HEATH/CROWELL  In 1907, Charles Samuel Leonard Crowell (1881-1964) married May Pearl Groombridge at Windsor, Ontario.  Several years later, the couple posed for a studio photograph (right) with their daughter Dorthea.  The resulting picture was typical for the times, static and rather formal.  But the photograph taken of them in about 1950 (left) was quite the opposite.  With Sam and May strolling past storefronts in downtown Vancouver, British Columbia, a street photographer named Foncie Pulice captured them in something akin to an action shot.  Pulice worked various locations, taking candid pictures of people from 1934 until 1979 – and his favourite location appears to have been on Granville Street.  According to a stamp on the back of their snapshot, Sam and May were photographed while walking along that same street.  It is unlikely they were taken by surprise, however, as “Foncie’s Fotos” were well-known in Vancouver.

Sam Crowell was a machine shop foreman at the Wallace Shipyards.  He is believed to have gone west during the First World War.  He retired in 1950, probably at about the same time that he went for his photographic stroll.