THE PRESS, HAGADONE NEWSPAPER NETWORK, Sunday, May 22, 2005, p. A6 Hello Mr. Canjar! Relative's visit reveals what happened to man in photograph BY RON ROIZEN and JIM SEE Special to The Press It's one of the best known photographs deriving from the Great 1910 Fire (below right). Here are two men with bandaged heads, and hats, standing next to each other -- one with heavily bandaged hands as well. The photo comes from the Barnard-Stockbridge collection at the University of Idaho (8-X545H). It is almost certainly a studio portrait. Carl Ritchie, Forest Service archeologist and Big Blowup historian, says it's the only post-Big Blowup portrait of injured firefighters known to exist. "Their attire," says Ritchie, "is standard dress in early 1910.  Pictures of other crews readying for the fire line show similar dress." "Yet, their clothes might have been donated to these men once they were discharged from the hospital or they were furnished by the studio just for the photo." Both men's names are known, says Ritchie.  "Anton Canjar is on the right and a man named Zeller on the left." Nellie Stockbridge probably took the photo -- T.N. Barnard turned over most of the operation of the studio to her years earlier. Did Stockbridge seek the men out and take this photo as part of her ongoing documentation of Wallace's turbulent history -- now including the Great 1910 Fire? Or did the men come to Stockbridge -- wanting a commemorative photo, perhaps one suitable for use as a postcard, to send to family, and marking their participation in and survival of a momentous and terrifying event? "More likely," suggests Ritchie, "the men got their photos taken as documentation and proof that they were injured in the Big Blowup while in service to the U.S. Forest Service." "This photo" continued Ritchie, "could be used later should evidence for compensation be required....A picture is worth a thousand words." Who were they, these dignified men -- who bore the injuries of trying to fight an overwhelming fire and who, doubtless, were lucky to escape with their lives? Last week, Jim See, president of the Pulaski Project, was enjoying a social hour at a local watering hole when he happened to meet Ivan Canjar, a visitor in town from British Columbia. Canjar, as it happened, had come to Wallace and the Silver Valley to check out the place where his grantfather, Anton Canjar -- the man on the right of the photo -- as a young man had once fought in the Great 1910 Fire. Ivan, a fit looking and friendly man in his mid-fifties, was born in Croatia and spoke with a moderate accent.  He'd lived in Canada, he said, since the 1960s. Ivan brought with him a collection of old letters, stained copper brown where paper clips had once held the pages together. The letters comprised the Forest Service's side of a long exchange in which grandfather Anton had sought compensation for his badly burned hands as well as for time spent in Wallace's Providence Hospital and, thereafter, for time during which he was unable to work.  The correspondence stretched into 1912, when the Forest Service was still assuring Anton that they were seeking appropriate relief for him. Grandson Ivan also had a post-Big Burn picture of grandfather Anton.  It showed a man with badly burned hands, now unbandaged. Who was Anton Canjar?  What happened to him? Ivan knew very little of his grandfather, though what he knew was enough to define the deep structure of a human drama. Anton had arrived in the U.S., at Ellis Island, in 1904 at the age of seventeen.  Somehow, he made his way to Montana and Idaho -- doubtless, Ivan said, following the lead and advice of other Croatians who had also come to the Inland Northwest. He fought in the Big Blowup. (Carl Ritchie informs that Canjar faced the fire at the head of Boulder Creek, south of Mullan, in James Danielson’s crew.  "Danielson and his crew took refuge on a large talus slope," Ritchie added, "but the fire intensity was so great that every man on the crew had their hands, face and head burned by the searing heat.  One crew member panicked and died in an attempt to flee.") Anton Canjar survived but with badly burned hands. In due course, Anton traveled back to Croatia, where he met and married Ivan's grandmother.  A son, Ivan's father, issued from the union. Then Anton headed back to America, promising to bring his wife and child over when he had settled. Letters arrived for a time, but then they stopped coming. Anton disappeared in a distant and vast continent. "I think he ended up in Tacoma," says Ivan, "but no one in the family really knows." Ivan's grandmother, Anton's wife, never remarried. She never spoke ill of Anton, Ivan said. "She was too dignified to do that," he added, with a smile. --Ron Roizen and Jim See are members of the Pulaski Project, which group has partnered with the U.S. Forest Service to save the mine and trail where Big Ed Pulaski's heroic rescue of his crew was carried out in August, 1910.