Photo Inquiries

Privacy and Copyright

It is the position of the United Church of Canada that photographs in the possession of the Church and transferred to the Archives were originally created and collected for the use of publications or for other communications purposes. As such, digitizing archival images for education and research is a reasonable extension of the original purpose the photos were created for.

Photos donated to the Archives from personal collections have transferred copyright to the Archives for the images. Images that are still under copyright may be used online at the discretion the Archives, or the original donor if copyright was not transferred. The images on this site are in the public domain (prior to 1949). Images later than 1949 are under copyright of The United Church of Canada Archives. Please contact the archives for permission to publish any images in publications, displays or exhibitions.

There are few names of students and individuals in our images. While this project is attempting to make public the photographic records of The United Church Archives we understand that some individuals may not wish to have images of themselves available online. If you identify yourself in an image and do NOT wish it to be publicly available or if you have any corrections about images or descriptions on this site please do contact us.

How to Order

The images on this site are of suitable quality for downloading and printing free of charge. You must properly cite the images if using elsewhere so that others will know where the original photographs came from.

A standard citation contains the image accession number, the item number, the title of the image, the date, and the Archives that holds the original:

eg. 1976.001P/ 2865, Ethalind B. Howson, 1907; United Church of Canada Archives, Toronto.

*Any square brackets (eg. [198-?]) in a photo description means that there was no information written on the verso of the image and the title or date is supplied by the archivist based on supporting information.

If you require a high resolution copy for publication or display, please contact the archives and review for copying fees and information on how to order.