Supporting paperwork available in the department.
This amateur footage was shot by Dr Anthony Stedman Till in 1939; Till himself donated them to the library and provided some information about them. He set off on his own expedition across Canada and the US in 1939 before the outbreak of war. The footage he shot is mostly colour. He was a highly regarded surgeon (his specialism was in thyroid and abdominal surgery). His visit to Canada seems to be of a professional nature with two visits to hospitals - Toronto General Hospital and The Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota. At Toronto General Hospital members of the medical staff are named although some of the footage shot inside is rather dark and a little unsteady. At the Mayo Clinic we are shown an operating theatre with what appears to be open heart surgery taking place. Many major landmarks feature along this journey including the Heights of Abraham, Niagara Falls, Rocky Mountains, Vancouver Bay, etc. The footage certainly marked a turning point in Till’s life: in 1940 he joined the RAMC and served in the Middle East, Cape Town and Suez. He was captured and became a POW, imprisoned in Stalag VIIA. As a POW he operated on fellow prisoners and local civilians, then at some point (according to his obituary), he was repatriated to the UK for his services (he spoke fluent German). He was then part of the 181st Field Ambulance, which was in the vanguard of the medical relief of Bergen-Belsen, a Nazi concentration camp.
An obituary outlining Till's life can be read here: http://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/biogs/E000353b.htm