I thought I would share the photo I took of Prince Andrew while on a visit to a local forestry mill on Vancouver Island in July of 1977.
I was working at the Goldstream Gazette, a weekly newspaper when we got a hot news tip that Royalty was coming to town. Actually, the whole Royal family, including Queen Elizabeth and Prince Phillip were visiting various parts of Canada in 1977 to celebrate the Queen's Silver Jubilee.
I don't recall exactly how we heard about it, because there was no email, no internet, no fax machine, but it turned out that Prince Andrew, the younger brother to Prince Charles was going to be visiting the Sooke Forest Products Mill. I also don't recall there being any media accreditation needed, I just showed up at the mill along with a Gazette reporter and we just tagged along during the tour.
Anyway, during the tour, there were lots of facts and figures about how many board feet the mill produces and other very interesting information that I'm sure that the Prince found fascinating. When the mill manager was saying these figures, at this very moment I made this picture of HRH with my Nikon F and a 105mm lens as the Prince was listening very carefully to what was being said and he goes "Mmm".
It made the front page in the next weekly edition.
Well a month or so later I got this letter back, no postage stamp, addressed to "Gary Nylander, Esq., Goldstream Gazette" It was a bit of a surprise when the letter showed up we in the newsroom had a pretty good chuckle about my "Royal Letter", something that I have always kept as a memento from my years as a newspaper photographer.
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