John Leslie Charles

Born at Weybridge, Surrey, England on 15 December 1892, son of Robert W. Charles and Alice Priscilla Poulton, he attended the Edward the Sixth Royal Grammar School and emigrated to Canada in 1910.

A large part of this survey was carried out during the winter of 1927 by Charles on foot and dog sled with two men from the Cree (Nēhilaw) community at Split Lake.

He was twice mentioned in dispatches and was presented with the Distinguished Service Order by King George V. During the Second World War, he recruited the 20th Field Company of the Royal Canadian Engineers at Winnipeg and commanded that unit on the Pacific Coast.

After the war he helped the US Army locate a military rail line between the railways in British Columbia and US Forces in the Alaska Territory.

His body of photographic work documents daily life and railroading from the early 1900s in northern Canada to the remote Brazilian Amazon rainforest in the 1970s.