These colourized photos of the 1912 Regina Cyclone aftermath add a whole new level of reality

One man’s pandemic hobby has led to snapshots of the aftermath of the historic 1912 Regina Cyclone being seen in colour for the first time.

During his dive into the archives, Moose Jaw based photographer Ron Dormer came across countless snapshots of life in Moose Jaw over the decades, some as early at the 1890’s.

“Well COVID was hitting and I needed something to do,” Dormer told CTV News.

“I went down to the archives at the Moose Jaw Library and took out some of their photos and thought these would sure look nice to redo. Take the scratches out, all the blemishes and perhaps put some color to it.”

His fascination only increased with the discovery of some snapshots of the devastation from what is generally considered Canada’s most deadly tornado.

Striking Regina on June 30, 1912, the EF-4 tornado killed a total of 28 people.

“I'd heard about it, but I've never really seen the pictures,” Dormer said.

“So I started to do those and my goodness when you saw the detail in those pictures and the destruction that hit.”

According to the historical record, 300 were also injured and 2,500 were left temporarily homeless.

“You never think it’s going hit this part, where we live. You always see down in the states, they have their big tornadoes that are so destructive,” Dormer said.

“When I opened these photos and saw that same destruction was just a few miles from us, I thought, ‘Wow, oh my goodness, it was a terrible thing.’”

(Courtesy: Ron Dormer)

Restoring the portraits of destruction was an extensive process, according to Dormer.

Software acted as a helping hand, colouring many aspects of the photos automatically.

However, Dormer consulted an array of sources for the details of the scenery, seeing what colours were used for homes, clothes and even toys from the 1910s.

“I would go to Google and find out what popular colours were for clothing and house paints and cars, stuff like that,” he said.

“Then I would extract it from that photo and place it into the project that I was doing.”

Dormer said that his work, bringing colour to the pages of Saskatchewan’s visual history, has an impact not only on the causal viewer of the photos.

“I know a couple of guys who do research for books and whatnot. They said, ‘Wow, it really helps to clarify the shot and to draw from it,’ to give details to their stories,” he explained.

“A lot of that's lost in a grainy picture, but I was able to retrieve some of that.”

(Courtesy: Ron Dormer)

Many of the colourized photos of Moose Jaw’s history are currently for sale at Dormer’s gallery at the Harwood’s restaurant in “Saskatchewan’s most notorious city.”

For the snapshots of the Regina Cyclone, however, Dormer believes the value of the photos exceeds the price.

“My purpose is really just to get it on the air,” he said.

“So that people can realize just what happened in their city.”

Dormer has a slide show of the photos that can be seen on his YouTube channel.