A Canadian Family

Verdun in Black And White (3): Family Photographs from the 1940s/1950s

The 83rd Carnival of Genealogy (hosted by Janet Iles at  Janet The Researcher) is dedicated to Musical Instruments, so I thought it would be the perfect moment to share this photograph of me at the piano in 1957.

No one in my family actually knew how to play the piano – or any other instrument for that matter. The piano belonged to our landlord and the photograph was taken in the living room of our third floor walk-up on Church Street in Verdun.  My own parents both came from modest backgrounds without any disposable income for instruments - let alone  music lessons, but they loved the idea that their children might some day play an instrument.

This b/w photograph was taken was taken by my mother with her Brownie camera. She loved this photograph so much that she walked down to Wellington Street (Verdun) and bought a little tin frame for it. Then she inserted some blue cardboard backing and added some silvery little letters. By the way, in the 1950s these letters didn’t come with an adhesive backing and there weren’t any glue sticks; these letters were carefully attached one-by-one with good old fashioned liquid glue! This picture hung in my bedroom until we moved to Ville Lasalle.

It was in those Verdun years that my mother first discovered the modern American women’s magazines such as Redbook and Ladies’ Home Journal but she couldn’t afford to buy them. Instead she would just leaf through them at the IGA checkout corner and this is where she got many of  her home decorating ideas and her vision of what a modern dream home – and a modern ’50s suurban family -  should look like.

Many years later – when we were living that modern suburban dream in Ville Lasalle  -  she told me that she knew that we had really “made it” when she could just reach out and buy any magazine she took a fancy to!

Ladies' Home Journal Ad

Related Posts:

In Living Memory: The Twentieth Century

Verdun, Quebec – Church Avenue (rue de l’Eglise)

Vintage Postcard: General Electric Company, Schenectady, N.Y.

October 31, 2009 - Posted by Evelyn Yvonne Theriault | . | family history