A landscape photograph a historian says is “an original Edson Graham hand-tinted print” has come to light in Ontario and the antique dealer discovering it believes it belongs back where it came from, the Annapolis Valley.

The print, titled “The Corner Brook,” is an example of the work Wolfville photographer Edson Graham did through the 1920s to the 1940s. The print was brought to my attention by the dealer who contacted me when a Google search brought up columns I wrote about Graham over a decade ago. “I acquired (this) original work of art… hand signed by Edson Graham and it is an amazing photograph,” the dealer wrote. “The print has been well preserved under glass all these years and is in wonderful condition. I knew it was special when I saw the frame it was in.”

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“In the very heart of the Land of Evangeline, beneath the shadow of Blomidon, with a far-stretching strip of golden beach and the orchards extending for miles one every side… nestles the seaside resort of Kingsport. The destiny of Kingsport is very plain – a year or so will see it as fashionable a haunt as any on the New England shores.”

This optimistic prediction of a great future for Kingsport is in a tourist booklet published circa 1893 by the Windsor and Annapolis Railway. With hindsight we know that Kingsport became important when the Cornwallis Valley Railway opened in 1890 (linking its port with Kentville) but it never became the “fashionable haunt” predicted by the railway.

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