A Veteran's Day Trip

In honor of Veteran's Day here in the U.S., I thought I would pull a picture out of my great grandfather's World War I photo album of pictures he took on his deployment to France and beyond. Above is one that doesn't feature him because I assume he is taking the picture and so one I haven't researched before. I popped it into Google Image Search which told me that it is of Place de la Comedie in Bordeaux, France. I hopped online to see if I could to a tour of the modern place and could at least situate myself somewhere nearby, I think.

I'm not certain that this is the same place. The tallest building with the mansard style roof on the center left of the above photo certainly looks like the same building in the top photo but really none of the others so. It may be time has just changed appearances or I'm in the wrong location altogether. So I started focusing on the fountain which isn't to be seen in the newer lower photo.

I retrained Google's A.I. to just the fountain and cropped out the soldiers. It assured me that it was a fountain called Fontaine de Tourny and used to be installed near the Place de la Comedie. They were originally made for the World's Fair in Paris back in 1855 where the Mayor of Bordeaux came across them. He loved them so much he obtained two of them after the fair and had them installed in Bordeaux. There they remained until 1960 when they were dismantled to make room for an underground parking garage. 

One of those two fountains ended up at a French antique dealer where it was spotted by a Quebec City, Canadian business man who fell in love with it. He had it restored in Paris and shipped to Quebec City in time for their 400th anniversary. As an aside, unbeknownst to me, Quebec and Bordeaux are considered sister cities.

There it sits today near the Parliament building. I was able to take this journey thanks to my great grandfather Victor below who was probably one of the few who was able to take a camera along with him to France, use it to take photos and those photos have been preserved throughout all the years since. Because of all those things, I am able to salute the Veterans today by writing this post.