What You Can't See

“I came in second in my age group. Beat some kid from Winnipeg who thought I was just this hick from up north. I was thrilled.” He poured himself a cup of tea. “But you’d never know it from the picture that went in the newspaper. I looked like I was about to cry. Everybody thought I was sad because I didn’t win. But the truth is . . .” he paused for effect, looking at the boys. “I really had to go to the bathroom!”

Liam glared at his dad, but Oliver burst out laughing. Trying to change the subject, Liam said, “I guess you never really know what’s going on in a photo. What you can’t see.”

His dad held up his book. “You know what I just learned? Some photographers at the start of the First World War needed good pictures, but they couldn’t get what they wanted. So they took photos of soldiers who were training, maybe added a few things and cropped the picture so you couldn’t see that it was nowhere near the battlefield. They weren’t trying to trick anybody — they got the real deal eventually.”

“Now that we’re talking about old photos . . . ” Liam’s mum pulled a big book off the shelf. Curious, the boys crowded around her to see the heavy pages full of photos. Grinning back at them was a much younger version of Liam’s dad. His hair curled in every direction down almost to his shoulders, and he was standing in front of a cherry-red car. “You kept refusing to get a decent haircut,” she smiled.

Pretending to be offended, Liam’s dad said, “I was planning to be a rock star!”

“I think you look great, Dad!” said Liam.

Oliver chimed in. “And that car is so cool!”

“Not if you had to actually ride in it,” Liam’s mum snorted. “It broke down right after I took this photo. Cost us a fortune to fix, and then it died completely a month later.”

She turned a page. Her face went still as she stared at a picture of a woman and two kids in matching sweaters and toothy smiles. “Is that you and Uncle Al?” Liam asked.

His mum didn’t seem to hear him at first. “He was having a tough time then. The kids were bullying him at school, but Grandma didn’t know, and he wouldn’t let me say anything. I wish I could have helped him.”

Liam’s dad put his arm around her shoulders. “We should go visit him and Paul one of these days. We haven’t been to Montreal in ages.”

She smiled and turned the page. “Oh, now here’s a nice one!”

“Mum! No!” Liam yelled. There for everyone to see was a baby who looked a whole lot like him peering over the edge of a bathtub, soapy bubbles everywhere.

Like the good friend he was, Oliver pretended to be studying the chess board. “Get ready to take a photo where you look really sad,” he said, “because I’m about to win.”

You never really know what people in a photo are thinking or feeling.

For instance, many pictures from residential schools show First Nations, Métis or Inuit kids smiling and playing. But it’s important to remember they were away from their families, living in unfamiliar buildings and eating strange food. They had to have a lot of strength to get through it. Guy Hill Residential School was a real place, and it did have a hockey program.

And yes, there are some famous fakes among the photos of the First World War, although there are far more images where photographers captured the all-tooreal horrors of battle. If your family has some photo albums, ask someone older to tell you the story behind what you see in the picture.