great grandma boucher

Throwback Thursday – 4 generations

Life

As I mentioned, I am taking a Photoshop class and this week we learned about restoring old photos. It just so happened that my mom brought me a photo album that belonged to my grandmother that I, for some reason, had stored in my things at her house in Spokane. Many of the photos neither of us had seen before and this is one of them! And it’s such a great photo! Here we have me at around 7 years old, with my mom, great-grandmother in the middle, and grandmother on the right.

The original photo has a red cast to it and now I wonder why. Is it due to the fading of color in the print? It seems like a lot of old snapshots have a red cast to them. In the original photo below you will see that I have a gnarly gash on my chin. I was trying to remember how I hurt myself and then it hit me, this is when I took a serious spill on my bike. I wrote about it here.

4 generations before

before

Here is my “new and improved” Photoshopped version. I corrected the color, removed a ton of dust, and removed the scab on my chin.

4 generations after

After

I am kind of proud of the finished version, but in some way it makes me a little bit sad too. Like I’m rewriting history or something.

It’s interesting because I posted both of these on Flickr and I got more response on the original version. One person even said that the original’s red cast appealed to them. I kind of feel like the original, red cast, scabbed chin, and all, tells more of a story. What are your thoughts?

Wayback Wednesday

Life

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Following along the lines of my Granny Mary’s lineage, here is a photo of her parents, my great-grandparents. Will and Laura Boucher (pronounced boo-shay). I have always thought Will Boucher very handsome and Laura (whom I called Great Grandma when she was alive) was also very beautiful. I wrote about her in this post. She was a wonderful woman. Very gentle and kind. She was very much in love with Will. They had seven children. Granny Mary was their second child.

Will died under very mysterious circumstances when he was in his early thirties.

He decided to move his family away from Coeur d’Alene, Idaho to Vancouver Island, British Columbia. This didn’t sit well with Laura’s father, Ben Chainey (I will talk about him in another post). Regardless, Will moved the family anyway. I don’t recall the reason why he moved. I believe it was a job opportunity but I can’t remember what that was.

He was killed accidentally by his business partner when they were out hunting. Shot in the stomach, his birth certificate says.

I find his death interesting and wonder if it really was an accident. We will never know.

Ben Chainey helped Laura move the family back home to Coeur d’Alene where she lived until she died when she was 96  (she also spent time in California later in her life). She never remarried.

Wayback Wednesday

Life

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This is my great-grandmother, Laura Boucher. I haven’t a clue who the other dude is. A distant cousin maybe? My great grandma lived to be in her nineties. She was well loved and had the most beautiful spirit. This guy probably came from far away to see her. I love how, in the photo below, she seems so happy to see him and his wife. And they seem happy to see her, too.

I have mentioned her briefly on this blog in the past. I would really like to write more about her. I would like to learn more about her! One of the things that I want to do with these Wayback Wednesday posts is write more about those that came before me. I would love to learn, and tell, their stories. My great grandma has a really intersting one that is worth persuing.

One thing I learned about her recently: She knew how to speak French fluently. I had no idea! She liked to visit a French woman down the street so that they could converse together in French. I find little details like this about my relatives fascinating.

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