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Off the Beaten Path with Chris & Connie/BIGDoer.com Hundreds and hundreds of articles! Over one point three million words! Over 25k photos! Tens of thousands of hours invested! Tens of thousands of visitors per month! On the menu every day: Abandoned Places Hiking Adventures Vintage Machinery Historic Sites Then &...
It’s been a custom for years to offer a gift to anyone who is the owner of a subject that appears on this website. We’re a poor broke society, so it’s a small token, but we hope it shows how much we appreciated the opportunity. We have a blast photographing...
Presenting: Rosies and The Griffon Spitfire. Here’s a bunch of folks, friends, family and associates, getting together for a charity photoshoot (and admittedly a good time) with a sleek World War Two fighter as a backdrop. The girls are stepping into the past and playing the part of a storied...
The Beer Parlour Project, by Chris Doering, Johanna (Connie) Biggart + Rob and Margarit Pohl. We’re channeling an unbridled passion to document old-time, small town hotels and hotel taverns. It won’t just be photos of these historic structures and we’ll be connecting with patrons too. The buildings, the people, the...
This yearly event is heaven for silver ball aficionados and it’s been happening since 2016. Twenty twenty-two marks our second visit to the Edmonton Pinball & Arcade Expo and as a good time, all the boxes are checked. It’s pinball overload and we’ve not only here to document the goings-on...
West Canadian Collieries #1 came from the Canadian Locomotive Company of Kingston Ontario and has called the Crowsnest Pass home for over a century. The locomotive worked for a couple of coal mining firms locally, WCC being the last, before being put on display. It looks a tad forgotten, hidden...
The building we’re documenting today is well over a hundred years old, and early on, but very briefly, functioned as the Ogden Hotel. They offered lodging and the Beer Parlour, thanks to its strategic location and circumstance, did well. More on this on a moment. During World War One the...
by Chris Doering · Published April 8, 2025 · Last modified April 9, 2025
It’s 5 o’clock somewhere, except for here at the Trails End Hotel. The taps are dry and the band ain’t playing tonight. Flashback to June 2024 and we’re in Southern Saskatchewan for the Beer Parlour Project
, celebrating small town watering holes and stopping houses. The buildings, the people, the stories,...
On the west arm of Kootenay Lake (British Columbia) and close to Nelson, there’s remains of an ancient tugboat. This craft, the wood-hulled SS Hosmer, was launched well over a century ago and for decades employed by the Canadian Pacific Railway. It hauled barges for that firm, loaded with rail...
Welcome to Family Groceteria, Centre Street north in Calgary, a traditional Mom ‘m’ Pop corner store from the post World War Two boom period. These businesses were once common to many older neighbourhoods, but most have gone the way of the dinosaur. They’ve been replaced by corporate gas station/convenience store...
This railway themed Then and Now takes us to the East Kootenay region of British Columbia. A gorgeous place! Team BIGDoer was sent an old photo showing a train along the Canadian Pacific’s Kootenay Central lines in the 1970s and given permission to use it in a comparison. Woohoo, and...
Straight and Narrow: a way of living that is honest and morally proper (Merriam-Webster Dictionary). Morally proper…like being nice and all? Really? They’re not looking at us when they say that. These signs are not actually real and were put up for a bit of fun here in Mendham Saskatchewan....
For today’s subject we touch on a little known, but fascinating chapter in Alberta’s history. We’re speaking of a person, one Anastasia Holoboff (or Holuboff, sometimes Holobova, less common Golubova) or as most knew her, Anastasia Lords. She was the one time spiritual leader of an Alberta based Doukhobor group...
The Wi-Fi password is “Mother” and and the contact email is “askfornorman at thebaitsmotel.ca”. We made up the first one, but the second is 100% true and is on their webpage. We love old-school motor courts and the Baits Motel in Spences Bridge British Columbia is a beauty. There’s the...
Nier Alberta was not a town as such, but a railway siding. Perhaps they had a post office, but it was not really by definition a community with houses and businesses. Located a bit north of Calgary, it had one modest claim to fame, nothing big or in a world...
In this then and now comparison we’re hanging around an alley in Calgary’s downtown west end. Admittedly it’s a strange beginning but we’re in search of a location seen in some old photos shared with us by a friend. There’s sure been a lot of change in the fifty some...
Stampede Speedway Calgary operated in the 1980s and in the blink of an eye was gone. A 3/8 of a mile dirt oval, it was located well away from any neighbourhoods at the time and while that’s still the case, the city is rapidly approaching. The people behind it picked...
