Gerard Nash brings N.L. history into colour including the Royal St. John's Regatta

Gerard Nash vividly remembers attending the Royal St. John's Regatta with his family as a child.

"I went to the regatta since my dad was carrying me down and carried me back," he told CBC News in a recent interview.

His memories of the festivities down at Quidi VidiLake remain so colourful because Nash has a knack for preserving them.

Also known as the "photo mender," Nash picked up the art of restoring and colourizing old photographs about 25 years ago. It began when he started a family tree project, gathering images from family, distant relatives and old photo albums. But many of the images that fell into his hands werequite damaged.The cracks and tears created holes in history.

"I guess years ago people didn't take care of pictures as well as they do today," Nash said.

Nash's passion for photo restoration and colourization isn't limited to his own family history.

"I try to find good historical photos of the province and I restore them and then post them for people to see," he said.

Nash runs a Facebook page and X account where he shares some of his work. Sometimesusers will identify their family members and provide backstory and anecdotes.

Nash works with a variety of images sent to him by friends, familyand clients of his small business.He finds others inMemorial University's digital archives and the City of St. John's archival collections.

Diving into the archives

"I've always been a big fan of the regatta and I also have a big love of the history of that area," Nash said.

Hecombs through online archives looking for regatta photos of the past, with enough quality left to work with.

"I try to get different time periods and also try to get the older ones because, you know, they're obviously rare. People haven't seen those," he said.

The first organized regatta in St. John's on record was in 1816. The earliest archived images date to the 1890s, around the time photography became popularized in North America. The photos show a barren Quidi Vidi landscape, seas of top hats and suited spectatorsand poised rowing team portraits.

Nash remarks on the more formal wear of regatta spectators and dapper rowing uniforms compared to today.

"They wore caps and pants. I mean it was a regalia, I guess, they would wear then, not just a T-shirt and a pair of shorts," he said.

Painting the past

Colour film only became popularly usedin the 1970s. But for photographs taken before then,true colours are lost to history.

Painting the past is a manual process that involves hours of research into every bit of detail in an image.

"The last one I did with the regatta, I was looking for rowing uniforms from the late 1800s," Nash said.

"I'll try to find some clothing from the period.For example, I put in 'men's pants 1895', you'll get all kinds of hits. So based on the picture itself and the colours I'm able to find through research, I can be pretty accurate."

Restoration the act of returning something to a former, original condition isn't exactly what colourization sets out to do.

"All of a sudden you start to colourize, and you start to find things thatI didn't know that was in the photo until you bring it out," Nash said.

Each chosen shade and hue contains information about who those people were in theblack and white film.Nash's colourized images are thoroughly-researched visualizations that connect him to his history.

"That's, I guess, what motivates me, in addition to the regatta really, is just a love of Newfoundland and Labrador."

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