STANLEY TURNER

Published 1948, Montreal

Size: 17.5" X 23"

Description:

A rare pictorial map of Montreal and the surrounding Laurentian region produced by the Brading’s Capital Brewery of Ottawa.  The map illustrates the major historical points of interests of the territory as well as showing areas that focus on leisure activities such as skiing, fishing and hunting.
The map is adorned at its border with images of Québec’s early explorers and   leaders.  These include Paul de Comedy de Maisonneuve, Samuel de Champlain, Jacques Cartier, Louis Joseph Papineau, Sir Guy Carleton, Pierre Gauthier de La Vérendrye, General Montgomery, Sire Wilfrid Laurier, René-Robert de La Salle,  and Lieutenant Colonel Charles De Salaberry.  The map also provides the approximate distances from different Canadian and American regions and cities to Montreal.
The map is of interest in that it offers an alternate view of the world, one associated with leisure and pleasure, rather than those that Stanley Turner was producing just a few years prior during the Second World War.  Although the imagery used by Turner is similar to those of his maps of the Second World War, the post war context is vastly different.  Nevertheless, his maps remained historically focused regardless of the contemporary political context.  Pictorial maps are thematic in general and are meant to inform as well as to amuse without regards to cartographic precision or the brutal reality of the context. As such, Stanley Turner’s distinctive style served him and his clients well in portraying and advertising their goods or the information that they wished to convey through their association with leisure or non aggressive imagery.