Mike Smith by Robert Lansdale
Toronto. The Postcards of Reuben R Sallows is a talk by Mike Smith on Reuben Sallows of Goderich and the use of his photographs in magazines and on postcards. The short talk preceding Mr Smith is a brief overview of Orillia’s Street Alive summer art featuring columns of cameras (story poles) as described by Mark Singer. After his talk on Reuben, I gave Mike a lift to the Mississauga Bus terminal at Square One. I have a tenuous connection to Reuben Sallows – my eldest daughter contributed code to the designer of the Sallows web site.
Mike explained that he became an authority in postcards after discovering just how inexpensive rare postcards could be. He has written many definitive books on postcards all carefully illustrated. Each postcard is given a valuation not unlike McKeown’s guides for cameras. Mike mentioned that Sallows was an unsung hero with beautiful photographs depicting life in Southern Ontario and Canada in the 1900s. He felt Sallows was an inspiration to many artists including the American, Norman Rockwell. Mike currently lives in Goderich.
