vintage photos

I hope every child has at least one person who loves them unconditionally. Someone who is not the one disciplining them when they do something wrong or the one always telling them to clean their room but someone who listens to them,  never judges and always loves them no matter what. When I was growing up that person was my granny, my dad's mom. I don't remember her ever raising her voice to me or being disappointed in me or ever telling me to do anything I didn't want to do ~ yes, she spoiled me a little. But, in return, I adored her.

I even named my first born Anastasia in her honour; we call her Tasia for short. My Granny was always old to me; she didn't have my dad, her first child, until she was thirty-eight which was pretty late back in her day. She married at thirty ~ she must have thought she was going to be an old maid. She was a wonderful woman.


One thing that always surprised me was how many photographs she had. She was born in 1911 in Saskatchewan into a family of Russian Doukhobours who had immigrated to Canada from Russia in 1899.

That's her in the middle with her sisters: polly on the left and millie on the right

She grew up on a farm through world war one, the twenties and thirties.

picking potatoes in 1932 with her sister millie (she's on the right)

She had hundreds of pictures of her life there. When she died, I was lucky enough to inherit a number of those photographs. I've been looking through them lately and thought I would post a few of my favourites.

My granny on the far left with a few of her friends

Granny is in the front on the far right pictured with her softball team in 1931

Granny and the gang - granny is second from the left in the front row between her brothers John on the left and Bill on the right. Her sister olga is second from the right in the front row.

granny and the girls getting ready for a swim ~ she's the one primping...

and on the far left.

waiting in the car...

on the left with her sister millie.

My Granny loved her siblings...there were ten originally, two didn't make it past early childhood. She was the peacemaker in her family, even during many family feuds between various siblings, granny stayed close with everyone. She hated fighting and arguing and always made sure she kept in contact with all her family.

Granny is the one in black...she told me her family wasn't as orthodox as some of her cousins and friends. Can you tell?

Granny loved clothes. She became a seamstress and owned a dress shop in the forties. I still have a few of her dresses, one still has the price tag on it from her shop. I have the dress she wore when she was married (it's a dark green with sequined embroidery on the left shoulder). And a really cool old dress that she purchased in 1929 from New York. She said it was a runway dress that originally came from Paris. It's beautiful...which reminds me I need to take some more pictures! I don't have proper photos of any of the dresses...maybe a project for next week.

Granny on the right with a friend...she had many.

My grandpa in the middle with his cousin stella on the left and I'm not sure who on the right...before he and granny got together.

grandpa and his gang...he's playing guitar.

My grandpa died about thirty years before my granny did; she lived to be 93. She talked about him everyday.

This is a photo of my granny's grandfather with her sisters millie and polly before she was born...I love it just because it is so old (taken about 1910) and because polly is holding a box of bubble gum ~ 5 cents for the box, it must have been a treat from grandpa...

I hope you didn't mind the little walk through my past...like I said these are just a few of many. It's wierd to think that all of the people in them are gone. I wish I had spent more time gathering stories from my granny. Incentive to gather some from those who still remember them...