The berms seen in these photos are some of the last remnants of the former Grand Trunk Pacific Railway line into downtown Calgary. Built in the early 1910s, the track came from Northern Alberta (near Edmonton), entered the city in the east, before bending northwards and paralleling the Bow River....
Today we’re looking at a structure built as a wind-powered grist mill, but never used in that capacity or even completed. It’s unique in form, with an almost European flavour and last functioned as a blacksmith shop on the farm. Come join us as we explore it and the the...
There’s not much left of this tumbled down old cabin in the woods. The location is the Crownest Pass of Alberta and it’s not too far from the British Columbia border. Found along an old pack trail, the structure is seemingly connected to a small coal mine on the same...
Calgary has an extensive pathway system and this urban trek makes use of the section running alongside the Elbow River. The adventure begins at the Glenmore Dam, winds its way north and heads into the community of Mission on the edge of downtown. The river is always in view or...
Presenting two photos captured some sixty sixty years apart and from the same location in Calgary. Each shows a passing Calgary Transit vehicle, and while the modes of transport seen in the comparison have changed, there’s an otherwise timeless quality to the scene. The location is the community of Ogden,...
The location is far eastern Alberta and in the little community of Sibbald. There off Highway #9. A faded sign taped to the door declares: “Warning, nude entertainers appearing within premises. Some patrons may find this offensive. No minors. Picture ID only. $10.00 cover charge. Sibbald Bar & Hotel.” Did...
The images used in this comparison were captured less than two decades apart and in all frankness, they don’t show much change. Except that the railway is history. The location is Empress Alberta and we’re right on the 4th Meridian at the Alberta-Saskatchewan border. There’s the old railway line that...
St Peter and Paul Church is found along a dusty Alberta backroad and in a spot well off the beaten track. It’s in a picture-perfect setting and the idyllic scene presented here is straight out of a painting. There’s delicate, wispy white clouds and powder blue skies, fields of golden...
Small towns on the Canadian prairies, like Torrington Alberta and many others we’ve visited, are no strangers to adversity. Something big happened, starting in the 1990s, that changed them all forever. It’d did happen all at once, but in the span of a few short years, the landscape changed. Things...
This icy cold day we visited Fish Creek Park in Calgary for a little hike. Keeping chill thanks to mother nature! We’ve come prepared, but still, it’s no picnic…wait it was a picnic. These low temps meant we had the place pretty much to ourselves and while usually busy, it’s...
Flashback to 2014 and we’re exploring out near Moose Jaw Saskatchewan. Ahead and to the left…a childhood memory…a Bonanza Steakhouse? Steakhouse? That’s a stretch. It’s been at least twenty years since we’ve seen one and we thought them extinct in Canada. Remember: you’d pair a shoe-leather slice of Chuck and...
What’s this? The ghost sign of an old Radio Shack store? Really? That firm closed down in Canada decades ago and any memories have long been relegated to the deep, dark recesses of the mind. Such connections to the past are usually hidden away in the subconscious and remain dormant...
Join us as we explore abandoned areas of Riverview Hospital (formerly Essondale Hospital), in Coquitlam, British Columbia. It’s a former mental health and addiction facility dating back well over a hundred years. The site has a somewhat unsettling feel about it and the buildings are frequently featured in horror films...
Kenopsia: "the eerie atmosphere of a place that's usually bustling with people but now vacant or abandoned."
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Sarah Ito:
Ogden Hotel Calgary 100+ Years Apart
Byron Robb:
The Tug SS Hosmer (1909)
Byron Robb:
Along the Kootenay Central w’ Greg McDonnell
Jack Rutherford:
Anastasia Lords of Anastasia Village
Johanna (Connie) Biggart:
Nier Alberta’s Psychedelic Grain Elevator
Byron Robb:
A Downtown West End Alley (Calgary)
Helen Besterling:
Stampede Speedway Calgary (1982-1987)
Anonymous:
The Grist Mill / Blacksmith Shop (2015)
Byron Robb:
Ogden Road Calgary 1950 & 2016
Anonymous:
Sibbald Gentleman’s Club (Closed)
Rob Pohl & Arturo Pianzola:
Riverview Hospital Coquitlam BC
Johanna (Connie) Biggart:
Empress Alberta at the 4th Meridian
Johanna (Connie) Biggart:
St Peter and Paul Church 1918
Tim Swaren:
The Last Grain Elevator in Torrington
Anonymous:
Radio Shack Westbrook Mall (Calgary)
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