At 219 Victoria Street, the Fuoco Block was not always the Fuoco Block. When originally built in 1914 it was known as the
SUSSEX CHAMBERS, due in part to the lettering at the cornice and, we suppose, in part to the fact that
Sussex Chambers was an original tenant.
Be that as it may, one of the second floor offices in the Fuoco Block was occupied by a photographer, an Englishman named John Scales, from its construction in 1914 until 1953, when he retired to Salmon Arm, passing away just two years later.
John Scales, Photographer
(1875 - 1955)
John Scales operated a commercial photography business at 219 Victoria Street for over forty years. He was born in Sidcup, England, a small town south-east of London, where he trained as a photographer. Scales immigrated to Canada in 1899 and homesteaded in Lacombe, Alberta, but he soon gave up farming for photography. His wife Ethel immigrated in 1910 and after moving to Kamloops in 1911 they opened a photographic studio. The Inland Sentinel proclaimed it a "model of convenience and good taste." The studio operated on the second floor of this building from 1911 to 1953 providing the citizens of Kamloops with portraits, graduation pictures, and documentary photographs.
Scales was best known for his images of May Day celebrations and parades. The Scales Studio motto read "If you have beauty we can take it, if you have none, we can make it." John Scales closed his business in 1953 and moved to Salmon Arm where, after a too short retirement, he passed away in 1955. He is buried in the Mount Ida Cemetery and his gravestone bears the biblical verse "Until the day break, and the shadows flee away."
From the Plaque on the Fuoco Block