Michele LeTourneau
Northern News Services

Yellowknife (Nov 12/99) - Amazing Family Sundays organizer Erica Tesar has a special treat for us the day after tomorrow.

That treat is a selection of photographs taken by Henry Busse, which are on display at the Prince of Wales Northern Heritage Centre.

"He was the first commercial photographer that we had here (in the North)," Tesar says.

"It's an amazing collection. He left a wonderful legacy of the North, and particularly of Yellowknife."

John Poirier, co-ordinator of technical services for the Northwest Territories Archives, has worked on the collection that numbers 30,000 to 40,000 photographs.

"About 5,000 have been organized and made accessible," he says.

"It's the type of photography you don't see around here anymore. He was interested in everything that was going on in the community, and it's an interesting collection as a result."

The public is invited to drop by the centre between 2-4 p.m. Nov. 14, not only to view the photographs and tell stories relating to them but also to aid in identifying subjects in the photos -- it was Busse's unfortunate habit not to label his photographs.

In the 1961 Christmas edition of News of the North, it was reported that Yellowknifer Henry Busse was now listed among Canada's top 50 photographers. His name stood alongside that of Karsh, renown photographer of such world figures as Winston Churchill and playwright Tennessee Williams.

Busse had come to photography, and Yellowknife, by a circuitous route.

Born in Waldshaart, Germany, the son of a judge, the young Busse, just 18, joined the artillery in the First World War. After the war, he studied agriculture and then became the administrator of a large sugar beet farm complex.

According to a newspaper article written by Yellowknifer Erik Watt for the Edmonton Journal on Jan. 2, 1959, Busse booked a passage to Canada in 1927.

"His first venture was a chicken ranch near Starbuck, Manitoba," wrote Watt.

But Busse lost his savings.

He then worked in Saskatchewan, Alberta and British Columbia, mostly on farms. In Vancouver, however, he opened up an ice cream parlour. He was the first to sell licorice ice cream, he told Watt. Somewhere amid all that restless activity, he learned how to run a darkroom.

Along the way, Busse had never taken the time to get his naturalization papers. In 1939, at the outbreak of the Second World War, he was interned as an enemy alien and eventually shipped out to New Brunswick.

It was in Port Radium on Great Bear Lake -- where he'd received RCMP clearance to work as a pipefitter's helper after the war -- that he started taking photographs. He was 47 years of age.

Writes Watt:

"Busse stayed in Port Radium until July 1947, building up a nest-egg and learning photography as a member of the mine's camera club. 'Mel Campbell, the chemist, was president,' he (Busse) says, 'and he had to coax me to join. I had a vest pocket camera I'd purchased second-hand for $5, but the club membership was $2 per month, and I was only making 67 cents an hour.'"

A visiting priest from Yellowknife, Father Gathy -- who used the darkroom as a confessional -- convinced Busse to set up shop in Yellowknife.

Busse's work appeared in National Geographic, Reader's Digest, Time, the Edmonton Journal, News of the North, other publications and at the 1958 Brussels World Fair.

That World Fair photograph, Elements of the North, was taken Feb. 23, 1955 at Cameron Falls -- a day Busse was not likely to forget.

Busse, taking pictures at -45 C with a 35 mile an hour wind, froze his fingers.

"Howard (trapper and prospector) said 'Henry, Henry! Your fingers are gone!'" Busse recalled for Watt.

"I looked at them, and I was almost sick. They were dead white. I got my mitts on again somehow, and when we reached the cabin I packed my fingers in Vaseline and wrapped them in caribou fur, I didn't want to lose them."

The next morning, Busse went out to take more photos. A Yellowknife doctor couldn't say whether or not the photographer would lose his fingers. Three sleepless weeks later, it looked like the fingers would heal.

Apropos of Busse and photographs, Watt finished by writing:

"Some he sells, others he simply takes for his own enjoyment, for to Henry Busse, photography is not a business, it's a way of life."

Busse died in a plane crash in the Nahanni Valley area on Sept. 29, 1962, one year after being named one of Canada's top 50 photographers. His body was never recovered.