1936 – 1939
After I left Paramount Studios, I found work at the Unique Art Studio on Yonge Street near Wellington, a so-called “amateur studio” for amateur photographers.1 It was spring and we were getting ready for the summer season. Snapshot studios were a lucrative business during the summer months. Most people had an inexpensive Kodak Brownie box camera so finding a summer job wasn’t a problem.
We worked 10 hours a day for $12.00 a week. We received 50 cents overtime if we put in more than 10 hours in a day. Some employees were assigned particular jobs, such as printing snapshots that entered a large tray filled with developer. One or two employees transferred them to water, then fix.2 Rolls of film were developed in a very hot room. It was a difficult place to work especially during the busy season in hot summers. We coloured snapshots and enlargements; others sorted orders for delivery and did anything that needed to be done.
Every morning the drivers delivered and picked up film to be processed from drugstores across the city in small cars. Mounted on the top of each car was a replica of a girl in colour holding a camera.
Our boss arranged a picnic for the staff in Streetsville, west of Toronto, every summer. Transportation was supplied by the small pickup and delivery cars.
I enjoyed the company of all my co-workers and having a job, even though it was a sweat shop. The downside was the foreman. I think he spent every minute of his time making sure we didn’t slack off. He would even stand outside the washroom door to make sure we weren’t in there smoking. Not a very nice man.
We worked five days a week from eight a.m. to six p.m. with a half hour for lunch, and six to eight hours on Saturdays, supposedly our “half day.”
In the late summer of 1939, after working there for a little over three years, we got together and decided to do something about our long working hours and low wages. We all signed a petition to take to City Hall hoping to find help. At that time unions were rare or unknown to us.
Somehow the foreman got hold of the petition and gave the list of names to the boss. We all worried about our jobs wondering which one of us would be the next to be fired. When my time came to leave, I was actually relieved at the thought of not ever having to go back.
Thinking about some of my experiences I wondered how a refugee with a family must feel: working in sweat shops: earning wages they could barely exist on, not knowing the language or the country. If an English-speaking Canadian can’t do anything about a bad situation what chance does a refugee have?
Once again, I was out looking for work. But unlike some of the employees I did not have a family depending on me.
I met Doug in March 1939 while working at the Unique Art Studio.
Next Chapter: Meeting Doug
1 According to Might’s Greater Toronto City Directory for 1938, Unique Art Studio was located at 36 Yonge Street, Toronto, on the west side south of Wellington. What appears to be the building Angela worked in is located at the same address today. According to Photographers of Ontario, the studio was owned by Charles and/or Christina White. The studio later moved to 6-8 Colborne. Return
2 “Fix” a short form of Fixer is one of several chemical baths used to develop photographic prints. The chemical dissolves excess silver halide so the developed photograph will not be light sensitive. Silver halide turns black when exposed to light. Return