They are snapshots of everyday life: a man tending to coffee pots in a diner, sheep grazing outside a house, laundry hanging between two homes as a couple of kids smile at the camera, a girl running through dirty snowbanks.

But there are mysteries behind these ordinary scenes from the last century in Halifax.

Who are the people in the photos? Where, exactly, were the photos taken? And when?

"If people weren't good about labelling them on the back what it was or even dates, they're total mysteries," says Susan McClure, the municipal archivist hoping to answer those questions.

A man tends to the coffee pots in a diner. (Halifax Municipal Archives, Halifax Works Department photograph, 102-39-1-1401.10)

Staff at the archives are appealing to residents to help identify the people, locations and scenes in dozens of photos dating back to the early 1900s.

The photos have been posted on a website that allows members of the public to add comments. People can also email archives@halifax.ca.

"It really helps to be able to put things out there because lots of people have many more memories that we can access to try and identify these places."

McClure said staff use clues in the photos to help narrow down the time frame.

"Quite often that's based on what people are wearing or what kind of vehicles are on the streets, or we've got, you know, the three sisters smokestacks [in Dartmouth, N.S.] — we know the different years when we went from having one smokestack to two to three and so those kind of things can help us identify the date of the photograph."

A woman looks out an upper-storey window in this undated image. (Halifax Municipal Archives, Halifax Works Department photograph, 102-39-1-1401.1)

Although most of the photos are likely within the Halifax Regional Municipality, the odd one may be from further afield.

The municipality has roughly 500,000 photographs in its archives, with about 20 per cent of them digitized so far.

McClure said the photos are used by researchers, authors, kids doing school projects, academics, and sometimes people just looking for a special gift.

As photos are identified, more will be added to the website.

MORE TOP STORIES