In 2005, James Long discovered an abandoned suitcase filled with photo albums in the alley behind his house. The photographs in the albums and the process of tracing them—and even finding members of the family who “appear” in them.

Large-scale photographs of small-town Canada.

This photo was taken in Winnipeg’s North End at St. John’s Park on Main Street, in 1940 or so. I was about five years old and the only girl in the family. An accident, my parents told me. A happy accident.