Series MS-3378 - Colonial administration field photographs of Richard Maynard (Department of Indian Affairs tours of inspection)

Richard Maynard (1832-1907) was a well-known British Columbia photographer, prospector, and business owner originally from Cornwall, England and based in Victoria, British Columbia.

Richard Maynard married Hannah Hatherly in England in 1852 and they immigrated to Bowmanville, Ontario. While there, he operated a boot and shoe business but left in the late 1850s to travel to the Fraser River on the west coast of the country to participate in the gold rush. Richard returned to Bowmanville and he and his wife Hannah moved with their young family to the Colony of Vancouver Island in 1862 on the Sierra Nevada. Upon the Maynard family’s arrival in Fort Victoria, Mr. R. Maynard continued his prospecting enterprises in the Stikine region on the mainland. Upon his return from the area, he joined his family and opened up a business in Victoria.

Primarily a field photographer, Richard was known for his field and landscape photography. It is unknown how or with whom he learnt photography. He made many trips in the Colony of Vancouver Island and the mainland. One of his earliest trips was an excursion to Barkerville in 1868 with his son Albert. At that time, early photographer Frederick Dally was among the other photographers in residence there. In 1873 and 1874, Richard travelled on the vessel the HMS Boxer touring Coast Salish and Interior Salish Indigenous communities as the photographer accompanying government officials including Israel Wood Powell on tours of inspection. The journey in 1873 consisted of travelling to the Northeast Coast of Vancouver Island and adjacent settlements on the mainland including Fort Rupert on Vancouver Island, and Bella Coola, Bella Bella and Cape Caution, and in 1874, he travelled to the West Coast of Vancouver Island which included Friendly Cove in Nootka Sound. In the late 1870s and early 1880s, photographers Oregon Columbus Hastings (1846-1912) and Edward Dossetter (1844 -?) made similar inspection tours with I.W. Powell in 1879 and 1881 respectively.

In the spring of 1884, Richard Maynard traveled to Haida Gwaii (then referred to as the Queen Charlotte Islands) as a photographer with the American explorer Captain Newton H. Chittenden. Engravings from his views were published in the Official Report of the Exploration of the Queen Charlotte Islands for the Government of British Columbia (Victoria, 1884).

Also during the 1880s, Richard Maynard documented the construction of the transcontinental railway in British Columbia and Alberta through multiple tours. In 1885, both Richard and Hannah Maynard appear to have photographed the Canadian Pacific Railway (C.P.R.) along its route through British Columbia. These trips crossed both Coast Salish and Interior Salish Indigenous territorial regions and produced images of both colonial and Indigenous settlements and communities at a time of intense change and oppression that significantly affected Indigenous lifeways, rights, resources and lands in British Columbia. Maynard C.P.R. related photographic "views" were available for order or purchase at the Maynard Studio and other commercial operations in Victoria and on the mainland during the 1880s.

In the late 1870s and 1880s, Richard also made several trips further up the continent to Alaska for photographic purposes in 1879, 1882, 1887, and in 1892 to the Pribilof Islands where he documented sealing and seal rookeries.

For his work, Richard Maynard received acknowledgements including those representing museum and photographic communities. In a public lecture in 1884, members of the Newcombe family acknowledged Richard Maynard's ethnographic work British Columbia and Alaska, and his documentary record of the Cariboo Road in the 1860s and 1870s. In 1890, Richard Maynard won first prize in the professional class for the Victoria landscape view, "The Arm" by West Shore magazine in October of 1890. During his lifetime, Richard Maynard’s photographic works appear to have been collected by a number of museum institutions in the United States.

During the course of his career, the personal history of Richard Maynard and his wife are closely linked, to both his photographic work and that of his wife’s photographic studio, Mrs. R. Maynard’s Photographic Gallery (1862? – 1912). Richard Maynard and Hannah Maynard took several working trips together where they both practiced landscape photography during the 1870s and 1880s. This included trips to Vancouver Island, Haida Gwaii and to Banff, Alberta. Richard Maynard's field photography and landscape views appear to be used by Hannah as source material for composite works, such as the piece “80 Views on the Frazer River” featuring multiple landscape views, and also in their “documentary” composite works of Indigenous subjects. Photographic work created by Richard and his wife Hannah have been attributed to each other in several ways and means over their photographic careers. Both Richard and Hannah Maynard have been given credit for the same photographic work, as in the case for the Victoria landscape view, "The Arm."

Richard Maynard retires in the late 1890s. In 1896, his son Albert Hatherly Maynard (1857-1934) became the general manager of his business, as well as taking over management of the photographic stock. Richard Maynard died at the age of 74 on January 10, 1907, in Victoria, British Columbia.