Ontario photographer ‘in shock’ after losing millions of photos from van break-in

Wayne Adam has been travelling around Canada, taking pictures of historical sites but someone broke into his van while parked in Montreal, taking millions of his pictures with them

An Ontario man is picking up the pieces of a lifetime’s work after hard drives containing over a million photos were recently stolen from his van.

For the past decade, Wayne Adam has been travelling around the east coast of Canada, taking pictures of historical sites.

The self-proclaimed history buff said that he decided to go and see all of the Parks Canada National Historic Sites but then realized there was more to be discovered.

“The Parks Canada National Historic Sites is just a fraction of all the national historic sites,” he explained.  There are all these wonderful federal heritage designations, and most of them are in private hands.

“They’ve each got a red federal plaque. And I just said, ‘OK, I’m going to go out and document as many as I can.’”

For the past few years he has been travelling across all corners of the Maritimes, Newfoundland and Labrador to document them.

“I had covered pretty much with a few exceptions, the whole eastern half of the country,” Adam explained.

“And that is what was documented in my pictures. I was hoping to create a series of guidebooks for each province on all the national historic sites and designations.”