Surviving photos preserve 90-year-old Galt park scenes
FLASH FROM THE PAST
Followers of Flash from the Past know that I collect photographs, postcards, snapshots, negatives, paintings, sketches, etc. that have anything to do with Waterloo Region and area.
Today’s images are a result of that obsession and are in their own category: photographs-thatalmost-became-postcards.
Recently, at one of the antique malls, I purchased five photos of Galt the exact size of traditional postcards, i.e. 3½ by 5½ inches. When I turned them over, a stamped phrase appeared: “Property of F.H. Leslie Limited, Niagara Falls, Canada — Please Return.” To postcard collectors in Southern Ontario, F.H. Leslie is a respected name.
Frank Howard Leslie published the Niagara Falls Evening Review for many years. Among his side interests was travelling throughout the Niagara Peninsula and Grand River Valley taking photographs for postcards that his company produced from the late 1920s into the 1940s. He especially favoured scenes from parks, and it is only à propos that in Niagara Falls, there is a park named after him.
Within Waterloo County, F.H. Leslie issued many post cards of Kitchener (especially Victoria Park), a few of Waterloo scenes, fewer of Galt and, seemingly, no others although I’d be happy to be told otherwise.
The wording on the back of those five photos indicates that Leslie had sent these to some potential sales outlets in Galt such as newsagents, drugstores, bookshops, hotels, etc. to get their opinion of which might make good-selling souvenir postcards. Somehow this group of five never was sent back to Leslie and has survived through the years.
May 12, 1930, was an overcast day judging by these photos taken during his visit to Galt. All five photos are nicely composed scenes taken while Leslie walked around the park.
Soper Park, as described by Karen Dearlove in the 2012 issue of the Waterloo Historical Society journal, was not the park’s original name. In the early 1900s, some of farmer William Jackson’s land was purchased by the town of Cambridge. Mill Creek flowed through — and Dundas Street traversed — the acreage. Canadian landscape architect Frederick Todd (a disciple of the famed Frederick Law Olmsted) was hired in 1905 to design Jackson Park. Todd advocated a look as natural as possible, even maintaining a swampy area at the north end. A few non-natural features such as the pavilion inside the Shade Street entrance and creative landscape renovations blemished his original plans. Work progressed but financial restrictions and the First World War put an end to many of his concepts.
Postwar, enter park neighbour Dr. Augustus Soper. Dissatisfied with Todd’s natural-look ideas and stalled work, he contributed $10,000 and suggested draining wet areas, lining Mill Creek’s banks with stone along its entire length, building rustic bridges, laying down driveways and adding amenities such as a swimming pool, midway, sports fields and a huge peony garden.
In return for Soper’s ideas and money, Galt rechristened the site Soper Park in 1920 and a new boulevard through the park was named Marion Way after Soper’s wife. Most of Soper’s suggestions were carried out and, for decades, that was the way the park appeared to its many visitors. During the 1990s, the city decided to revert to a more natural look — many features were removed and the creek allowed to return to a more natural state.
The May 1930 photos by F.H. Leslie help preserve an alternate view for 21st-century visitors who are used to the modern version of Cambridge-Galt’s major downtown park.