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The Man and the Studio
Stanley G. Triggs
Notman hits the rails
Throughout Notman's life, railways were of help to his career. They enabled him to expand his business into other cities in Canada and the United States and to keep in constant contact with the branch studios once established. Trains provided fast transportation to scenic spots such as Niagara Falls, the Thousand Islands and Lake Memphremagog. Notman also received many commissions and entered into various other arrangements with railway companies to photograph their rolling stock, stations, yards and locomotives, as well as scenes along railway lines.
Beginning with the Victoria Bridge construction, Notman made frequent photographs for the Grand Trunk Railway. When the Marquis of Lorne came to Canada in 1878 to assume the duties of Governor General, he and his wife Princess Louise were carried from Halifax to Montreal on a special "vice-regal" train. Notman photographed the train as it was standing on the approach to the Victoria Bridge, and made detailed studies of the ornate interiors of the dining car and the parlour car.
The Notman camera was also trained on the lines and bridges of the Intercolonial Railway in eastern Quebec and New Brunswick, showing the scenic beauty of the countryside through which the line passed. There is no record of whether this work was done on commission, but the photographs taken later for the Canadian Northern Railway in the Lake St. John district may have been prompted by a request from that company or from the provincial government. As the district was being opened for settlement, both the government and the railway were interested in obtaining good photographs of established farms, large well-built barns, healthy livestock, productive fields and growing towns. Notman's son William McFarlane Notman made several trips in the 1890s and in 1906 to the Lake St. John district for this purpose. On one of the later trips he was accompanied by an assistant, William Haggerty. At about the same time the Trans-Continental Railway was being built from Quebec City through LaTuque, Parent and Amos towards northern Ontario. The Notman firm made a similar documentation of farms and villages in this area, but this time included photographs of the line under construction and of the lumber and pulp industries.
The largest group of railway photographs Notman produced, however, was the series taken earlier for the transcontinental line being constructed from Montreal across the western plains and the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific Ocean. It was William Van Horne of the Canadian Pacific Railway who realized the potential of photography as a promotional device and exploited its use to the fullest. In the agreement made between Van Horne and Notman, the railways promised to provide transportation, with stopovers at any station desired, while Notman agreed to supply a set of photographs to be used in railway promotional programs. Notman would keep the copyright and the negatives. In 1884 Notman's eldest son, William McFarlane Notman, made his first trip to the west in connection with the Canadian Pacific Railway, returning on subsequent trips in 1887, 1889, 1897, 1901, 1903, 1904, and 1909.
The photographs brought home to Montreal from these expeditions - western scenes of mountain grandeur, gigantic trees, Native people and tepees, as well as other views taken in Eastern Canada - were very popular with tourists and local populations alike. Prints were sold in hotels, stationery stores and railway depots across Canada in much the same manner as postcards today, bringing in a substantial return for the investment of time and money. But however glamorous this side of the business may have seemed, and however much it served to spread the Notman name to an ever-widening and admiring public, it was portraiture that was from the first and continued to be the solid basis upon which his business was built.
