Royal Commonwealth Society : Current St. Mary at Isle Ronde

Henderson, Alexander (1831-1913)

Royal Commonwealth Society

<p style='text-align: justify;'>Alexander Henderson (1831-1913) was born in Edinburgh and emigrated to Canada in 1855, settling in Montreal, where from 1859 to 1863 he worked as a commission merchant. Henderson had experimented with photography from 1857 and soon displayed a great gift for the medium, publishing his first major collection in 1865. In the following year he adopted photography as a profession and from 1870 concentrated upon landscapes, evocatively capturing a wide range of scenes in urban areas, the countryside and wilderness, often featuring human activity. Henderson travelled throughout Quebec and Ontario, and also visited eastern and western Canada. In 1892, he joined the Canadian Pacific Railway as the first manager of its photographic department and retired in 1897.</p><p style='text-align: justify;'>This photograph shows an ice-shove on the St Lawrence River at the end of April. As the frozen river thawed, huge blocks of ice were broken and heaped into mounds. A group of ice-gleaners with long hooked poles stand on top of one of the mounds. These men collected blocks of ice which were stored for use during the summer months. In the background a narrow navigable channel can just be seen, with the city of Montreal beyond.</p><p style='text-align: justify;'>See Janus record <a target='_blank' class='externalLink' href='https://janus.lib.cam.ac.uk/db/node.xsp?id=EAD%2FGBR%2F0115%2FY3062B%2F2'>here</a></p>