This photo was taken by William Notman (8 March 1826 – 25 November 1891), a Scottish-Canadian photographer and businessman.
From Wikipedia: Notman was born in Paisley, Scotland, in 1826, and he moved to Montreal in the summer of 1856. An amateur photographer, he quickly established a flourishing professional photography studio on Bleury Street, a location close to Montreal’s central commercial district.
His first important commission was the documentation of the construction of the Victoria Bridge across the St. Lawrence River. The bridge opened with great fanfare in 1860, attended by the Prince of Wales and Notman’s camera. The gift to the prince of a maple box containing Notman’s photographs of the construction of the bridge and scenes of Canada East and Canada West so pleased Queen Victoria that, according to family tradition, she named him “Photographer to the Queen.”
The first Canadian photographer with an international reputation, Notman’s status and business grew over the next three decades.
Photography during the mid-19th century was not the simple process it later became. The typical tourist generally did not carry a camera and much of the Notman studio’s images were taken with the tourist’s needs in mind. Visitors would look through Notman’s picture books and chose views, to buy individually mounted or perhaps made up into an album, and have a portrait taken as well. Street scenes in the burgeoning cities of Canada, the magnificence of modern transportation by rail and steam, expansive landscapes and the natural wonders, were all in demand.
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Dana Viking says
What a lovely story. Are there more of his photos of Muskoka that we can see?