Club History - Submitted by Graeme Crabb, January, 2008

When I arrived in Perth in the fall of 1996, I discovered there was no camera club in the area – the closest at that time being in Brockville, Kingston and Ottawa. Not wanting to drive those distances, I decided to take on the challenge of establishing a brand new club to serve the Perth region.

As a newcomer to the community, I didn’t know anybody, so it was time to make contacts. I visited Pictures Perth and met Hugh Henderson, the owner at the time. He was enthusiastic about the idea and gave me the name of a fellow he thought might be interested and put up a poster with my name as contact.

Next I placed an ad in the EMC for two weeks and waited for calls to come in. There were only four or five replies, but I set up a meeting at our home and invited all to attend, including Hugh and the contact he gave me (I think the first name was Camille). This was the late fall of 1996. Five people showed up – Howard Owen, Gary Webster, Keith Allen, Bruce Young, Camille plus me.

It was a start. Camille was not interested, but the others were. We decided to hold the inaugural meeting at Howard’s in January, 1997 and he would do a presentation on his professional work. We put up more posters and placed ads in local papers, and were rewarded by sixteen people showing up. The Lanark County Camera Club was born. An executive was elected with me as the first president and we made arrangements to rent space for future meetings at St. Paul’s Church in Perth.

From that time on, the club grew and thrived. We had guest speakers, workshops with well-known photographers, outings and special interest groups. The meeting location changed eventually to the Baptist Church, then to Algonquin College, where we have much more space.

After three years as president, I passed the mantle to Michelle Steward in 2000. The year 2003 was a rough one for the club as membership began to decline and it was difficult to get executive members. Derek Parkinson was president for a short time in 2003 before Ralph Buttrum took over that same year. Linda Mentzel was elected in 2006 and is our president currently.

Today the club thrives and is growing steadily. Two digital groups meet on separate days and a wide variety of activities take place over the year. It was interesting to see how the club went from entirely film in 1996 to almost completely digital at present. Club policy welcomes both film and digital shooters as it is the photograph that matters rather than the type of camera used to take it.

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