My 40th LOST VALLEY article - Searching Facebook for Fragments of the Past

The preparation for launching The Lost Valley Blog in 2007 included building a reference set of Google bookmarks. [I guess the Blog is more of an online magazine.] At last count that file contains over 500 URLs which allow me to quickly fact check specific details in the photos and maps I use with the articles or to double check dates and spellings. After 24 years absence from the North End, the names of some Saint John streets eluded me. Nineteen of the bookmark URLs are in FACEBOOK, the social networking site developed at Harvard University, and which is incredibly simple to use.

Actually I never use Facebook in my personal life. I subscribed simply to access these Saint John sites, in the hope of "striking gold". That hasn't happened yet, but I have found silver. I equate site searching to the pop bottle collecting I did in my early childhood. Each Saturday my goal was to build a dollar, two cents at a time.
I did find some useful photos in "Old Pictures of Saint John" and some interesting anecdotes in a couple of the school alumni groups. I was especially interested in "St. Peter's Elementary - Junior High School" because I attended in the 1970s. I wrote about St. Pete's in previous Blogs.

One of the gallery screens in OLD PICTURES OF SAINT JOHN. Unfortunately some contributors have had a change of heart and deleted photos from the set. Several photos have been scraped from this site and pasted in other Saint John sites on my list.

Some of the Saint John Facebooks sites are fraught with problems. For example I wanted to share photos and information with the "Old Pictures" group but because I am registered in Vancouver and am not in the New Brunswick regional network I can view their site but not submit anything. I was able to contribute a little enthusiastic commentary on just a few S.J. sites but in most cases there was no reply or comment to what I had to say. The language in a few sites can get rather salty or coded. The South Enders group is probably the most entertaining. They include a few "characters". Some pages are patrolled by protective owners who may delete whole pages of submissions for reasons of their own. The CHSJ Television site is an example of that. Another is the Aberdeen School site. That one has rather good photos of a few Lost Valley streets before the demolitions, but unfortunately the "owner" contributor defaced them all by scrawling his own name in large script. It doesn't matter now because public access is has been blocked.

Here is a shot of the Valley which you will find in the "North of Union" FACEBOOK site. Holy Trinity Church is on the north valley wall. I wasn't a big fan of the North of Union lobby group, largely because a few heritage consultants were paid $$thousands for little or no real effort, while everyone else contributed without expectation of compensation.
These are the nineteen Saint John, N.B. sites I scoured on FACEBOOK for trace info useful in preparing articles for The Lost Valley history Blog.

Another shot of the old Valley, this time looking east, which can be viewed in the gallery offered on the "North of Union" FACEBOOK site.

Some of the Saint John FACEBOOK sites never really took off and will no doubt be deleted sometime soon. New ones may continue to be announced in the SAINT JOHN, N.B. topics page. Many older topics have already been deleted. FACEBOOK itself will ultimately be sold. There have already been stupendous offers, and when ownership changes the database will be heavily weeded. In the meantime you might check out the site which matches your own Saint John experience.