Thousands of photos need names put to faces, Manitobans asked to help
The project has identified roughly 2,000 people in photographs from Canada's North
Indigenous people in Manitoba and across Canada are being asked to take a look at some old photographs from Library and Archives Canada, to see if they can find any familiar faces.
It's an initiative called Project Naming that is being used to identify people, places and events in archival photograph collections.
The project began in Nunavut, with university students bringing laptops and digitized photos home to the North over Christmas break in 2002 but has since expanded to include the entire country.
"What we're trying to do is reach out to the communities where these photos were originally taken and elsewhere, because of course people move, and at least try to ... hopefully put names to the faces, identify the people in them. But also the places, the events, or the activities that are taking place within these pictures," said Beth Greenhorn, manager of the project.
Since 2002, they have converted thousands more photos to digital format and they have put names to roughly 2,000 faces.
Greenhorn couldn't say exactly how many of these photos were taken in Manitoba but it is in excess of a couple thousand, she told CBC's Information Radio, and not a single Manitoban has been identified.
Starting this week, every Thursday the project will feature a new photo, hoping someone can tell them the history behind the image.
