This Day in History: Vancouver postcard photographer gets his due

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Fred Herzog isn’t the only Vancouver photographer who achieved fame late in life.

Herzog was 76 when he had a landmark show at the Vancouver Art Gallery in 2007; Philip Timms was 96 when he had his breakthrough show at the Centennial Museum in 1970. It was called The World of Philip Timms, 1900-1910, and featured 150 photos of the city and its residents.

Timms had moved to Vancouver from Ontario in 1898, when the city was experiencing a boom equipping miners headed to the Klondike Gold Rush. The boom continued after gold fever broke in the Klondike. In 1901, the population of Vancouver and its environs was 36,124; in 1911, it was 171,896.

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Timms worked for a couple of established photographic studios run by S.J. Thompson and the Edwards Brothers before striking off on his own in the early 1900s to become a postcard photographer.

“There was a postcard craze on,” he told Aileen Campbell of The Province on Aug. 1, 1970. “I shot up everything in sight and turned them into postcards. Sold them in stationary and drugstores. They were an advertisement to the world about Vancouver.”

Using a couple of portable cameras with folding bellows, Timms would cycle around pioneer Vancouver photographing the fledgling city. He took numerous photos of the impressive Victorian and Edwardian structures that sprang up, such as an ornate New Market Hall built on piles on Westminster Avenue (today’s Main Street) in 1908, before the eastern end of False Creek was filled in.

He captured a joyous group of young boys atop a cannon at the Beatty Street Drill Hall, writing the wry caption: “Our first line of defence” on the postcard.

He loved his captions. A postcard featuring streetcars plowing through the streets in a rare snowstorm was captioned: “Must we admit it? Winter, Vancouver B.C.”

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One of his classics is a hilarious photo of the beloved lifeguard Joe Fortes diving into the waters of English Bay, his body still in the air, his head submerged. It was titled “‘Joe’ Diving, English Bay,” and like most of his photos, captured much more than the main subject. In the background is the old English Bay bathhouse, on the platform are a trio of young boys in the full-body swimming costumes of the day.

“I remember saying 25 years from now, these pictures will be valuable in terms of a record of the city’s history,” Timms told Campbell.

He was right — his photos aren’t just striking images, they’re historical documents of a long-gone era.

Timms came from a printing family, and his postcards and prints are renowned for their quality — his postcards sell for $100 and up. The Vancouver Sun/Province photo collection has a Timms print of the Carnegie Centre, back when it was the Carnegie Library, and it’s simply luminous.

Timms’s brother Art opened a printing and engraving shop at Georgia and Hornby streets in 1903. He invited Philip and his brother-in-law, Bill Seip, into the business.

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“I was the photographer, my brother the printer and brother-in-law the picture-framer,” Timms told Campbell. “We sat on the curb and said, ‘What are we going to call this joint?’ So we called it the Art Emporium.”

The Art Emporium would become the longest-running art gallery/business in Vancouver history — the last owner was art dealer Torben Kristiansen, who operated it until his death in 2023.

Philip Timms left the Art Emporium to start his own postcard shop on Granville Street in 1906, eventually moving it into his house at 1608 Commercial Dr. But there was an economic recession in 1912, and he went to work for his brother Art, who had a printing shop at 14th and Main streets.

Philip Timms remained a printer into his 90s. He continued to take photos, but not as a full-time commercial photographer.

He had hoped to become Vancouver’s first archivist, but the city gave the job to Maj. James Matthews. Perhaps that’s why Timms donated his archive to the Vancouver Public Library, not the Vancouver Archives.

The library has scanned 3,500 of his photos, which you can find by searching VPL Special Collections Philip Timms on its website.

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Timms died on Aug. 8, 1973, at age 98.

jmackie@postmedia.com

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