A picture is worth a thousand words

Times Contributor

 

They say a picture is worth a thousand words and is a treasury of memories. In the digital age so many of the photographs we take are disposable because we can always retrieve them on computers or phones, but in the not so recent past, one relied on film and negatives. If those were lost, so were your pictures. 

At the end of January, Ron Elder (an employee of Agrium in Standard) was driving on Highway 561 south of Standard when he came across a paisley fabric bag in the middle of the highway near Range Road 223. Elder stopped his vehicle and went to inspect what seemingly looked like garbage which had been thrown from another vehicle. Upon inspection, Elder was amazed at what he found: a treasury of old photographs in the fabric bag dating back to the early 1900’s. 

After bringing them back to Standard, the office staff looked through the photographs for any names or addresses they could follow up on to get them back to their original owners.  

The pictures were all in black and white and some were still in their original cardboard portfolios (as was done in the past before the digital age). They ranged in size from 3×3’s to 8×10’s. Pictures of infants and many wedding pictures were part of the contents as well as a group picture of “The Orangeman’s Society”.

The group of men in the photo, which had “Orangemen’s Society” on it, is unique, and is not a group the Agrium office had heard of before. After further investigation on the Internet it was found that a bit of a history lesson was in order. “Orangemen, members of the Loyal Orange Institution, familiarly called the Orange Order, a Protestant Irish society founded and flourishing mainly in Ulster. It was established (1795) to maintain the Protestant ascendancy in Ireland in the face of the rising agitation for Catholic Emancipation. Its name is taken from the family name of King William III of England, who defeated King James II in the battle of the Boyne in 1690. July 12, the anniversary of this victory, is the principal holiday of the order, on which the members wear orange-colored flowers and orange sashes and march in parades; parades passing through Catholic sections of Northern Irish cities have been a source of interreligious friction. Branches of the society have been formed in many parts of the English-speaking world.” (from infoplease.com).

No one has picked up the lost photos yet. They surely are a treasure to someone and were accidently lost through a move from the back of a truck. If anyone knows who the owners might be please call the Agrium office in Standard at (403) 644-3883 to claim them.