Alberta museum turns to social media to identify '70s mystery man

He could be a '70s movie star, a counterculture icon, a member of a long-forgotten psychedelic rock band or just a particularly groovy-looking guy from High River, Alta.

Nobody really knows, but the town's Museum of the Highwood wants to solve the mystery and identify the manin the old black and white photo.

The museum recently started posting photos from its archives to its Facebook page hoping to identify a few facesof High River locals of years gone by. This mystery man is its most popular post yet.

"We decided it would be fun to publishphotos every day from our archives,"said Irene Kerr, director of the Museum of theHighwood.

"Anotherreason is that a lot of our photos are in our database but they don't have information like who the people are, so we thought what would be kind of fun is thatpeople would see an oldphoto and would recognize the person in it and be able to identify them," said Kerr.

The photo was part of a box of local photos dropped off at the museum back in 2008.

The Museum's Facebook followersare on the case with the photo garnering thousands of views and plenty of suggestions and shares,but still no positive ID. Some think they may have dated him andothers are checking school yearbooks, trying work out who the man is.

Carr says some of the photos are just plain fun to look at, like the mystery hipsterwith his square glasses, ornate kaftan-styleshirt,beads, sideburns and carefullycoiffedhair.

"We know the local photographer who took it but we're not sure of the year.I'm guessing it could be late '60s or early '70s," said Kerr.

The museum has thousands of negatives and prints from local photographers who snapped images of many locals over the last century,but not all of them have names attached.

"I like the style of the photo, he has a great style, the haircut, the glasses, he really encapsulates the time period," said Olivia Cotton Cornwall, who works at the museum and discovered the photo.

"People are loving it. They really like photos from the '60s and '70s. You have an older generation using Facebook now," said Cotton Cornwall.

The Facebook project was supposed to be a two-month pilot. Given the popularity they've decided to keep posting.

If you think you know the mystery man you can contact the Museum of the Highwood at 403 652-7156 or check the museum's Facebook page.

• MORE ALBERTA NEWS |How Calgary's 'revolutionary' first librarian shaped the city
• MORE ALBERTA NEWS |Alberta's low electricity costs to shoot up in April