Fonds red-2798 - British Canadian Realty Limited fonds

In 1910 William Perkins Bull (1870-1948) and several other investors in the Red Deer Investments Company (also known as Red Deer Holdings), including his brother Duncan O. Bull, bought up lots in and around Red Deer, Alberta. They were speculating on the rise in land prices in central Alberta as the Canadian Northern Railway was developing a line through the area. Targeting naive British investors, they then formed a new British firm, British Canadian Realty Limited, to handle the marketing and sales of the land throughout Britain. In 1912, as part of ongoing promotions for the sale of the accumulated lots, British Canadian Realty Limited commissioned a local Red Deer photographer, George E. Fleming, to put together a selection of about 100 photographs of Red Deer and district in an album. Several of the photographs emphasized jersey cattle, because the Bull family were heavily involved in cattle breeding in the region. The album was then used by the firm at its offices in London and Birmingham, England to promote the highly speculative land sales. The land boom fizzled out in Alberta by early 1914, and the company itself collapsed with the outbreak of the First World War that same year. William Perkins Bull managed to retrieve the album from the wreckage of the company