls sitting at each end of a makeshift teeter-totter made of a wooden plank resting at its centre on a tree stump. A woman stands on the centre of the plank above the stump. All three people are looking at the camera. In the background is a gravel or dirt drive. A two-wheeled horse cart sits on a dirt or gravel pad beside a fence made of posts and five horizontal rails. Beyond the fence is a cleared field and beyond that a stand of Douglas fir trees.

Narrative

This circa 1900 photograph depicts two daughters of James and Laura Dunsmuir at Burleith, the James and Laura Dunsmuir house on Victoria's Gorge Waterway. Jessie Muriel "Moulie" Dunsmuir is on the left, and Joan Marion "Marion" Dunsmuir is on the right. The identity of the woman in the centre has not yet been determined.

This photograph is mounted in a brown suede leather album that documents the life and times of the James and Laura Dunsmuir family from about 1895 onward. The album includes scenes at their house Burleith on Victoria's Gorge Waterway, various coastal locales north of Victoria, and parts of the United Kingdom.

History of Use

This photograph was taken in about 1900 and placed in an album created by the James and Laura Dunsmuir family at Burleith, their home on Victoria's Gorge Waterway. In 1906 it was probably taken by the family to Victoria's Government House where they lived while James served as British Columbia's eighth Lieutenant Governor. From there it was taken to the family's new house, Hatley Park, in 1910.

Sometime after Laura Miller Dunsmuir's death in 1937, the album became the property of Dola Frances Dunsmuir (also known as Mrs. Dola Cavendish) and was kept at her house Dolaura in Colwood, B.C. After her death, the album was owned by her sister Kathleen's daughter, Judith Humphreys (also known as Mrs. Judith Joy). Her daughter donated the album to Craigdarroch Castle in 2012.

Date

circa 1900

Dimensions

8.6 x 9.5 cm

Support

Paper, Photographic paper

Country of Origin

Canada