Over the course of Curio’s working relationship with the hospital, we discovered a tucked-away archive of early 20th century books containing; advertising, medical documents, encyclopedias, and yearbooks. The yearbooks are interesting in their own right — they provide a peek into the dorm life of the nurses who were trained at the Royal Alexandra Hospital, before the nursing program was terminated. The yearbook archives reach back to the 1930s, and the books are a candid documentation of the student’s lives. They contain snapshots, autographs, quotes, and personal notes to friends in the program; unsurprisingly, nothing about student life has changed.
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- A page out of the Nursing Year book 1946.
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- Sheet music with a twist in the 1940 yearbook
The vintage advertisements were what really caught our eyes.
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- An ad in the 1943 yearbook
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- Another refreshing ad from 1943
Discovering these yearbooks was exciting. Not only because they are a historical record of Edmontonian ad design, but also because they offer an interesting perspective on the aesthetic trends of the period. The local sponsors for the yearbooks included department stores, butchers, dairy farmers, drug stores, tailors, and a variety of other local businesses. We quickly realized that there was a great potential to digitize and share the archives that would have otherwise been left dusty, neglected, and forgotten.
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- An Edmonton ad company from 1946
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- A familiar media company’s logo from 1953
With a grant from the Edmonton Heritage Council, we began the process of collecting all the editions of the yearbook. We scanned and archived ads from the very first yearbook to the last. The first edition of the yearbook, Milestones, came out in 1930.
This blog is dedicated to sharing the treasure-trove of vintage advertising that we discovered.
Follow the link to see more from the Adsotively blog.
