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Toronto Star Newspaper: 51,849 Historic Pictures Online Published: 06 September 2008 By: Rick Roberts, Biography & Archived Articles Today I stumbled onto a photograph that I have been seeking for thirty seven years. My wife's family has a favourite story about her father, Harry Darnbrough (1919-1969). The family story claims that there is a picture "somewhere" of the "Darnbrough brothers" "guarding" Queen Elizabeth during her visit to Toronto. Harry served with the Governor General's Horse Guards from the age of twenty until his death in 1969. Like most family stories the details of this one may have evolved through re-telling. Harry had a Darnbrough cousin (Arthur) who served with him. However, we have no evidence that any of Harry's brothers joined the Horse Guards. The family was convinced that the Royal visit in question was that of the young Queen Elizabeth in 1959. For many years I read every account that I could find about that Royal visit and examined pictures from a wide range of sources. The reason for my dedication to finding the picture is that there are no surviving photographs of Harry in his traditional Horse Guards regalia. I hoped to find one for Sandra and her siblings who lost their father at a young age. A couple of years ago it finally dawned on me that the family story may have been about a different Royal visit. Could it have been the Royal visit of 1939 -- the visit of Queen Elizabeth, The Queen Mom. That was the year that Harry joined the Governor General's Horse Guards. His cousin, Art Darnbrough, was already a member by then. While Googling a completely different topic, a link to the website Toronto Star Page and Photo Sales appeared. It was the first time I'd heard of that site. A quick click revealed that the website contains a database of 51,849 pictures that can be searched by keyword. The researcher is provided with thumbnail images of all pictures in the database that match with the search criteria. Those thumbnails can be clicked on to provide a view of a larger version of the same picture, along with brief details about the picture. The commercial aspect of the site is that a researcher can identify and then purchase a physical copy of the image from The Toronto Star. The pictures in the online photo archive were taken from the newspapers' files from the last 100 years, with new pictures of recent events being added daily to the online collection. I first searched "darnbrough". No luck. Then I searched "royal visit 1939". Low and behold the second page of results provided a very good picture of the Queen sitting in an open-top McLaughlin Buick proceeding past a row of mounted Governor General's Horse Guards on Danforth Avenue. In it's online format, the picture is not clear enough for me to be able to make out the faces of each of the Horse Guards, however, I've ordered a nice big copy of it for closer examination. The online pictures are clearly watermarked TORONTO STAR and are under copyright. The website picture archive is very well cross referenced (see image above). The specific picture that I found was categorized a number of different ways, ensuring that a researcher could find it easily. The example I mention was referenced in the following categories: car; danforth; avenue; horse; guards; king; george; vi; motorcade; queen; elizabeth; saluting; union; jack; flags; governor; general's; horse; guards; mclaughlin; buick; animal; auto; historic; military; royal; royalty; street; visit; 1930s. This may not be the correct picture for my research, but the odds are good enough that it was well worth the risk to order a physical copy. If you are interested in finding pictures of buildings, people or just about any other topic, check out the online picture archive at the Toronto Star Page and Photo Sales website. Rick Roberts, GlobalGenealogy.com Inc. More Canadian Genealogy & History Resources from Global Genealogy:
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