It was early days for home movies when Newfoundland businessman Gerald S. Doyle bought a Ciné-Kodak camera at Macy’s in New York City in 1938. Film for the camera was expensive and had to be sent to Kodak for processing, and there was no sound. But early home movies had one thing going for them: Kodachrome. Twenty years before colour snapshots became common, amateurs could shoot movies in Kodachrome’s rich tones.
The new movie camera became Doyle’s constant companion on his travels around Newfoundland. With a keen, observant eye and the immediacy of a focused lens, he recorded a way of life in Newfoundland outports over a period of more than twenty years. The 300-plus photographs in this book are individual frames extracted from those colour films, laser-scanned for high resolution. Together, the images invite readers to accompany Doyle as he sailed into tiny, isolated communities and captured a bygone place and time, where life was centred on the sea. The pictures chronicle a people in the last days of Newfoundland as an independent nation through the early days of being a Canadian province, from 1938 to 1955.
Step into the sunny long ago with a patriot who loved his country. Gerald S. Doyle’s photographs will intrigue those with a curiosity for Newfoundland life as they explore one man’s remembrance of things past.

John Doyle has worked in communications for most of his professional life. He was a founding member of Newfoundland Independent Filmmakers Cooperative and helped it become the backbone of the province’s film and television industry. His films include the award-winning feature Extraordinary Visitor, CBC Television’s Above and Beyond, and documentaries including Regarding Our Father (with his sister Marjorie Doyle). John has also worked with CBC Radio as a host, writer, and producer. He is a former chair of the Newfoundland and Labrador Arts Council and a member of the Writers Guild of Canada.

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Gerald S. Doyle (1892–1956) was a Newfoundland businessman and folk song collector. With the benefit of wealth acquired as a manufacturer and distributor of drugs and patent medicines, Doyle sought to preserve and promote the cultural heritage of Newfoundland. He was known especially for his company’s sponsorship of a daily radio news program broadcast across the island, which included personal messages of interest to those living in isolated fishing villages. Doyle’s publication and free distribution of Old-Time Songs and Poetry of Newfoundland was perhaps his most significant contribution to the preservation of Newfoundland culture. Appearing in five editions beginning in 1927, the “Doyle Songbooks” consisted of material collected during his travels in the outports over the years.

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