More Than a Thousand Words

Photographs are a powerful tool for preserving the past, but Rosemary Gilliat Eaton took that power further. Her camera captured the rural beauty of Cole Harbour, Nova Scotia, when it was threatened by encroaching development, and — as recently recognized by the John Bragg Award for Atlantic Canada — she used her photos to save more than just memories.

Rosemary Gilliat was born in 1919 in Hove, England, and spent much of her childhood in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka). Her interest in photography began at an early age. She started her photojournalism career primarily in England, but stories of Canada and its vast, open wilderness drew her westward. She emigrated here in 1952 and quickly fell in love with the country. As a freelance photojournalist, Gilliat worked for such magazines as Canadian Geographic, Maclean’s, and the Hudson’s Bay Company’s magazine The Beaver, now Canada’s History.

In the 1960s a chronic inner-ear issue curtailed her career, and in 1963 she married hydrographic engineer Richard Michael Eaton. His work led the couple to move from Ottawa to Nova Scotia two years later. She found much to love in Cole Harbour, just east of Halifax, aiming her camera lens at the local salt marsh and the flocks of geese that called it home — capturing them as she had the marvels of the Canadian Arctic a decade earlier.