I hope you will join me in raising funds to digitize and preserve the remainder of Richard Glaze’s 16mm film collection, bringing to light transit scenes in Toronto and elsewhere that haven’t been seen in over 50 years. A GoFundMe page has been set up, and donations are being accepted from now until the end of March.

If you have been following this website for the past two years, you will have noticed the contributions of one Richard Glaze. Born in Ohio in 1932, and immigrating to Canada in the late 1960s, Richard was from a young age an avid railfan and photographer. Sadly, in November 2019, I was approached by Richard’s friends who told me that he had to go into long-term care, and his extensive collection of literally thousands of rail and transit slides, photos and memorabilia needed a home, and would I take on his collection? I agreed, and have been overwhelmed (in a good way) by the depth and breadth of the material Richard collected. It is an honour to hold this collection and work with museums across the United States and Canada to preserve it. So far, nearly 900 of Richard’s photographs have found their way to this website, out of over 2,200 that I’ve scanned, and I’ve only scratched the surface.

But amongst Richard’s extensive collection of slides was nearly two miles of 16mm film footage, covering outings he’d taken in the 1950s, 60s, and 70s. It’s hard enough finding film projectors that can show this footage, but digitizing these films for video viewing wasn’t cheap. As a result, in April 2021, I set up a Kickstarter fundraiser to raise the funds to get Richard’s 16mm films scanned and digitized, with the help of Frame Discreet. Dozens of people stepped up, and over $7,500 was raised, enough to digitize a third of the collection.

You can see the results on our YouTube Channel. Most recently, we’ve released a 17-minute-long video highlighting three trips Richard took to Toronto to see the TTC’s operations in 1959, 1960 and 1962. You can see the video below:

It’s taken us a few months to go through the first third of the collection and make it viewable to all — not just edited videos, but raw footage. Now, however, the time has come to finish the job. A lot of material remains to be digitized, offering up such gems as the last days of streetcar operations in Montreal and Ottawa, the Rochester Subway, the debut of the CLRV at the CNE, the launch of the Bay and Rogers Road trolley buses, and more.

Again, scanning at the quality that Frame Discreet delivers isn’t cheap, and there’s a lot of material to scan, but I hope that many hands and wallets make light work. I hope this GoFundMe will bring out rail and transit supporters everywhere to contribute what they can to bring these scenes to light, for all our enjoyment, and for the preservation of history. This campaign will run from now until March, so feel free to give a little bit multiple times. Every bit helps.

Thanks to everybody whose help brought Richard’s amazing footage out of obscurity. I look forward to making more historic scenes available, and I think everyone for their attention and support.