Mentorship

I got very lucky soon after I had graduated from high school in that I met up with a great mentor at the start of my photography career. During the summer of 1976, my father thought I should try and see if there was any photographic work at the weekly newspaper, the Goldstream Gazette, the paper had just started publishing in March of 1976 and was co-owned by two experienced journalists, one of them was Mike Crossman, a photographer with extensive experience in both freelancing and working on at daily newspapers. The Gazette office was not far form the auto body shop that my dad worked at, so one day soon after I walked down to the Gazette office and asked to see Mike.

 I think Mike told me to come back with some prints that I could show him, and return I did with a stack of prints tucked under my arm. As I sat in the Gazette office in a nice oak office chair, Mike sitting opposite from me in a similar oak chair leaning back as he gazed over my prints. I don't remember all the things he said, but I recall he picked up a orange grease marker pencil and started marking up all my prints. I guess I was little surprised but hey they weren't any good anyway! at the end of our meeting he went over to a filing cabinet, pulled out a few rolls of 35mm film, ( Kodak Tri-X ) and told me to go shoot something. Which is what I did, that led to a photo assignment and many more one on one mentorship sessions in the Gazette office. I learned a lot in those years which gave me a solid foundation to build my career in the years ahead. The picture posted was one of the prints where Mike where gave me some helpful advice, on the print he wrote: "Shutter speed 40% important" ( so I wouldn't forget ). The photo was not very sharp because I shot it at too low of a shutter speed.

The picture is of the E & N Railway Dayliner Budd car #9103 that derailed not far from our family home, I think it happened in the early summer of 1976, the picture was never published as I had not started work at the Gazette at that point, but I recall that the train event caused quite a bit of commotion with people going to have a look at the derailed Dayliner and gave me an opportunity to photograph my first "spot" news event.

A Vancouver Island trip on the Dayliner

When working as a photographer for the Goldstream Gazette in January of 1978 I was contacted by a reporter, Bruce Obee who was doing freelance work for the Toronto Star at the time. The Star assigned Bruce to do a story on the E & N Railway Dayliner. The Star also wanted some photos to go along with the story, so I ended up with the photo part of the assignment.

 A bit of background, Victoria–Courtenay train (formerly the Malahat) or what most people just call the "Dayliner" is a Budd Rail Diesel Car that used to run from Victoria to Courtenay, BC on Vancouver Island a distance of 362km ( 225 miles ). The Dayliner rumbled past my parent's home on Station Avenue in Langford on a daily basis twice a day except for Sundays. I remembered the train well, I could always tell when the train was passing our home as it slightly shook our house, we all got used to it after a while, one year it even derailed not far from our home, it was one of my first “spot news” events that I photographed but never got published, I was still in high school at the time. The Dayliner was operated by Canadian Pacific Railway ( CPR ) in 1979 it was taken over by Via Rail, it ran until 2011 when the passenger service was discontinued due to lack of repair of the track and several railway bridges.

 I don't recall the reason behind the story and why the Toronto Star was interested in a passenger train from Vancouver Island, I think it might have been about the CPR selling the passenger train service to Via Rail. I wish I had a copy of the story and photos that ran in the Star, I seem to remember seeing a copy of the paper, but I never kept a copy.

 The photo assignment was a day-long affair leaving the Esquimalt area of Victoria early in the morning, the trip to Courtenay, BC was almost a 5-hour trip one way, it returned the same day, so it was dark when returning to Victoria in the short days of winter.

 It was a really wonderful day, although it started out as a typical dark rainy day with some wet snow in the Victoria area the snow was much greater in-depth the further one traveled up-Island, so by the time the Dayliner arrived in Courtenay there was a foot or more of fresh snow, it was as they say a winter wonderland. The snow was magical it made for great photos with the old train station and the Dayliner parked along the side. While the train was traveling along the route I made photographs of the train engineer, the conductor, and passengers.

 I shot a half dozen rolls of Kodak Tri-X ( 20 exp. ) black and white film during the trip with my Nikon cameras, I went back the next day to shoot a few pictures of the train going over the Niagara Creek trestle, a specularly high trestle along the route accessible from Goldstream Park. Then I processed the film, made some 8 x 10 prints, and gave them to the reporter who sent the pictures and the story off to the Toronto Star. A few weeks later I received a cheque for $75.00 ( about $257 today ) not bad pay for a young photojournalist just starting out.

 These pictures are scans from my original negatives which I still have today.

Here is a link to more photos from my 1985 dayliner trip.