Scott Radley: Mom and dad. Before they were mom and dad.

The emptying of mom and dad's condo so the new owners can move in was nearly done when the dusty old suitcase from the storage locker was cracked open. Inside were a dozen or so manila envelopes stuffed with old papers and letters and other documents.

And photos.

There was dad as a toddler sitting with his sister, another straining to peer above the crowd as a boy at a Montreal Gazette newspaper carriers' dinner, and one sitting with friends on the front porch. Best of all, a five-year-old version of him just looking straight at the camera with an innocent grin almost certainly just a moment before getting himself into some kind of trouble.

As the contents of the next folder were poured out, there was mom as a three-year-old playing at the cottage, another a few years later as she was preparing to climb onto an inflatable swan floatie in the lake, posing for a Christmas photo as a new teenager and looking all put together with her parents at what might've been her Grade 8 graduation.

My gosh, they were just kids. The wrinkles that life would beautifully etch onto their faces through the next 80-plus years until their passings within the past couple years were far away. They were younger here than my own children are in many of the photos on the walls of our house.

As each black-and-white - pictures I'd never seen before - was slid to the side to make room for the next, an oddly profound thought took shape.

At the moment the shutter clicked to capture each of these shots, these two people had no idea what their lives would become. Who they'd marry. Where they'd live. What they'd do. Who they'd meet along the way. They had no clue they'd become a nurse and a lawyer. That they'd spend their retirement travelling the world doing volunteer work. How long they'd live. That they'd be happy.

Life was a giant blank canvas laid out in front of them and they were just beginning to learn how to paint.

More striking? At this moment, these two baby-faced youngsters had no idea there would someday be someone - two someones - who would call them mom and dad. And four people who would eventually call them grandma and grandpa.

This was Back To The Future" in real life. A step into their childhood before their story was really told.

Of course, some might suggest this could simply be thinking too deeply about something that really isn't all that surprising. After all, unless you're a student of subjective idealism - the idea that everything merely exists in your mind - you understand the world was here before you arrived. You realize that just like you, your parents had a childhood. You get it.

Besides, it's not like childhood photos of people we got to know as adults are a new thing. We've seen photos of Queen Elizabeth as an infant and a young Wayne Gretzky and a youthful Elvis Presley. They didn't know what their lives were going to look like when those pictures were taken either.

But it's different when it's closer to home. We've only ever known these people in one role. Mom. Dad. Older. Mature. Not like this.

Why hadn't I see these images before? Don't know. Unlike today, they didn't plop a selfie on social media every 12 minutes. Their default position wasn't to put the spotlight on themselves. My guess is these photos were placed in this suitcase years ago and then forgotten.

It happens. Maybe a lot. A few folks who've been told about this find have explained how they, too, have stumbled on a cache of photos that have transported them to a past that made them look at their late parents with fresh eyes.

But this may not last much longer.

With cameras now in every phone and a phone in every pocket, we're probably going to have endless video of every step in the lives of tomorrow's moms and dads. This might already be the case with today's parents. Finding it will be as simple as going online and looking up their Facebook or Instagram pages.

But for those of us of a certain vintage whose parents predated that technology - yet came along late enough for cameras to be common enough to record bits of their early lives - the stories of our folks are more a patchwork than a documentary.

One that hadn't been written when the flashbulb popped for these pictures. But one for which we knew the ending by the time we saw them.

Scott Radley is a Hamilton-based columnist at The Spectator. Reach him via email: sradley@thespec.com