Dear friends,

Welcome! I doubt that you got to this page by accident, so likely you know that my father, Ernie, was keen on photography, especially home movies. I now have digital copies of most of them. My job is to let you see them.

I will fancy-up this web-page as time goes on.

Some local history

Some of these films date back to the Second World War, so let that be my starting point. Like a lot of people, Dad had a hard life during the Thirties. Even in 1928 his family hadn't the money for his schooling past Grade 8.

Dad told me that he took stock around 1940: after all those years as a farm-hand he had saved about $40. He wasn't the type to fritter away his money, either. Then he learned that you could join the Army and get paid about a dollar a day, along with free room and board. Thus he ended up in the Signal Corps and developed his life-long interest in electronics of all sorts.

Of course, he had saved most of his pay and that became, in 1946, his intitial stake in the Matador Co-op Farm. My mother Evelyn had grown up at Matador itself, where her father was a section foreman. She found work doing odd jobs for the newcomers at the Co-op farm. She and my father married in 1948. I was born in 1952 and followed by brother Kelly in 1954. In 1975 the old farm dissolved and Mom, Dad and Kelly moved to Saskatoon. They are gone now, but they (and I) always had a special place in our hearts for the farm.

What is there to see?

I have about 5 hours of film. After he retired, Dad spent quite a bit of time editing and pasting together all his 8mm films. (Each of these reels would have been just a couple of minutes long.)

Quite a bit of what I have is shaky and washed out with age. But still you will see things you had forgotten, maybe even a picture of yourself as a young child. Naturally, Kelly and I are over-represented. I must say that I acted a bit of the twerp in places. I have no memory of that - but, it was my Dad with the camera, after all.

What I will do then is put up shorter clips on YouTube, with links to them below. This will take some time. I will also put up questions, as in "Who is this?", Where is this?", and so on. I would love to get an email from you to help me out. You can see my email address below.