Imperial Visions of the Built Environment in William McFarlane Notman’s Royal Tour Photographs, 1901

My project proposes to analyze representations of the built environment in William McFarlane Notman’s photographs of the Royal Tour of Canada in 1901. Held at the McCord Museum in Montreal, the photographs picture the tour taken by the Duke and Duchess of Cornwall and York (later King George V and Queen Mary) across Canada on the newly built Canadian Pacific Railway, from Quebec City to Halifax. The photographs raise important questions about the exclusion of Indigenous communities from the camera view in the early twentieth century, and the visual presentation of settler colonial towns and cities in this period. The project outcomes are to provide insights into an as yet unresearched part of the Notman collections, resulting in an academic paper, public talk, blog post and public engagement activities with the McCord Museum. More widely, my research will expand scholarship on colonial photographic histories of Canada and provide new approaches to decolonizing archives within the museum.

Faculty Supervisor:

Gloria Bell

Student:

Partner:

Cardiff University

Discipline:

Sociology

Sector:

Indigenous Affairs; Education; Other

University:

McGill University

Program: