Memory Mondays – Digitized Photos

The Western Development Museum (WDM) is pleased to be an institutional partner on the Building London with Canadian Resources: An Immersive History for Learning the Limits of the Earth’s Carrying Capacity Partnership Development Grant, funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Council of Canada (2021-2024).

As part of this project, parts of the WDM’s photographic collections are being digitized. Photographs that depict early settlement, grain production, cultivation, livestock production and rural and urban growth are being digitized and recatalogued for use in the project and to improve their preservation status and records at the WDM.

Follow these links to learn more about this project: Summers of Scanning.

For this month’s #MemoryMondays, we’re sharing a few of these recently digitized photos. All four of these photos feature tractors and were taken in or around 1918. According to Statistics Canada, in 1921 (the earliest year digitized data is available), 17,523 farms in Saskatchewan reported having a total of 19,243 tractors.[1] To learn more about the history of tractors in Canada, check out the post “A-tread by a century: 100 years of tractor data” on the Statistics Canada website.

^[1] Statistics Canada Table 32-10-0229-01, Tractors, Census of Agriculture historical data

IHC 10-20 Titan tractor pulling hay wagon and hay loader, c. 1918.

International 15-30 tractor hauling pens on the University of Saskatchewan farm, 1918.

Cultivators behind Aultman-Taylor 25-50, c. 1918-20.

Stewart stook loader with homemade tractor attachment, c. 1918.