Geraldine Fitzgibbon was born in Toronto on Oct. 31, 1854. Her parents were Agnes Dunbar Moodie and Charles Thomas Fitzgibbon.
Even more interesting were who her grandparents were. Her grandfather was Colonel James Fitzgibbon, the military war hero of the War of 1812 who received Laura Secord's message about an impending American attack. Her maternal grandmother was Susanna Moodie, who along with her sister Catherina Parr Traill, were well known Upper Canadian authors.
Geraldine completed her education in Ottawa and while travelling abroad met her future husband, John Douglas Moodie (J.D.). The couple were married in 1878. After moving back to Canada, J.D. and his father attempted to farmstead in Manitoba. After five years of farming, J.D. became disillusioned with farming and joined the North West Mounted Police in September 1885. Thus began a long association with the NWMP.
After a brief stop in Calgary where Geraldine gave birth to their fifth child, the Moodies were posted to Medicine Hat then on to Battleford. It was the move to Battleford that signalled a new phase in Geraldine's life: practicing the art of photography in earnest.
Prior to this move, she had helped her mother over the year with illustrations and some photography. In 1895, the local newspaper, the Saskatchewan Herald, announced that "Mrs. Moodie is having a photographic gallery built near the Presbyterian Church."
This distinguished Geraldine as the first female photographer to operate a studio on the Canadian prairies. In this capacity she captured rare photos of First Nations ceremonies and family life, which most male photographers never saw. She also worked closely with the NWMP providing many of the photos we use today illustrating daily life at a police post.
In late 1896, the Moodies moved once again, this time to Maple Creek, where she once again opened a studio. After spending some time in Ontario while her husband was fighting in the Boer War, she returned to Maple Creek and spent several years moving around with J.D.'s postings. By 1904, Geraldine and their youngest son Alex, joined J.D. in the far north on Hudson Bay in the Eastern Arctic.
Geraldine Moodie was a female pioneer of early Canadian photography who, as author Donny White states "witnessed and documented the final days of the native peoples' culture on the prairie, the passing of the open range ranching frontier, and the turn-of-the-century Inuit culture of the Eastern Arctic."
Spanning half a century, her remarkable visual legacy will hopefully inspire a new generation of women to pursue their dreams.
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