Their Stories post featuring two creative dating profiles!

In celebration of Valentine’s Day, this week’s Their Stories post features two dating profiles that end up a perfect match. Love is in the air!

Unidentified Portrait from the Thomas Bouckley Collection. Collection of The Robert McLaughlin Gallery.

Portrait #1

Photo received by Matchmaker Dolly, with completed application as follows:

Name: Donald Bence Arthur

Age: 57

Height: 5’ 5”

Weight: 168 lbs.

Hair: mostly brown

Eyes: depends on shirt colour; sometimes green, sometimes blue

Background: Scottish/Hungarian

Occupation: semi-retired shoemaker with small mobile unit (pulled behind bicycle from town to town)

Hobbies: baking, alpine gardening and painting en plein air, mostly chimneys in winter… but also fences, (any season for the right price)

Favourite Sports: ribbon dancing, competitive whistling and caber toss

Best Attribute: a natty collection of footwear

Worst Attribute: cigar breath has occasionally been mentioned

Views on Children: don’t mind as long as it’s from a great distance

Spiritual Beliefs: I would prefer not to be matched with anyone who owns a ouija board.

Unidentified Portrait from the Thomas Bouckley Collection

Dolly matched Donald with Portrait #9.

Name: Eleanor Mondegreen

Age: 65

Height: 4” 1” (seated), 5’ 3” (upright)

Weight: (including boned corset, petticoats, bloomers, woolen dress with brass buttons) 180 lbs. (buck naked, 135)

Hair: yes

Eyes: not bad, getting harder and harder to read in dim lighting

Background: actually, just an old bedspread the photographer hung up

Occupation: proud nurse with the VON for decades until a terrible ruckus, fisticuffs really, with a patient who disputed my insistence that the hymn ‘Keep Thou My Way’ contained the phrase “gladly, the cross-eyed bear”.

Hobbies: tatting

Favourite Sports: darts

Best Attribute: a sense of whimsy

Worst Attribute: cannot keep a secret for love nor money

Views on Children: it’s all a backward glance at this point

Spiritual Beliefs: I would prefer not to be matched with anyone who owns a ouija board.

Follow-up Notes:

Three years after their marriage, Donald became fully retired by which time Eleanor had tatted herself a 20^th century wardrobe. They lived long and happily. Dolly’s greatest success story.

By: Carin Makuz

Their Stories – Unidentified Portraits 3 and 9

This week’s Their Stories posting includes a letter and a short first-person story. Be inspired by one of the unidentified portraits and participate by posting on the wall in the exhibition space or in the comments below!

Portrait #3

A lapsed Jesuit

The day that I was asked to sit for this photograph was the same day that I discovered my benefactor and friend Dr. Emile Herbert would no longer be attending communion at St. Ignatious of Loyola church where I had preached for more than twenty years. It was then that I understood why I had been born. My true calling was to become a medical doctor, rather than a priest. Dr. Herbert would no longer be attending services because he had become stricken by the same disease that he had spent his life trying to eradicate. And that disease was Dementia Praecox, or what is often referred to as insanity.

By: Carol Barbour

Unidentified portrait from the Thomas Bouckley Collection

Portrait #9

Dearest Mother,

I hope this letter finds you well. I have thought much of you this day. With tears in my eyes earlier, I said aloud, oh that sons and daughters should take their parents advice to heart.

Through my tears I recalled how you spoke harshly of Helen the day we wed. I am sorry I did not believe you then, but I have come to understand. You looked into my future and saved me with your guidance.

Before we parted, you taught me how to feel joy, to take pleasure in the recalling of a simple word or a shared moment. Marriage has much difficulty, but thanks to you I stop, take in all that is around, and let the joy fill me. The way the girls look following an afternoon of play, the flowers in bloom at the front of the house and smell of the chemicals in my developing trays. I feel strength in my happiness and conviction to overcome my plight.

The gift of one joyous moment to the next carries me through the difficult times. You have taught me well. This day, I feel the greatest appreciation for my mother.

With love,

William

By: Lisette Sanders Coulson

Unidentified Portrait #2 – Story by Freda Jepson

This past fall, I put a call out to the community to submit creative writing entries to accompany unidentified portraits in The Thomas Bouckley Collection. With ten portraits to choose from, submissions included diary entries, letters, short stories, poetry and even a dating profile. I was so pleased with the number we received and the quality! The project resulted in an exhibition that is currently on display at the RMG until May 1st. Due to spatial restrictions, I wasn’t able to include all of the submissions, however, I will be posting two additional stories each week on the blog for all to enjoy. A huge thank you to everyone who participated!

On April 7th, join us for an evening with the Durham Folklore Storytellers. Using the submissions to the Their Stories exhibition as inspiration, the Durham Folklore Storytellers will take listeners on a journey to imagine the lives of these unidentified people.

– Sonya Jones, Associate Curator

Portrait #2

Loneliness

Am I to know no one as me

And to be known by none

To have no one to walk with me

As I approach my home.

Other lonely paths ‘longside of

mine run parallel

Yet join not mine to make a road

That leads where love can dwell

Should kindred spirit call to me

“We two now one shall be”

I’d kindle then the fire of life

To blaze for eternity.

By: Freda Jepson

Unidentified Portrait #1 – Story by Mat Calverley

This past fall, I put a call out to the community to submit creative writing entries to accompany unidentified portraits in The Thomas Bouckley Collection. With ten portraits to choose from, submissions included diary entries, letters, short stories, poetry and even a dating profile. I was so pleased with the number we received and the quality! The project resulted in an exhibition that is currently on display at the RMG until May 1st. Due to spatial restrictions, I wasn’t able to include all of the submissions, however, I will be posting two additional stories each week on the blog for all to enjoy. A huge thank you to everyone who participated!

On April 7th, join us for an evening with the Durham Folklore Storytellers. Using the submissions to the Their Stories exhibition as inspiration, the Durham Folklore Storytellers will take listeners on a journey to imagine the lives of these unidentified people.

– Sonya Jones, Associate Curator

Portrait #1

My dearest Emma,

If you receive this then my greatest work has failed. At dawn this morning I set out to walk across the Niagara Gorge. I hoped to do it until I break the record for fastest crossing. Even my friends think me crazy. They say “Cliff, why would a man who works off the ground want to spend his free time there”. Tell them I did this because I want to meet the sky on my terms.

I have been preparing for this my whole life. As a boy I there was no tree in all of Simcoe country that I could not climb. Working on chimneys and steeples seemed like the logical career. But over time, that place that I loved became only a place where I worked. I see Toronto now- a city that defies our limitations- and want to feel the freedom that that city must feel.

I do not expect to make money off of this endeavour. But then it would not be a labour of love. I hope that this letter will never be delivered; but if it must, I need you to understand why I stepped out this morning.

With love,

Clifford

By: Mat Calverley