I am just old enough to have lived through the transition from black and white to colour, or at least this transition in photographs.
When we see old news footage of the 1940s and World War II, most of it is in black and white. Gradually though, during the 1950s, this started to change.
Our family photo albums echo this transition as some of the photos of my youth are in black and white, but there is a transition to colour over time.
I have several photos that show me playing in the snow with my sister Hazel from 1957. The ones with us playing in the snow with a sleigh certainly harken back a simpler time.
About the same time, we seemed to visit Niagara Falls… in the winter!
Our parents bought their first house in St. Catharines shortly after these photos, and apparently, they also purchased a colour camera as well.
The first house photo is in black and white, and then they switch to colour.
I’d wager that the front yard is just soil in the black and white photo, while in the colour ones that follow it appears the soil has been seeded, the lawn has grown in, and it is just a typical suburban landscape with an absence of trees of any size.
Those photos of me in front of the new house have that unmistakable 60s yellowish sepia tinge to them. You can actually get filters to turn current photos into retro ones with that sepia tone. On a couple of the ones below we updated the contrast and tone a bit to make them a bit more contemporary.
This photo with me squinting into the sun has me dressed a little like I’m still in England even though we’re in Canada.
The 3-wheel bike is actually one my parents brought from England. It was clearly a prized possession and one deemed worthy of shipping across the ocean. Apparently, they were hard to come by in Canada.
There’s even a photo of me without front teeth, mandatory for childhood photo albums. And some shrubs have been planted too! Today many of these 1960s neighbourhoods have lovely tree canopies.
I suppose one of the other things about our first house in suburbia, was that it was at a time during the North American economic expansion that allowed families to have one parent as the bread winner and one parent at home.
In our case, Dad was out busy growing a business and mom stayed home with us. She had worked as a fire truck driver in England during World War II, so it’s not that she couldn’t work or didn’t want to work outside of the home. It was more that the economics of the day allowed her to stay home and nurture me and my sister Hazel. I am grateful to have had this gift from my parents.
They were great days in so many ways. Busy, stressed, two income families today struggling with massive mortgages and debt must look back on this time as simply a fantasy. It was indeed a great time to a kid.
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