Lighthouse Photos by Cyril R. Littlebury c. 1922-1932
Photos of British Columbia lighthouses by Cyril R. Littlebury in the years 1922 to 1932 with thanks to Dudley R. Booth for permission to publish – please visit Dudley’s new website at Historic Photos. There are many more photos there besides lighthouses.
When Dudley Booth developed some old negatives his father gave him he found a treasure trove of scenes from 1920s and 1930s Vancouver.
The photos showed Vancouver life and buildings, including the dedication of Pier B.C. and construction of the Vancouver cenotaph, as well as ships and aircraft of the time.
A recent press release stated that Booth’s father gave him a dusty old suitcase full of photo negatives when the younger Booth was just 14 years old. Booth’s father came across the wooden case when he was clearing a friend’s house in 1946, and he passed the suitcase on to his son. Dudley kept the case untouched for decades as he married, moved to Coquitlam and raised a family. He worked as a sales manager for a welding firm, and when he retired he pulled out the old case and decided to develop a few of the negatives.
What Booth had stumbled upon was a collection of work by photographer Cyril R. Littlebury, who took thousands of photos around the streets and harbours of Vancouver from 1922 to 1932. The young photographer died from cancer in the midst of the Depression at the age of 38. Littlebury’s collection of photos was saved by his father who died in 1946, 10 years after his son. The Littlebury family was originally from England and had owned a printing business in Calgary. They moved to Vancouver in the early 1920s where they took up photography.
Dudley has transferred the original negatives to a digital format and has spent many years archiving and researching the collection and the photographer behind it. Littlebury had recorded detailed information on the edges of each negative, allowing accurate identification of the subjects in the photos. Based on numbering, Booth estimated there were as many as 10,000 negatives in the original collection, but there are fewer than 1,000 left today.
More history and photos here at the Vintage Wings website.
A book of railroad photographs by Cyril R. Littlebury can be purchased here at Karen’s Books.
If you would like to purchase prints of the above photos or any of the others in his collection, please contact Dudley Booth at his website Historic Photos.
