"Early in 1889, Robert Wilson Reford, scion of a Montreal shipping magnate, set off for British Columbia with one of the first Kodak box cameras in Canada. For the next two years, Reford lived in Victoria working as a clerk for the Mount Royal Rice Milling and Manufacturing Company to gain experience before joining the family business. More than eight hundred snapshots in five albums reveal that, whether in Victoria or traveling around British Columbia, whether at work or at play, Reford was seldom without his camera. Both a tourist and a businessman, he exemplified the 'New Amateur' of the 1890s, photographing 'ordinary' subjects, infrequently chosen by professional photographers, in a manner distinguished by freshness and spontaneity: native people, ethnic groups, women, people at work, even friends having an ostentatiously bibulous picnic." From Treasures of the National Archives of Canada