Mine Exploration Ontario Canada 1934

What are the odds? A couple of weeks ago my mother arrived at my house with a plastic grocery bag and handed it to me. Inside were six little 16mm movie reels that my father (1930 – 2004) had in the basement of her house. The movie reels were from 1934.

Here is the part I found interesting. A couple of years ago my Aunt in BC told me she had a small 16m movie of my Father’s family when they were kids. Se retrieved it from my Grandmother’s apartment when she died in 1985. Here is a link to this movie. https://pbase.com/filmworks4ever/1937_toronto_in_high_def
She also told me there had been other films but they threw them away because they didn’t recognize anyone in them. They were of people working. At the time I though, what a loss, but what can you do? Well, in the plastic bag were six movies my grandfather ( -1947) had related to his mining exploration in Northern Ontario in 1934 (or 35).

My Aunt had told me my grandfather was very keen on cameras, phonographs and radio’s etc. What are the odds that his grandson designs machines for scanning old movie film? That is what I do and that is what I did. Here are some sample frames from these six short movies.

If you think it is easy to find clear shots on an 18 frames per second 1934 handheld movie, then you would be wrong. Although I scanned the film in high definition, the original size here is ½ the scanned resolution. So here they are looking back at us from 76 years in the past. I will add about 130 images over time.