Medicine Hat Then & Now – Parkland Apts

While randomly browsing a favourite website something catches our eye, a photo showing a group of apartment blocks in Medicine Hat Alberta about sixty years ago. It’s an otherwise unremarkable image of rather utilitarian buildings that strikes us as curious and asking: “I wonder what they look like today?” We’re at Parkland Apts and shooting a BIGDoer Then & Now!

Here it’s a little slice of time and we want to go back and stand where the original photographer did about 1961. Then everything seen was fresh, new and the area devoid of trees. Most of the buildings sit atop an escarpment and overlook the South Flats area of town. Medicine Hat is a mix of flat prairie cut by deep valleys (one home to the South Saskatchewan River) and here they were on the edge.

There’s just over a dozen apartment blocks here, known present day as Parkland Townhomes. All are very similar in size and appearance. There’s a good deal of green space with many trees on the property having grown in since the early days. These had yet to be planted or perhaps little seedlings back when the original was captured.

Cars seen on the old photo include some 1940s and 1950s era Fords and Dodges, along with with a couple Plymouths. The newest appears to be about a 1959 model (can you say tailfins!) and the oldest from about ten years earlier. Plymouths, incidentally, were once super common out the prairies back then and were an everyday man’s car. Think no nonsense and budget oriented. The marque in the early 2000s was relegated to history but in the 1950s-1960s seemed to be everywhere.

Then as now the world’s a car-centrist place and in a sense the scene not all that different despite the span of time. The vehicles in shape and style have changed but not their importance in most people’s lives.

Notice the lady walking away in the old photo and on closer examination she appears to be pushing a baby carriage. We wonder where the kid is now! Coincidentally, we captured a random person a little closer in but otherwise on about the same plane as she. Look for them beside the mini-van on the right.

While many of the buildings are obscured by trees, you can see they’re little changed. A couple of the power poles look no different despite the time that’s passed. In this section of the Parkland Apt complex the blocks are diagonal relative to the road and laid out in an orderly fashion. Elsewhere, their placement is more widely spaced and at square angles to each other.

The then photo comes from our friends at Prairie-Towns.com (we visit often), a repository of old postcards and the like. While we searched around for an original publisher, we came up empty. By the numbers it’s likely in the public domain.

This Then & Now was presented in a side-by-side fashion. When shown this way or even overlaid, the two images match almost perfectly, but one over the other, the effect is not as convincing. They’re no less lined up, but oddly don’t look it, a weird illusion we’ve struggled with since we started these posts. We call it fall-away and it’s related to the focal length used in the original (which at best can only guessed at) verses the one used by us. This style of view is much smaller, but gave the most pleasing result in this case.

The building in the link to follow, itself fodder for a T&N (but shot from across the valley), can be seen from Parkland Apts: Medicine Hat Then & Now – Ogilvie’s.

This was silly little post, for fun and nothing more. Be happy knowing we do have more of these in the works, maybe 15-20 already shot, but waiting due to other obligations. Once we find an opening, we’ll post them, as they’re both a favourite with us (for the sheer fun of it) and our website visitors. Truth is, they take a disproportionate amount of time to compile and so they’re the first to be bumped.

Enjoy!

A comprehensive resource such as BIGDoer.com could not exist without help and support of our readers. Do your part and comment on your favourite articles (maybe this one) or share this post on social media. Or with your friends! It only takes a couple seconds and helps us know you’re out there and appreciating what we do. And this keeps new content coming.

They’re saying…

”The subject matter is very interesting as it has provided me with ideas for places to film for my travel channel. Thanks for sharing these historic and abandoned places!” Alex Hunter.

More T&Ns…
Medicine Hat Then & Now – Ogilvie’s – Within sight of Parkland Apts.
Superman 3 Then & Now – Lana Lang’s – The Man of Steel is on the scene.
Calgary then and now – Civil Defence – Duck and Cover!

Something to say and no one to say it to? Go here: contact us!

Date of Adventure: March, 2020.
Location: Medicine Hat, AB.
Article references and thanks: City of Medicine Hat and the Medicine Hat and District Genealogical Society.

Parkland Apts Medicine Hat sixty years apart.

They’re present day known as Parkland Townhomes.