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This photograph album contains pictures that P. C. Colony took while visiting Niagara Falls, Toronto, Montréal, and Québec City in the summer of 1897. Most of the pictures show street scenes, buildings, and scenery.

This album (23cm x 18cm) contains 71 photographs that P. C. Colony took while visiting Niagara Falls, Toronto, Montréal, and Québec City in mid-July 1897. The volume's cardstock pages were once bound. With the exception of three larger prints, the photographs (approximately 10cm x 11.5cm) are pasted two to a page. The first two items are labeled with lengthy manuscript captions, and the remaining items are identified by typed captions. The typed title "Toronto Trip, '97" is glued onto the front cover.

With the exception of the second item, a picture of P. C. Colony driving a plow pulled by two horses, the photographs show scenes from Colony's 1897 trip to Canada, where he attended the Third International Convention of the Epworth League in Toronto. Colony captured several images of a "bicycle sunrise prayer meeting" and a "firemen's exhibit," and one picture is titled "Toronto waif." He also took a series of pictures at a lacrosse game and two of a "Highland bagpipe band." The remaining photographs show street scenes and buildings such as churches (sometimes with interior views), a restaurant, a penitentiary in Kingston, and the Québec Parliament Building, as well as scenic views taken on or near water. The album has pictures of Niagara River rapids, the Lachine Rapids, Toronto Bay, a sailboat on Lake Ontario, a Canadian Pacific railroad bridge, Montmorency Falls, the American Falls, the Horseshoe Falls, and the Thousand Islands.

This nineteenth-century album contains 46 once-bound pen-and-ink caricatures on heavy card stock, each card with or formerly with metal eyelets on one short edge. A pencil inscription at the back of the volume reads, "Mr. Albert L. Briggs, Providence, RI," and internal references to Providence, Rhode Island, further suggests that either Briggs or another local resident may have produced the artwork. The figures represented in the volume vary widely and some are more sympathetic or more disparaging than others. The illustrator relied heavily on exaggerated features, stereotypes, and jokes directed at people's physical appearance to provide social commentary especially on race, ethnicity, gender, and class.

This nineteenth-century album contains 46 once-bound pen-and-ink caricatures on heavy card stock, each card with or formerly with metal eyelets on one short edge. A pencil inscription at the back of the volume reads, "Mr. Albert L. Briggs, Providence, RI," and internal references to Providence, Rhode Island, further suggests that either Briggs or another local resident may have produced the artwork. The figures represented in the volume vary widely and some are more sympathetic or more disparaging than others. The illustrator relied heavily on exaggerated features, stereotypes, and jokes directed at people's physical appearance to provide especially social commentary on race, ethnicity, gender, and class.

At least seven of the illustrations relate to women, including drawings referring to women's rights and various women's roles as mothers, performers, physicians, and cooks. One, labelled "What is home without a mother," may be a reference to a song by the same name published in 1854, and it features a woman with a monstrous face. Another titled "HANNAH LONG" depicts a woman peddling "Quaker Bitters" (probably the Providence, Rhode Island, patent medicine by that name) and may be referring to Hannah Longshore (1819-1901), who graduated from the first class of the Women's Medical College of Pennsylvania in 1851.

Many of the caricatures focus on impoverished or working class people, showing individuals in tattered clothing or in lower-paying professions such as a farmer, a shoeshine, and a seeming gravedigger. A number of illustrations depict men in various stages of intoxication or alcoholism. Forms of social disorder are highlighted in caricatures of a convict and of a knife-wielding murderer labelled "THE MAN THAT KILLED JOHN GILPIN." Commentary on physical and mental disability are also represented, in drawings of a mentally ill man labelled "Luny" and a man with unaligned eyes and feet labelled "On exhibition."

Other caricatures reflect racial, ethnic, and religious stereotypes. Two racist caricatures depict African Americans, including one of a Black Congressman and one of an Uncle Remus character. Another caricature depicts a recent immigrant, while two are anti-Semitic (those labeled "The Torturer" and "NAME IT"). Two figures depict high religious figures, from Catholic or Orthodox Christian churches; one wears a robe, a fur-brimmed mitre, and snowshoes. The word "KAMSCHASA" is written near the bottom of the robe, likely referring to the Kamchatka peninsula in Russia.

Other caricatures highlight people based on their height, weight, profession (such as a king, a knight, an editor, a lecturer), or social posturing. For example, attitudes like dignity, contentment, nosiness, and bashfulness are spotlighted. Others appear more innocuous, such as illustrations of someone reading the morning newspaper and another of someone taking "Rush's Pills," but underlying subtexts for many of the images likely have additional meaning.