Allandale Ontario Station c1906 or earlier. A slight crop of the original postcard by The Valentine and Sons’ Publishing Co. #100942
Toronto. …When this charming postcard of the GTR station in Allandale was sold, Grand Trunk trains delivered passengers to/from Toronto; This end of Kempenfeldt bay was clean, sail boats floated along on a summer’s breeze and people ate a hearty meal at the station restaurant.
Today, GTR and its successor, CNR, no longer deliver passengers; The ending ‘d’ was dropped from Kempenfelt bay; the end of the bay is/was polluted; the pleasure sail boats have departed; a dirty 30s government dock was build and allowed to deteriorate; and the restaurant is no more.
In the 1840s daguerreotypes were considered marvellous. Portraits could be taken in minutes and the final product delivered to the sitter in under an hour. And it was cheap compared to a miniature (painting). No one cared that the colour was lost unless hand painted. No one cared that it was a one-off image. It was remarkable that a sitting took only a few minutes. So short that special clamps and furniture were sold to briefly hold the subject steady.
Today we capture an image in full colour in sub-seconds; view it and if acceptable send it anywhere in the world seconds later. Who ever hear of minutes to capture a portrait and then mail it (the original!) to another taking days, weeks or months! Indeed things are relative – and we are so spoiled!
