The more I look at it and the location I would say it is Canadian Mounted Rifles...... Since the Strathcona's and the 1st Canadian Mounted Rifles (Royal Canadian Dragoons) did not really get their uniforms or kit till they arrived in Ottawa for their original muster and the 2nd Canadian Mounted Rifles I cannot say for sure but I have a very good feeling that they did not get theirs till they also mustered.....
Now comes the BIG question what Canadian Mounted Rifles was it, 3rd, 4th or 5th...... None of them saw any active service and 4th and 5th were not fully manned before the war ended...... Was he a recruit and eventually only got as far as Ottawa or was he 3rd CMR who arrived in SA after the war and came right home.....
See below, Mathers was in Edmonton after September 1901 which to me puts the photo in the period of the recruitment of the 4th and 5th CMR......
Mike
Charles Wesley Mathers
William Hanson Boorne and Ernest Gundry May established what may have been Edmonton’s first photo studio in 1891 at 9666 Jasper Avenue. The partners hired the 24-year-old Mathers for their Calgary operation in May 1892 and later that year convinced him to oversee their Edmonton location.
He immediately took to the burgeoning settlement and in February 1893 purchased the studio from Boorne and May. It was a tiny little place, barely 12 feet by 18 feet, with living quarters above.
Mathers built his early reputation taking photos of working class citizens, like gold miners panning on the banks of the North Saskatchewan River. In 1897, with business booming, Mathers built an entirely new two-storey wood frame structure on the same spot. “C.W. Mathers Art Studio,” the sign read, and was later changed to “C.W. Mathers Photographer.”
In April 1901, Mathers travelled north from Edmonton to Athabasca Landing and then down the river into the McKenzie and to Fort McPherson on the Arctic Ocean. His return in September generated a huge amount of public interest and the Edmonton Bulletin kept its readers informed of his progress processing the glass negatives into prints. The story went on to say that the images would be “the only views taken in the north country by a professional photographer using the latest and most complete appliances.” Those photographs were to be published around the world — the first such ever seen by thousands of people.
The urge to travel and photograph what he saw took Mathers over, and in June 1904 he sold his portrait business and studio to his assistant, Ernest Brown. Mathers travelled down the Saskatchewan River to Fort Pitt (Lloydminster Landing) to Battleford and then settled in Vancouver the following year. He moved to Taft, California, in 1920 and died there in 1950 at the age of 82.
Mather’s photographs of Edmonton and area bought by Ernest Brown are part of the Ernest Brown Collection at the Provincial Archives of Alberta. Other artifacts from Mather’s time in Edmonton may well exist in collections in California or in the hands of relatives.
