‘A DETECTIVE STORY’
After spotting an old sign for a ‘G.A. Snider’ on the side of a Bank Street building, a curious Howard Simkover delved deep into some remarkable Otttawa history.
Howard Simkover was walking along Bank Street in 2011 when a faded sign painted on the brick of an old building just south of Slater Street caught his eye: G.A. Snider Photographer.
Simkover is not a historian. He’s an engineer with an interest in astronomy. The photographer’s name did not ring a bell. The sign didn’t even give a first name. Still, Simkover was curious.
“I just kind of fell into it. I became fascinated and I wanted to learn more,” he says. “It’s a challenge and a detective story, putting pieces together from publicly available information.”
G.A. Snider turned into a fouryear project for Simkover. He tracked down references in census information, city directories and newspaper advertisements, and interviewed three surviving grandsons, now in their 80s.
Eventually, he had enough information for a 565-page genealogy of Snider and presented his findings to the Historical Society of Ottawa.
The photographer, it turns out, was George Albert Snider, born in Halton County in 1856. He was in the business for about 25 years, but only a half dozen of those were spent in Ottawa. He gave up the photography business around 1896 — the competition in Ottawa was fierce, and that might be why he left. Snider entered the insurance business and eventually moved to Montreal. He died in 1940 at the age of 83.
A long, but rather unremarkable life. End of story? Not for Simkover. He would like to see Snider’s “ghost sign” preserved as a piece of Ottawa history.
The sign, like many of the faded advertisements on old buildings, has its own story. It’s on a southfacing brick wall of 134 Bank St. and dates back to the early 1890s. It now faces a vacant lot, once home to the 1,500-seat Odeon Theatre, which opened in 1949 and was destroyed in a 1958 gas explosion on Slater Street that rocked downtown. Some thought the city had been hit by a nuclear bomb.
The Odeon was replaced by another building, which was demolished in 2010, revealing the Snider sign again. Its years in hiding might have saved it, preventing fading by the sun and the onslaught of the elements.
Sally Coutts, the city’s co-ordinator of heritage services, says 134 Bank St. is protected under the Ontario Heritage Act, recognized in a bylaw passed by city council in 1999. The bylaw protects the exterior of the building, but not the interior. It doesn’t specifically mention the sign, but it’s not excluded, she said. Theoretically, a building could be constructed in the vacant lot that would cover up the sign.
“The wall would be there, but the world would not see it.”
It’s hypothetical at this point to say what might be done to keep the sign visible, says Coutts, but it’s an “opportunity for creative thinking.”
The vacant lot and the entire strip of properties from Slater Street to Laurier are owned by Morguard. The developer’s current design for the strip incorporates the facade of 134 Bank St. into a new building. But plans have not been finalized, and there’s a “good probability” the Snider sign could be integrated, says Bernie Myers, vice-president for Eastern Canada.
Morguard has a record of preserving heritage in its projects, Myers says. He points to Performance Court at 150 Elgin St., which incorporated the historic 1875 Grant house in the atrium of a 21-storey business tower.
Ottawa has relatively few ghost signs. In Winnipeg’s historic exchange district, there are almost 150 of them. Building owners can’t paint over the signs or repaint them, but neither are they required to preserve them, says Matt Cohen, a former president of the Advertising Association of Winnipeg.
In 2014, the association started an inventory of ghost signs in the exchange district. Cohen has spoken about the history of advertising signs and offers walking tours, which have attracted as many as 100 participants.
“Ghost signs tell the story of a moment in time,” he says. “In time they will fade away. That’s what makes them special.”
Simkover could find only two portraits by Snider, but he believes there are possibly thousands in the hands of the descendants of people he captured with his camera. He doesn’t want to see the Snider sign fade away.
“George may have looked on the sign until he left Ottawa. He may never have imagined that his sign would still be there for people to see 125 years later. I think it might amuse and please him to know that it was still there.” Who was George Albert Snider? Snider was working in the photography field as early as 1871, when he was still in his teens. He moved to Montreal in 1875, where he worked as a photographer and married Alice Hunter Burnet in 1878. By 1881, they were living in Brantford. They were in the Ottawa city directory in 1890, living in a house that no longer exists at 289 Kent St.
Snider set up a shop and studio at 123 Bank St. In 1892, he moved to a new building at 134 Bank St. Around 1895 or 1896, he gave up photography and went it the insurance business. He disappeared from view in Ottawa in 1901 and reappeared in Montreal in 1902, where he remained in insurance. Alice died in 1926 and George in 1940.
The couple had two children, Burnet and Lillian. Burnet had a distinguished military career, running away to fight in the Boer War when he was still under-aged. George Snider knew Prime Minister Wilfrid Laurier and managed to have Burnet retrieved from South Africa. Burnet returned when he was legally able to rejoin.
In 1911, Burnet went to Mexico to join in the fight against the revolutionary Pancho Villa. He was on the losing side, but this did not dampen his enthusiasm for military adventure. He was wounded three times in the First World War and died in 1961.
Burnet’s son Peter served in the Second World War and another son, Christopher, was decorated for bravery in the Korean War. Christopher Snider remained in the military and retired as a brigadier-general.