Time warp Photographer’s surviving images guide us back into the region’s history
In our time, everyone takes dozens of pictures every day, so it’s easy to forget that photographs at one time preserved only very special moments. Having them taken by a professional “camera artist” raised the importance level even more. Whether or not the occasion was a big event or just an outing, a photograph ensured that the day lasted a lifetime.
When I first saw this photo several years ago at the City of Waterloo Museum in Conestoga Mall, it immediately became (and has remained) one of my favourite local history images. It was taken in Waterloo Park and, while obviously posed, the photo leads us on a time-warp walk to a Sunday afternoon beside Silver Lake in 1894.
The photographer, Wendell B. Sherk, even without using the twin photos of a stereo view, has created a multidimensional image. His masterful arrangement puts the young women in the perceived foreground, but, cleverly, Sherk has placed some branches even closer to the camera. Right behind the women are four trees providing the first background for the scene.
The lake, shimmering in the sunshine, makes our eye travel quite a distance before allowing us to reach the far shore. That’s where some of the town’s most important buildings serve as the second background. I count six visual dimensions in Sherk’s composition.
One woman is dominant: at the left, she is the centre of attraction for the other four and their eyes subtly lead ours to her. This is, simply, a stunning photographic masterwork. From that sunny day when Wendell lugged his camera to Waterloo Park, he has left us an enchanting 12-decadesago visual.
Who was this Wendell B. Sherk? He is not among Berlin/ Waterloo’s well-known early photographers and did not leave a large body of work, only practising for 16 years across the turn of the century.
His ancestry is typical Waterloo County, but it’s also a minefield because the name Sherk has at least a dozen spellings. Greatgrandparents Joseph and Elizabeth Schoërg were among the very first Pennsylvania-German settlers in the future Waterloo Township. Their eldest son, Jacob Sherk, grew up on the nowdesignated Schoerg (no umlaut on the city plaque) farmstead near the Waterloo County Pioneers’ Memorial Tower. Jacob and Hannah (Bechtel) had 11 children, five of whom chose the Shirk spelling. Jacob, regrettably, visited the infamous 1834 travelling menagerie in Galt, contracted cholera and died within days at age 39.
Jacob and Hannah’s son Abraham married an Englishwoman, Lucy Buckler, and their middle child, the seventh of 13, was named Wendell Buckler Sherk. Growing up on a farm in North Dumfries Township near Blair, Wendell left the Mennonite faith and became urbanized. He met his first wife, Mary Coulter, in Drayton, where son Clarke was born in 1887.
Wendell, having taken up photography, then moved the family to Waterloo. Through the 1890s and into the 20th century, with his studio at 40 King St. S., he produced cabinet photos, matted photos, panoramic scenes, stereo views and landscape photos.
In 1900, Sherk was one of three Ontario photographers granted exhibition space at the Paris Exposition, where he received an honourable mention. That same year, in October, Mary died. Clara Powell became the second Mrs. Sherk in 1904 and the family moved to Brook Street in Galt. Wendell abandoned photography and appears in various documents as a merchant/manufacturer/cement worker. He also appears as Mandell Sherk, Wendel Shirk and Wardell Sherk, primarily due to sloppy handwriting by data gatherers.
In 1914, typhoid fever claimed the 57-year-old. Both Wendell and Clara are buried in Galt’s Mount View cemetery. Clarke moved to northern Ontario, worked as a fire ranger and died at age 50 of diabetic complications, leaving no descendants.
This photographer’s life and his surviving images guide us back one century/two centuries, into Waterloo Region history.