Niagara As Told Through Its Advertisements

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About the Collection

The aim of this exhibition is to create an insight into the Niagara region by analyzing the intentions and depictions of companies through their advertisements. Due to technological advancements in the printing industry, illustrated and photographic images became more commonly distributed in newspapers (Mainardi). As a result, local businesses could use images alongside its advertisements. The period examined in this exhibition explores the experimentation conducted during the latter half of the 19th century. However due to the limitations of the period, companies had limited flexibility in the detail and number of images they could show. As a result, analyzing the decisions made by the companies can offer insight into the gender, societal, and cultural views of the time therein building an understanding of the region during this time. In the same way the importance of visual culture was examined in the first part of this course, advertisements need to be viewed through a similar lens because the images are important cultural images that can tell us about the views and desires of the people in the Niagara region.

The set of images were largely gathered from newspapers and business directories sourced from the Archives and Special Collections at Brock University. All the advertisements were either for businesses in the Niagara region or were advertised in the region’s newspapers. The latter was included to further understand the region by not only analyzing local businesses, but the complete goods and services offered to the region. For example, the advertisements from the Canadian Pacific Railway and Saskatchewan Homestead Company indicate the likely interest from people in the region considering to travel west for better opportunities. This implies the view of the west as rife with opportunity to expand colonization efforts. A one-sided view perpetuated by European settlers not unlike the removal of Indigenous people from modern history during the photographs taken during the Chicago World Fair of the Kwakwaka’wakw peoples as discussed during the first part of this course.

The advertisements in the collection provide an understanding of the presumptive desires of the region and represent many of the themes of 19th century visual culture. The advertisements gathered often using symbolic imagery to communicate to the consumer the identity of the business through one image. Therefore, seeing businesses such as the Cataract House and Harris & Berston use indigenous people in its ads are telling in determining the region’s relationship and view of indigenous peoples. They were used as mascots and symbols of serenity and tobacco, a view consistent with the unfair treatment and characterization experienced by indigenous peoples in their lack of representation in 19th century visual culture.

Additionally, other themes can be discovered through the exhibition such as the consistent presence of animals giving insight into the use of animals as status symbols such as the patriotic use of the bald eagle in Bristol’s Sarsaparilla advertisement. Furthermore, the role of women in society can be further understood as seen through the depiction of woman at a sewing machine in the advertisement for Grover & Baker’s Sewing Machines. This portrayal of the women as the homemaker was consistent of the times and helps reinforce our understanding of the women’s role in society in the Niagara region. This ad is not dissimilar to the Kodak girl advertisements discussed in class as they are both directly targeting women because of the expected gender roles during this time.

These advertisements lend insight into the region by displaying the fashion, gender, and cultural views of the time. They provide crystallizations of the period due to the strategy behind the image choices and therefore should be viewed as a central populist medium capable of further understanding the relationship between the region and visual culture during the long 19th century.

Works Cited

Mainardi, Patricia. “The Invention of the Illustrated Press in France.” French politics, culture and society (2017): 34-48. Web.