One day last week I stopped into the wonderful Wolfville Memorial Library and found a treasure trove of old Life magazines. They were sitting by the door, free for the taking, two cardboard boxes of them. I couldn’t resist taking a pile home.

Life magazine was created in 1936 as the first all-photography news magazine by Time founder Henry Luce. It dominated the market for over 40 years and once sold more than 13.5 million copies a week.

It was a weekly until 1972, a special supplement and then a monthly from 1978–2000. Two generations of North Americans made it wildly successful, but then trends changed.

It seems to me that old Life magazines make an excellent portrait of an era. They document with images, just as this newspaper captures Kings County right here, right now. I dove in.

The oldest copy I found was from May 1961 and it cost 20 cents. On the cover was a Mountie in red serge with a stunningly beautiful Jackie Kennedy. John Kennedy was making his first official visit outside the U.S.

It was the ‘60s and Life photographers were hurt during a mixed-race bus ride that turned ugly in Alabama. The Dead Sea scrolls had just been discovered. The following month there were several pages of June brides from all over the world.

An ad for glass bottles said they keep “soft drinks sparkling fresh and returnable bottles offer the most refreshment at the lowest cost.” There were lots of very cool guys selling Barclay and other cigarettes. How ironic that bottles are making a comeback now and cigarettes are hardly cool.

Captivating stories and images

A photo essay by the legendary Gordon Parks about a family in a Brazilian slum captivated me. Twelve-year-old Flavio DaSilva was obviously “old with the worry of caring for his younger siblings” because he was dying from bronchial pneumonia and malnutrition. That publication brought donations that saved the boy's life and paid for a new home for his family.

Parks, who died recently in his nineties, once said, “the camera is my weapon against the things I dislike about the universe and how I show the beautiful things about the universe.” Later, he recalled, “I didn’t care about Life magazine. I cared about the people.”

There was an editorial on the costly race with the Russians to get to the moon. The Soviets, it was noted, “have neither cost-plus contractors nor union overtime.” Of course, neither does China or India today.

In May 1963 His Imperial Majesty Mohammed Reza Shah Pahlavi of Iran had his name on a 15-page feature. Surely an essay penned by a so-called royal reformer on the rebuilding of his nation was pure propaganda.

Patt Blue was another Life chronicler of the darker corners of existence. One of her most touching projects took her to the back ward of a long-term hospital for the seriously disabled.

In the 1970s, Life documented the demise of the Viet Nam war. The photos in 1976, when the Americans fled, are terribly sad. Who can forget the image of the little girl running from napalm? All war images are sad, but have they stopped any fighting?

I found the Life issue for May 1980, which was the month my oldest was born, and the St. Helen’s volcano eruption in Oregon managed to colour the sky in Nova Scotia. Alan was quick to dive into that issue.

In July 1981, Life asked on its cover, “Are we running out of water?” Lake Mono in California was being drained of a “resource more precious than gold. It is not only oil that may no longer run plentifully and forever.” Everywhere I looked, the irony piled up.

One could go on and on about how Life foreshadowed today’s predominant issues: unemployment due to factories closing; a cancer preoccupation; the environment; and violent conflicts that continue. The editors always leavened the dire news with images of beautiful and iconic faces like Princess Di and Marilyn Munroe. In that way they, and Life, live on.