Halloween Howl 2026 - Day 1

Let the fun begin! I opened my first ATC for Halloween Howl 2026. I will be posting every day this month to showcase what I received. Here is Day 1...

I love the background on this card. I will have to ask her how she created it. She then used rubber stamps and embossing powder for the bats, tree and graveyard. Those teeny, tiny ghost diecuts are fabulous. They are the perfect size for ATCs.

I forgot to scan the first three cards that I sent to my partner, so I am waiting for her to send me a photo to share here.

The Richmond Hill Historical Society

Over the summer, I decided that I needed to get myself ‘out’ more. Lately, it’s pretty much been work, home and shopping. I need more social contact. So, I joined the Richmond Hill Historical Society…sent in my registration in August.

The first meeting I attended was this month. Normally, the meetings take place at the Central Library but there are some renovations going on there right now. This time it was at the Elgin Barrow Arena. Of course, there were no close parking spots, and I don’t move fast and it was raining. I was a bit damp but I finally got to the meeting room.

The presentation, featuring member Bob Blanchard, was called “The Demise of a Village Culture.” It was a very interesting history of the businesses that have come and gone on Yonge Street over the years. It was a great trip down memory lane. I’m looking forward to the next meeting, hopefully at the library. It is much more accessible than the arena was.

Carnival 1968

I came across this program from the Richmond Hill Figure Skating Club in 1968 while sorting through a drawer of ‘stuff’ the other day. I would have been 12 years old that year. I had taken figure skating lessons for a few years at this point.

Can you pick me out in the photo below?

I’m in the back row, third from the left. I also found two other photos of me in my costume from a different year. My goodness, that was a LONG time ago.

I have no recollection of why I was not wearing my glasses because I most certainly would have had them and needed them to navigate the world. I lost interest in figure skating when I started high school and never pursued it further. It has been quite the nice trip down memory lane though.

Cabinet Cards

Thompson & Son was a 19th-century photographic studio located at 75 King St. E., Toronto, operating in the Late Victorian era (roughly 1885–1905). The firm produced historical portrait formats like vintage carte de visite (CDV) and cabinet cards. The sepia-toned cabinet cards and CDVs featured local citizens, often bearing the embossed or stamped studio signature "Thompson & Son, Toronto" on the decorative mount. The carte de visite or 'visiting card', (abbr. CdV) was a format of small photograph which was patented in Paris by photographer André Adolphe Eugène Disdéri in 1854, although first used by Louis Dodero in 1851. I have such a photo of my great-grandfather (born 1877) likely taken in the early to mid 1890s.

Each card was the size of a formal visiting card about 4½ x 2½ inches and such photograph cards, were commonly traded among friends and visitors in the 1860s onward. Albums for the collection and display of cards became a common fixture in Victorian parlors. The popularity of the format and its rapid uptake worldwide were due to their relative thrift, which made portrait photographs accessible to a broader demographic, and prior to the advent of mechanical reproduction of photographs, led to the publication and collection of portraits of prominent persons. It was the success of the carte de visite that led to photography's institutionalization.

The carte de visite was usually an albumen print from a collodion negative on thin paper glued onto a thicker paper card. The size of a photo was approximately the size of a business card, mounted on a card sized 2.5 in × 4 in. The logo of the photographer was generally printed on the front or back, as both protection of copyright and advertising.

A collodion negative was a transparent glass photographic plate coated with a light-sensitive nitrocellulose emulsion, invented in 1851 by Frederick Scott Archer. It dominated photography until the late 1800s because it combined sharp detail with the ability to make unlimited paper prints. An albumen print is a 19th-century photographic technique that uses egg whites, salt, and silver nitrate. Invented in 1847 by Louis Désiré Blanquart-Evrard, it was the dominant photographic printing process from the 1850s through the 1890s.

High-quality paper is coated with a mixture of egg white (albumen) and salt. The paper is next treated with a silver nitrate solution to make it sensitive to light. A negative is placed directly on the paper and exposed to sunlight ("printed out" without chemical development). The print is usually toned with gold chloride to improve stability and create rich brown or purple tones. The surface is glossy and smooth, because the image sits on top of the egg-white layer rather than sinking into the paper fibers. They are very sharp with clear details. As they age, the photo often shows a yellowed or faded look due to silver oxidation and the natural aging of the albumen layer.

The Milk Cartage Business

In the early 1900s, the milk cartage business relied heavily on horse-drawn delivery wagons and large metal churns. Local dairies sent milkmen, like my great-grandfather, on daily pre-dawn routes to supply fresh milk, often before breakfast, serving as an essential community service before modern home refrigeration was widespread.

The horses were often highly trained, learning all the regular stops and walking alongside the milkman automatically. Early electric and motorized delivery trucks started appearing in the 1910s, though horse-drawn wagons remained the backbone of delivery operations well into the mid-20th century.

Up until the early 1900s, milkmen frequently dipped milk directly from large barrels or churns into pails and jars brought out by residents. Glass bottles with cardboard caps gradually became the industry standard in major urban centers. When bottled milk became the means of delivery, many houses had a small opening in the wall of the house with a latched door on each side, and this is where the milkman left your order.

I remember one time, when my father accidentally locked himself out of the house, that he lowered me feet first into the house via the milk box so I could unlock the door from inside. That milk box door inside is locked with a bolt lock now. It’s a different world than it was.

Do you remember getting milk delivery when you were young? I do. Let me know if you remember that too.