It was the best Christmas gift Margaret and Barry Sharman ever received.
The Penticton couple got married at the drill hall in Margaret's hometown of Enderby in the summer of 1968, more than half a century ago. It was the beginning of a long and happy life together.
However, like many newlyweds, the Sharmans were strapped for cash and weren't able to pay for the wedding photos they'd had done in nearby Armstrong.
For decades, all the Sharmans had were memories of their special day.
But just before Christmas 2024, the couple saw their wedding photos for the first time.
Sandy Farnyuk, a friend of Margaret's since Grade 2, was one of the bridesmaids at the wedding. Farnyuk, who is also the president of the Enderby and District Museum Society, sent the Sharmans three photos of their wedding that had been found at the Armstrong museum.
The Sharmans received copies of the photos on Christmas Eve.
The story of the Sharman's long-lost wedding photos, first reported by Black Press, rippled through the media, with The CBC, The Washington Post and other news outlets interviewing the Sharmans and sharing their story.
"It's been overwhelming," Sharman told The Morning Star about the level of interest in their story. "It has brought out people that we knew in the '70s that we've touched base with again. Maybe it's just a good news story and everybody needed it during this time."
Margaret said she was extremely grateful to the photographer who kept the photos even though he hadn't been paid for them. But when the story first went out, she was unsure who the photographer was, having forgotten his name from all those years ago. She was also unsure how the photos ended up at the Armstrong museum.
However, Jessie Ann Gamble of the Armstrong Spallumcheen Museum and Art Gallery, was able to shed some light on these unknowns.
The envelope in which the wedding photos were found was labelled W.E. Saby, and Gamble confirmed the label referred to a former Armstrong resident Walter Ervine Saby.
Saby was the municipal clerk for the Township of Spallumcheen for many years. He lived in the white house on Mill Street between the RCMP detachment and the Anglican church.
According to an Armstrong Advertiser news report obtained at the museum, Saby had been a clerk for Spallumcheen for 20 years before he retired in 1970. Born in Bawlf, Alta., he worked as the secretary treasurer for the municipality of McGee, Sask., for 20 years before moving to Armstrong. He died in 1983 at the age of 81.
Saby had a wife, Pearl Rosetta of Armstrong, and three sons and two daughters.
The 1983 Advertiser article also mention's Saby's hobby.
"Mr. Saby enjoyed his hobby of photography, both during his working years and in retirement," it reads.
Indeed, Saby was a prolific photographer. More than 1,500 of his photos can be viewed at the Armstrong museum, and museum staff have close to 1,000 more of his photo negatives left to digitize.
Below is a photo Saby took of Foster Whitaker in a Spallumcheen vehicle at the IPE Grounds, courtesy of the Armstrong museum. Other photo subjects of Saby's included the Armstrong Hockey Team, activities at the local pool, and many, many family portraits.
"He was the only guy that really did wedding photos in Armstrong and probably Enderby and around. He had a little studio in his house and everybody went to him if they wanted wedding photos," said Armstrong resident Chris Pieper, whose own wedding in 1971 was shot by Saby.
But how did Saby's photos, including the Sharmans' wedding photos, end up at the museum?
Gamble 鈥攚ho is in her 80s and knows people in the Armstrong area just as well as anyone 鈥� has the answer.
She said sometime well after Saby's death, about 15 years ago, the Saby family had a garage sale to clean out their parents' belongings. Gamble recently spoke to a resident named Jeanette Goldenthal, who confirmed she and her family saw Saby's old photo negatives in a big cardboard box at the garage sale and decided to take them home, lest they end up in the dump.
"These people just sort of recognized that the negatives were going to go to the garbage and said well, we'd like them," Gamble said. "They kept them at their house for years, and I knew they had them and I kept saying, 'when are you going to donate those to our archives?'"
The Goldenthals eventually took the photo negatives to the museum, knowing the cardboard box was a trove of Armstrong history.
Since that delivery, museum workers Bob Nitchie and Linda Neden have been going through the photos and identifying as many people as they can to get them ready for the museum's photo archives.
Gamble herself is a master of identifying people in the area. When it came to the Sharmans' wedding photos, she pulled out a magnifying glass and carefully examined the faces in the wedding party to see if her sharp memory could form a connection.
In the end, the only person she recognized in the wedding photos was Farnyuk, but that was enough to trigger the chain of events that led to the Sharmans receiving the photos after more than 56 years. She called Farnyuk at the Enderby museum, had the photos sent to her, and soon after the Sharmans received what Margaret called "a Christmas miracle."
After the wedding photo story went out, Margaret received a message from Saby's grandson, Jeff Saby, who told the Penticton couple that he had grown up in Penticton. "What a small world," Margaret said.
"He was a lovely man to correspond with," she added.
Seeing the pictures for the first time, Margaret was thrilled to see her wedding dress and the dresses of the bridesmaids, as they were all made by her mother, who she said was an excellent seamstress.
Demonstrating her mother's kind heart, Margaret said her mom even refitted the wedding dress so others with little means could wear it on their wedding day.
"I don't know how many brides that dress was on, but it was quite a few."
The wedding photos have crystallized fond memories for the Sharmans 鈥� but who could forget that Margaret, riding an early wave of feminism in the '60s, was the one who proposed to Barry.
They were both working at the Bank of Montreal in Enderby when they met, and when Barry got transferred away to North Vancouver, Margaret said to him, "you know, I don't think this long distance is going to work. I think you should marry me."
