‘Braun, Harder, Andres with wives at Montreal River,’ read the caption on the back of this photo taken by conscientious objector Wes Brown in 1942. As luck would have it, I knew Ted and Mary Harder, the centre couple, who were my great-uncle and great-aunt. E-mails to relatives confirmed the couple at left as Mary and Henry Braun. But who were the Andreses? Conscientious objector lists and obituary records in the Mennonite Archives of Ontario were inconclusive. Then came a delightful e-mail from my parents. On a hunch, they tracked down a local Jacob Andres in the Niagara area, who confirmed that he and his wife Helen were the couple on the right. This is the power of archival photographs; they not only memorialize the past, but connect people in the present.
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