To commeorate the 100th anniversary of World War I, the City of Toronto Archives has digitized 672 military photos taken by John Boyd between August 1914 and November 1917. Mr. Boyd took photographs of the training activities of soldiers who would soon ship out as part of the Canadian Expeditionary Force during World War I. He assembled these pictures into an album and numbered, dated and captioned each one.
The pictures show many aspects of recruitment and military training, including parade drilling, artillery exercises, signalling, trench digging, and camp life. While most of the photographs were taken in Toronto, some images were shot in Montreal, Barriefield and Kingston, Camp Borden, Niagara, London, and Guelph.
Who was John Boyd?
A note taped inside the album explains the album’s provenance: “The photographs in this album were all taken by John Boyd (1865-1941), then assembled and titled by him to illustrate the various phases of recruiting and training of the Canadian men in the Ontario region who formed part of the first Canadian contingent in World War I.
“Basically John Boyd was a railway man, starting as a messenger in 1881 in the Grand Trunk Freight Office at Front and Simcoe Streets in Toronto. Promotions quickly followed which took him to Sarnia as Agent in both the Sarnia and Point Edward offices, then back to Toronto as Superintendent of the Weighing Department of the Canadian National Railways until his retirement after more than fifty-two years of continuous railway service.
“As a well-known member of the Masonic Lodge, he held a number of high offices including Grand Lodge, and was also the organizing Master of Two Toronto lodges, namely Tuscan and Transportation.
“Wherever he went, John Boyd carried a camera, and part of his wide collection of negatives is now lodged permanently with the National Archives of Canada at Ottawa.
“As a matter of further interest, John Boyd’s only son, John H. Boyd, was the first staff photographer of The Globe, starting there in 1922, and continuing as chief photographer with The Globe and Mail from 1936 until his retirement in 1964. Canada lost one of her finest and most versatile photographers when John H. Boyd died in 1971.
“It is the hope of his surviving sister that the members of the Royal Canadian Military Institute will recall some of their “not-so-good” old days as they scan these historic pages.”
The photos are all meticulously captioned. The caption of one photo of “Canada First Aviators,” taken June 28, 1915, identifies the 12 young men: D.A. Hay, E.H. McLachlan, F.H. Smith, J. Honor, C. MacLaurin, C.I. Van Nostrand, D.G. Joy, G.A. Gooderham, A.S. Ince, V. Carlstrom, C.N. Geale, W.K. Peberdy.
Viewing the photos
To look at the photos, visit the John Boyd’s World War I Photographs. Click on any page to start looking at the images. Once you click on a page, you can move forward or backward through the album by clicking on the arrow to the right or left.
To see a larger image of the page, click on View Full-sized Image below the caption. Once you see the full-sized image, you can further enlarge the image by clicking on the album page.
Battalions
To provide an idea of what is available, here is a list of some of the images I found in the order they appear:
