close your eyes and hope for the best

George Hunter with Korelle Reflex II at Grande Beach Manitoba, 1939.
(click image to enlarge)

Press photography was in the transition era between flash powder and flash bulbs. …I rigged up my Korelle with a rudimentary flashgun. With tinfoil wound around the finger release button to make contact and a table lamp reflector mounted onto a flashlight to utilize No. 5 flash bulbs.

In keeping with Irving Penn’s edict in that folks are more interested in where you came from than where you are at, I will endeavor to recall some early happenings and photographic endeavors.

The year after my trip to England for the Coronation (1938) the travel bug caught up to me. I talked my Norwood (i.e. Winnipeg suburb) friend, Steven Putnam, into pedaling to Kenora, a hundred and fifty miles east of Winnipeg, in the Lake of the Woods region of Ontario. Our bikes were the standard for their day, being the single gear variety, great for downhill, but not for the uphill grind. Speaking of hills, we were severely reprimanded by the RCMP for doing 40 m.p.h. (64km.) downhill near West Hawk Lake. The officer claimed, that had we hit a rock or a pothole, we would have gone flying. We just about wrecked our bikes anyway as half of the Trans-Canada Highway was still gravel and quite rough.

The Kenora trip didn’t cure anything. A few weeks after that trip we took off again on our bikes - this time for Minneapolis/St. Paul, a distance of over five hundred miles (800 km.). It took five days each way. We carried sleeping bags but not a tent. One morning, having slept overnight in a farmer’s barnyard, we awoke to find representatives of all the farmer’s birds and animals forming a prefect circle around us. So perfect was the formation that we wondered if there was a circle etched on the ground where each placed its toes and dared not cross. They were curious to see who was invading their territory.

Their Majesties, King George VI and Queen Elizabeth, Winnipeg, 1939.
(click image to enlarge)

The following year (1939) King George VI and Queen Elizabeth, paid a visit to Canada. During the processions through Winnipeg on the 24th of May, I was at the curb on Broadway Avenue and made a close-in shot of the couple in their carriage as they passed by. Eaton’s, Winnipeg’s largest department store, sold small prints of this photograph. From the royalties received, I was able to upgrade my Voigtlander Bessa to a Korelle Reflex II, a single lens medium format (2 1/4″ square, or 6cm x 6cm) camera, the predecessor to the Hasselblad that came along some twenty years later.

This really became a travel year. Later in the summer, father treated the family to a trip East by car. We drove to the lakehead, (now known as Thunder Bay) or as it was called then, Fort William and Port Arthur. We drove onto a steamship and sailed to Sault Ste. Marie. There was no Trans-Canada Highway overtop the Great Lakes at that time.

I had become interested in industrial activity through listening to a weekly radio program on my crystal set called “Night Shift” and so with our cousins from Toronto, we visited industrial plants such as Wrigleys, Canada Starch, Goodyear and Tip Top Tailors. I believe the tours and the radio programs were a big influence in my specializing in industrial photography assignments years later.

I recall doing most of the driving on the way home through the United States in the family Pontiac.

One day, on the Norwood Bridge, while making shots of the spring ice breaking up on the Red River, I met Orland Gibson who was also shooting the ice formations. You could say he was my first mentor as he was a great source of photographic information. It turned out that he had a pretty sister, Lois, who later became my first girlfriend who now lives in Courtenay, BC. We still keep in touch.

Another sister, Fredl, was married to Harry Rowed, a contract photographer with the CNR and stationed in Winnipeg. I met him before long and was intrigued with his work. He too became a mentor.

Later on I met the father, Erling P. Gibson, who was the chief photographer at the Winnipeg Tribune. Harry had a good friend in his counterpart at the CPR, Nicholas Morant. Nick lived in Montreal as well as in Banff but spent time in Winnipeg on railway assignments. His wife, nick-named Willy, had relatives on our street so I got to see the Morants whenever they were in town. Harry and Nick were to become lifelong friends. Scott Rowed, who lives in Banff and is a commercial pilot, mountain climber and excellent photographer, is a good friend and is Harry’s son.

With encouragement from all my mentors, I was getting more interested in photography every day. Press photography was in the transition era between flash powder and flash bulbs. I never got to use flash powder but I rigged up my Korelle with a rudimentary flashgun. With tinfoil wound around the finger release button to make contact and a table lamp reflector mounted onto a flashlight to utilize No. 5 flash bulbs. I was geared, in a haphazard manner to try out the new technology.

George Hunter’s first flash shot: Hollywood stars James Stewart and Madeleine Carol, Winnipeg, 1939.
(click image to enlarge)

While most of the crowd rushed over to the CN Station, a block away, I tore a mile down Main Street to the CP Station as I knew Banff was on the CP line. …With the Mickey Mouse flash setup, I had to shoot at a fifth of a second to ensure the flash bulb would synchronize.

When the most famous Hollywood film stars of the day, James Stewart and Madeleine Carol, were in town, I got up enough nerve to run down to the Fort Garry Hotel where they were staying. I waited around the lobby to catch a shot of the pair as they were leaving the hotel. In the crowded lobby I only managed to grab an individual shot of each. I heard that the stars were working on a film featuring the RCMP and were proceeding to Banff. While most of the crowd rushed over to the CN Station, a block away, I tore a mile down Main Street to the CP Station as I knew Banff was on the CP line. I managed a shot of the couple boarding the train. With the Mickey Mouse flash setup, I had to shoot at a fifth of a second to ensure the flash bulb would synchronize. While the individual ‘portraits’ were on the fuzzy side, I surprised myself with the station shot being fairly sharp. Happy with the shots turning out at all, I decided I would like to become a press photographer one day.

The grab shots didn’t make headlines anywhere, but they received a lot of praise at the University of Manitoba Camera Club from instructor Frank Kucera and others. This camera club, incidentally, was the only one I have ever belonged to and it was unique in having a full time director/instructor. It was not housed at the U. of M. campus out in Fort Garry but in the basement of a government building on Broadway Avenue and therefore quite accessible. It could have been that Frank was there for his love of photography or for the good of his health for all I know. I added him to my list of mentors. I bugged him with photographic problems on a regular basis. There were no photography schools or photo courses back then so this camera club was the next best thing.

As I was finishing up school (a year at Winnipeg’s United College) I spent more time reading up on photography and experimenting than I did on my lessons. William Mortenson was one on my heroes at that time. I have just about outlived everyone who has heard of him. It was before the days that people talked of Steiglitz and Steichen.

On Christmas and summer holidays in my latter school years I had diverse part-time jobs to earn money to buy film and equipment. They included repairing those old black desk sets at Manitoba Telephones, breaking heads off hogs at Canada Packers and selling women’s shoes at the Timothy Eaton store. Everyone from Winnipeg worked at Eaton’s at one time.

With a couple of Winnipeg photo enthusiasts, we rented office space to experiment in portraiture. It was at the corner of Fort Street and Portage Avenue. The Norwood bus stopped right in front of the door. At this prime address, we should have opened a formal portrait studio. One of the friends was Henry Lane, the postmaster for St. Boniface, Winnipeg’s sister city at the time, but now a part of Winnipeg, I believe. Another, Kas Hlynka, was a technician with the Winnipeg Grain Exchange. I was a kid with big-time photo-enthusiast friends and a team of experienced mentors.

Joining photographer friends of like mind on summer weekends, we would take off for Winnipeg Beach or Grand Beach, looking for interesting subject matter. We even tried our hand at glamour photography but knew we would never
make it to Hollywood. The best part of it was that we had fun experimenting with the various phases of photography.

© George Hunter

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