Great Moments in Price Family History: November 5, 1930

There’s a group on Facebook that provides a space for residents and former residents of Toronto’s Beach district to share stories and recollections. It’s called “The Beacher History Kaboodle” and someone recently posted a 1930 photo of Isabel Price that they had found in the Toronto City Archives.

Isabel, born in 1912, was the daughter of Leslie Price and Blanche Edmonds and a granddaughter of Joe Price and Lizzie Leslie. She became Isabel Moore in 1936, when she married Red Moore. You can learn more about her on her page on this website.

Here’s the photo that they shared in the Facebook group:

Creator: Unknown Date: November 4, 1930 Archival Citation: Fonds 1266, Item 22431 Credit: City of Toronto Archives www.toronto.ca/archives Copyright is in the public domain and permission for use is not required. (Click to enlarge)

And here is the page in the Toronto City Archives where they found it. According to the archival entry, the photo was from the files of the Toronto Globe and Mail.

I was captured by the lovely photo and decided to enhance and colourize it, resulting in what you see at the top of this post. Then I started wondering why the Globe and Mail (actually, it was just the “Globe” in those days) would have photographed the 18-year-old Isabel.

So I did a little more research, and here is what I found.

The week of November 3, 1930 was a busy and exciting one for Isabel. Early in the week, she had appointments with photographers from both the Toronto Globe and the Toronto Star. They wanted her picture because she was going to be receiving an award at Malvern Collegiate‘s commencement ceremonies that Wednesday, November 5.

The show began at two o’clock.

Only four prizes were awarded to Upper School students that year – Mathematics, Modern History, Modern Languages, and Science – and the girls swept them all. The mathematics prize went to Shirley Stephens and both the modern history prize and the modern languages prize went to Rita Philips.

Our Isabel won the science prize.

Here is the article that appeared in the Globe on the morning of Commencement day (Isabel is identified as number 9):

Photos of Prize Winners at Malvern Collegiate Commencement 1930
Toronto Globe, November 5, 1930, p 11 (click to enlarge)

And here is the one that appeared in the Star in the afternoon (Isabel is number 10):

Toronto Star, November 5, 1930, p 2 (click to enlarge)

Four years later, in 1934, Isabel would graduate from the University of Toronto. Despite her award-winning performance in science, her degree was a Bachelor of Commerce.

If you have a suggestion for another “Great Moments in Price Family History” post, please let me know in the comments below or by contacting me here.