About the Postcards

In this section of the website, you will find background on the history of postcards from a Canadian perspective, definitions of postcard-related terms used on this website and explanatory notes on the dating of the postcards. In the first phase of this project, the majority of the postcard images were scanned from Ken Elder’s sizable collection, which focuses on the area encompassed by the former City of Hamilton. However, the long-term goal is to supplement his collection with postcards from other local collectors and the Dundas Historical Museum. Postcards not found in Ken Elder’s collection will be added and their source identified in the POSTCARD DESCRIPTION line of the text accompanying the enlarged images. Credit will only be given to the collection from which the postcard was scanned even though the same postcard image may be found in more than one collection.

Ken continues to add interesting Hamilton-related postcards to his collection. The one below shows a small photo of the Hamilton Normal College, surrounded by oval portraits of the 192 graduates and 30 staff members during the 1906-07 school year. The photographer would have used a negative he prepared for hanging a much larger print in the College. Ken has identified it as a real photo postcard using CYKO printing-out paper, dated 1906-07. Along with other new acquisitions (see What's New), this postcard image will be added to the database in due course.

The goal of the next phase of this project will not only be to add postcards owned by local collectors but to better represent the former municipalities outside the old City of Hamilton. Two other on-line collections of Hamilton area postcards should be acknowledged. Russ Powers, former M.P. for the riding of Ancaster-Dundas-Flamborough-Westdale, is a longtime collector of postcard depicting the former Town of Dundas. Much of his collection has been digitized and can be viewed on his website in the form of a slide show.

Another local collector, Janet Forjan-Freedman, has an extensive collection of postcards of the Hamilton area and has now posted at least 1500 on her website: Vintage Postcards of Hamilton, all organized by topic.