PMB043 W.F. WHITE'S TAXIDERMY MUSEUM - FRONT VIEW

PHOTOGRAPH
15.25 x 12 cm

Date: Likely approximately 1903. (Business was mentioned in a newspaper article that year.)

Publisher / Photographer: Unidentified

Notation: This is a front view of W. F. White’s Museum at 563 Main Street in Winnipeg. To the best of my knowledge, the building would have been located on the east side of Main Street, somewhere on the first block north of its intersection with Market Avenue.

I suspect Mr. White is one of the two gentlemen posing on the threshold - hopefully, the less blurry of the two. I am not certain what the actual name of the business was. In a newspaper article of the time, it was referred to as "W. F. White's Museum. On the bottom of one of its products, "W. F. White Curios" was inscribed. In this picture, one of the signs (bottom right) appears to read "W. F. White Tax(idermy)." On an accompanying photograph, signage reads "Curiosity Emporium" and "Free Museum".

Whatever it was called, it definitely would have drawn me in. It seems like First Nations artifacts as well as pelts and mountings of Canadian wildlife constituted a large part of its inventory.