University Archives
& Special Collections

Canadian Historical Map and Print Collection

COLLECTION DESCRIPTION | COLLECTION HISTORY | MAJOR SPECIAL COLLECTIONS

Between 1500 and 1900, the studious labours of ingenious men produced a truly remarkable array of maps and charts, many with intriguing pictorial insets, of the vast land across the Atlantic. The earliest maps, based more on fantasy than fact, steadily gave way to more accurate and detailed work. Each voyage of exploration pushed beyond that which had been previously known and enabled the map-makers to fill in  another gap. British map-makers carefully reviewed the work of their French, Italian, Spanish, and Dutch counterparts and vice versa. Together they built on each other's work. Their works of art and science reflected and directed four centuries of daring expeditions, bitter colonial rivalry, rewarding economic enterprises, and tenacious settlement.

Many of the explorers kept careful written records of their voyages. Making a visual record of events, significant landforms, flora and fauna was deemed an important part of the official record. Indeed on some expeditions there was an official artist--George Back on Franklin's polar expeditions and John Sykes on Vancouver's voyages. As exploration led to land disputes, the British military spread across the continent. With little actual fighting to contend with, and having been taught the rudiments of art at the Royal Military Academy, a number of bored officers began to sketch their surroundings. To them we owe some of our earliest depictions of everyday life in the new settlements. John E. Woolford, Richard Short, J.F.W. DesBarres, George Heriot, Lt. H. Pooley, Robert Petley, W. Lyttleton, and William Moorsom were all members of the British military who left behind invaluable pictorial records of the life and land they had encountered in North America.

To encourage immigration and to meet a seemingly insatiable European demand for informative images of the emerging new dominion, professional illustrators journeyed to North America. Irishman William Eager produced some of the first commercially available city views of Halifax and St. John's. At the time of his death in 1839, Eager was working on an ambitious series of views of British North America. A few years later Eager's uncompleted project was taken up by British illustrator W.A. Bartlett. His 117 skilfully rendered topographical views in Canadian Scenery Illustrated (1842) reached a large and appreciative mass audience. Illustrated journals such as the Illustrated London News and the London Graphic sprang up to address the need for more visual information. "Special artists" travelled to all corners of Canada to capture each exciting new development and to document such events as a royal tour.

By 1869 Canadian publishers were able to launch their own illustrated journal, The Canadian Illustrated News. The journal provided many young Canadian artists with an outlet for their work and presented a distinctly Canadian view. Early in 1880 work began on Picturesque Canada, the most outstanding Canadian illustrated book of the nineteenth century. Under the direction of Ontario artist Lucius O'Brien, forty-three artists presented over 550 engraved images of the Canada they saw in the 1880s. Their work documented an important phase in the formation of Canada as a dynamic and unique society.

Running parallel to the production of mass-market illustration was the depiction of Canada by individual artists. Unique work often had limited public exposure and therefore did not have the same influence in shaping public sensibility and taste, or in fulfilling information needs. Yet these original works are nevertheless important sources of historical information. The finely detailed nautical sketches of Reynolds Beal, completed during his 1891 trip to Atlantic Canada, carefully document fishing equipment and techniques used at the time. The 1880-81 Fundy shore sketches of Stephen Parrish capture picturesque fishing and farming scenes.

With advances in photography--in particular, Eastman's invention of the hand-held camera in 1888--the camera and photographer began to supply the visual information needs of the general public. By 1900 the artist/illustrator was no longer the sole visual chronicler.

Canada has been well served by her visual interpreters. Our visual heritage is an important part of our cultural heritage, helping to shape our national identity. We are indebted to both the ingenious map-makers and the talented artists for recording our past for us, and to the dedicated collectors who preserved the images for future Canadians.