Mrs. Thomas Egan, How Do you Like Yourself? Gladstone, Manitoba, 1911

This is the reverse of the postcard photograph above:

The letter reads, "I received the plants OK. thanks.  They are doing fine.  How do you like yourself.  Now I hope you will be good.  It does not look like Rain to-day it is quite fine again now.  How is Tom.  The other card are not too bad.  I will send some others as well. Say the roll I got from Ernie Budge was spoiled.  So long for the present.  Frank."

It is addressed to Mrs. Thos. Egan, C.P.R. Gladstone, Man.

It wasn't difficult finding a Mrs. Thomas Egan, aka. Maggie Bell Egan in Gladstone, Manitoba.  Her Thomas was even a telegraph operator for the Canadian Pacific Railway.   They lived in Gladstone from at least 1901 to 1916.  Cobbling together the information from all of the censuses during that time period we know that Thomas Egan was born 29 Jan 1871, probably in Ireland. He came to Canada in 1880.  Maggie Bell Egan was born 18 July 1875 in Ontario.  They had two children:  William L., born 12 April 1898 in Saskatchewan and Mona Bell, born 1902 in Manitoba.

In Gladstone, Then and Now, the local history book published in 2001, there is a short notation concerning Thomas Egan:   "Two of the longest-serving agents were Tom Egan, who worked for the CPR and served in that capacity for around 40 years, and ........" "Tom and his wife, Mona & Bill lived in the old CPR station until it was torn down in 1940."

There is another local history book, THIRD CROSSING: a History of the First Quarter Century of the Town and District of Gladstone in the Province of Manitoba but I didn't find a mention of the Egan family there.

The following notice appeared in the Manitoba Free Press, June 30, 1897...

...which lead me to this article in the Qu'Appelle Progress newspaper on July 1, 1897.  My apologies for the fuzziness of the article.

So, I think we can say that Maggie Bell Blackwell Egan is the woman in the photo.  Who do you think the man is?  Is it Thomas?  Or is it their son, Bill?    Or perhaps Maggie's younger brother, Willie Blackwell?  The man looks quite young to me, but perhaps not as young as William Egan would be in 1911, the date the postcard was mailed.  Any thoughts?