The photograph shows “wait For Me Daddy,” By Claude P. Dettloff In New Westminster, Canada, October 1, 1940. The scene dates to 1940, a detail that changes how you read every face and object in the frame.
The picture became one of the most famous Canadian photographs of the war. Claude P. Dettloff was photographing the British Columbia Regiment marching to a waiting train in New Westminster when five-year-old Warren "Whitey" Bernard broke from his mother's hand and ran to his father, Private Jack Bernard. The image ran across North America, was used to sell war bonds, and hung in every school in British Columbia during the war. Jack Bernard survived and returned home in 1945.
Pictures of ordinary life are some of the most valuable historical documents we have. Grand events were always going to be recorded, but a normal day — how people worked, dressed, shopped, and passed the time — survives only when someone happened to point a camera at it.
