by Debra Moore and Bronwen Quarry
Archives of Manitoba, Winnipeg
|
The years will never change my ambition to picture all manner and variety of waterfowl in characteristic formations of flight, from the smallest snipe to the proud, great-winged Canada Goose. That this ambition can never be entirely realized doesn’t make any difference. [1]
In the Hudson’s Bay Company Archives (HBCA), the largest collection of photographs is one comprised of photos originally acquired by the Hudson’s Bay House Library in Winnipeg, primarily for use in The Beaver, which had been launched by the Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC) in 1920 as a magazine for staff. In 1933 the magazine expanded its scope, adding “Magazine of the North” to its masthead and turned to professional photographers to increase the appeal of the magazine to a wider audience. Lorene Squire was an American photographer, known primarily for her wildlife photography. She was among the first group of professional photographers commissioned by The Beaver to take photographs to document life in the north and the HBC’s involvement there.
Lorene Squire, 1938.
Source: HBCA 1987/258/134.
Lorene Squire was born in Harper, Kansas in 1910. She graduated from the University of Kansas in 1932 and began her career as a photographer shortly thereafter. Squire gained recognition relatively quickly for her nature photography and she was particularly well known for her photographs of waterfowl, publishing “Wildfowling with a Camera,” in 1938. Squire was first commissioned by The Beaver in 1937, and was sent on two subsequent assignments for the magazine in the following two summers. Her photographs were published by numerous other magazines including Life, Country Life, The American Magazine, Canadian Geographic Journal, and The Saturday Evening Post.
Squire’s first commission in 1937 was to take photographs of waterfowl in Northern Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba. In 1938 she joined the HBC ship Nascopie for its annual supply run to Eastern and Western arctic posts. The assignment, as she was told in correspondence with the company, was, “in addition to your specialty, you would do a more or less routine record of life in the north as you see it, and hitherto unphotographed [HBC] posts.” [2] She captured many candid shots of HBC employees and events, including people relaxing and socializing aboard ship, hard at work unloading supplies, and even the wedding of HBC employee Alan Robertson Scott and his bride Eileen Wallace who had travelled aboard the Nascopie to meet him at Arctic Bay.
“Constable Fyfe Craig Harbour leaping to boat for the Nascopie. Corporal Dodsworth and Winter holding boat.”
Source: HBCA 1987/258/182.
Squire’s last assignment with The Beaver in 1939 was to document the work of the Rupert House Beaver Preserve, a beaver sanctuary founded in 1931 by HBC employee James Watt and his wife Maud in response to the near extinction of the species in the James Bay area. In addition to multiple photo spreads that appeared in The Beaver, one of her photographs was chosen for the HBC’s 1940 calendar. In a change from reproducing paintings of historical events, it was the first photograph to be selected for a calendar and she was the only woman whose work was featured during the entire run of calendars from 1913 to 1970. In a letter to The Beaver she remarked that it was the only presentation of her work that year of which she was really proud. [3]
From her communications with editors of The Beaver and staff of the publicity department, her professionalism and passion for her craft, enthusiasm for the subjects and locations where she was sent to take photographs and her gratitude for the opportunities provided by the HBC commissions, are all evident. It is also clear that she felt very strongly about how her work should be presented or published. She printed most of her own prints, included captions, and signed them.
Pete Nichols with “Arctic White Foxes and Blue Foxes”, on board the Nascopie, 1938.
Source: HBCA 1981/28/53.
Much more of her work would likely have appeared in the magazine and she was, in fact, in communication with Clifford Wilson, editor of The Beaver, regarding a new assignment when he received word that she had been killed in a car accident near Pawhuska, Oklahoma on 11 August 1942 while on assignment for Life. She was 32.
In later correspondence, Wilson noted that he always looked forward to hearing from Lorene, and commented that “each letter [from her] was like a breath of fresh air”—full of charming observations and amusing anecdotes relating experiences on her HBC trips. In one letter she confessed, “I realize by now that I wouldn’t ever go north to take pictures except as an HBC photographer because that is by now the only way I could manage at all. I would have had to eat cold sandwiches on the train for lunch except that Roy Ross … told the conductor that I was taking HBC pictures and could I have lunch in the caboose. It has always been a thwarted wish of mine to see what a railroad caboose looked like and now I have had lunch in one …. And what is more I was being made miserable by two camera fiends from Boston going to Hannah Bay asking me question after question and me getting more and more glassy eyed and only helplessly muttering that I didn’t know much about cameras ….” [4]
Beaver kits at the Charlton Island Beaver Sanctuary, 1939.
Source: HBCA 1987/258/275.
The editors kept in touch with Lorene’s family after her death, contacting them occasionally to request permission to use Lorene’s photographs either in The Beaver or to reproduce them for employees interested in framed prints of her work, as well as to pass on requests from other publishers to use her photographs. The good relationship Lorene had with the HBC continued with her family members. This led her father to indicate his desire to turn her “northern” photographs and negatives over to the HBC in 1948. However, Lorene’s mother was reluctant to part with her daughter’s work and it would be a few more years before they would be transferred to the company. Beyond the prints received at the time of her commissions, negatives and additional prints were received in late 1952, with a further shipment of prints arriving the following year.
The Lorene Squire collection was transferred to the HBC Archives in three separate portions in 1981 and 1987, and totals nearly 3,000 negatives and 425 prints. This comprises what is probably the largest group of Lorene Squire photographic works held by one institution. Small collections have been identified in various archives such as the University of Winnipeg, and Library and Archives Canada. Others are likely held in private collections around the world.
The Hudson’s Bay House Library photographs, including the Lorene Squire collection, are described in the Archives Keystone database online. The prints have been scanned and will be available online in the near future.
Squire’s colour photograph from Pangnirtung was used in the HBC’s 1940 calendar.
Source: HBCA P-404.
1. Lorene Squire, Wildfowling with a Camera, J. B. Lippincott Company, New York, 1938.
2. HBCA, RG2/7/95, Canadian Committee Correspondence (Roneo System, Beaver ‑ Lorene Squire, 16 June – 3 October 1938.
3. HBCA, RG2/8/1100, Canadian Committee Correspondence (Decimal System), Beaver ‑ Articles ‑ Lorene Squire, 17 June 1939 – 27 July 1966.
4. Ibid.
Page revised: 20 August 2016
