Why in the world did they do that? It’s great the old building was given a new lease on life, but wasn’t consideration given to saving the sign? An iconic part of Edmonton’s Jasper Avenue since forever it’s now partially obscured by new construction. That new addition…well…the aesthetics are not everyone’s cup of tea, but we can accept it. But for the sign…they’re going to burn in hell! Love or hate what they’ve done, the old Lodge Hotel seen in this post plays a big part in another fun and interesting T&N.
Even after all these years the building retains its character and that’s in spite of the best efforts of those behind its redevelopment. Is it us or are the two architectural styles at odds? It feel wrong for some reason, and that’s keeping an open mind. Was heavy drinking involved? Contempt for the Lodge? Won’t anyone think of the children? We need answers! Oops, forgot to turn off soapbox mode.
Our old photo comes courtesy of the Gerry Squier collection at the Motor Bus Society and for this, we’re in their debt. Gerry, who’s gone now, shot bus photos all over North America for decades and the group has allowed us to use any for then and now fodder. We’ve posted one already (scroll down for link) and have more planed, so stay tuned. We see many fishbowls in your future.
Edmonton Transit: Lodge Hotel. Along Jasper Avenue with Chris Doering and Connie Biggart (BIGDoer/Synd)
A new Hall of Fame inductee: we say thanks and we tip our hat to ”Jean Masters” for sponsoring this post! Do the same…
Then: We’re at the east end of downtown Edmonton, the old part of town, and looking west. It’s not said when the old photo was captured, but a little detective work would put it at about mid-1970s or just beyond. Explanation in 3…2…1…
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The three prominent buildings in back (former AGT Tower, the tallest, former McCauley Plaza its shorter twin, plus MacDonald Estates Apartments in front) we’re all standing by 1973. Any identifiable cars all seem to fit the era, so nothing out of place there. Wagons with fake wood panelling were all the rage back then, but tacky ruled that decade. The car displays a yellow license plate, incidentally, which first came into use in 1975. We’re narrowing things down.
The American Motors logo displayed on the billboard, back left, and advertising a car dealership is of the era. AMC…remember them? Oh yeah, Gremlins were a thing of beauty! A check of old phone books (our go-to resource lately) shows the “instant cash” place in business before 1978. We’re closing in.
There’s a theatre seen, back left (the Dreamland), that we know was torn down by 1979, but that’s a moot point as we also know this bus was retired a year or two prior. Adding it all together has us pretty confident we’re dating the photo reasonably well.
Wait a second…nine bucks per week for a room? The Lodge was a high-class joint!
Random interesting stuff to follow. The distinctive roof of the historic Hotel MacDonald can be seen poking out (both photos) on the left and it’s one of the classier digs in town. You know what what means? We’ll never be a guest. In behind the Dreamland, a neon marquee of an old café is seen. We picture one of those Hollywood style diners with a grizzled old cook sweating away in a wife-beater, hunched over the grill and swatting flies between puffs on his cigar.
The partially obscured sign for the Alberta Hotel shows just above the bus. A new building occupies the site today but they saved the front wall to use as a façade along with that conical roof feature (blocked by new construction from our position). When the old photo was captured, the once upscale Alberta was a dive, but that became the fate of many old inner-city hotels of the era. The Lodge, incidentally, at the time was more a rooming house than a hotel and had functioned as such for decades.
The bus dates from 1948 but probably worn out and that close to retirement when Gerry captured it. Most trolleybuses in the ETS fleet in the 1970s were from that era and working on borrowed time. A fleet of replacements would come along in the early 1980s to seal their fate, but these old timers soldiered on to the bitter end.
Edmonton shut down the overhead in 2009, leaving only Vancouver in Canada with a trolleybus network.
Number 182 came from Canadian Car and Foundry of Thunder Bay Ontario and built to US “Brill” designs. Edmonton owned around a hundred of these buses and they proved to be long lasting. Not everyone appreciated the ugly maze of wires overhead, but they were efficient (if used on trunk routes), durable and generally simpler than their fossil-fueled counterparts. Many major Canadian centres operated trolleybuses during the 1940s-1970s period, with a few cities hanging on longer (like Edmonton).
The trolley is along the #5 route which after passing will head to the exhibition grounds in the city’s northeast quadrant. This route still exists today and follows many of the same streets as its predecessor. In hindsight, we should have waited for a modern #5 to pass.
Now:All those new buildings, cold, soulless edifices of concrete, steel and glass demonstrate how downtown Edmonton has grown. The gentrification monster has found the Lodge Hotel, but this at least assured vestiges of the old building would remain. Otherwise, who’s to say what would have happened and we heard it may have been threatened for a time.
The structure dates back to 1911 and of Edwardian style popular during that era. It was originally called the Pendennis Hotel and will again carry that name (minus the hotel part) and offer mixed-use space. In the artist rendering on the developer’s website a new (smaller) sign shows on the east facing wall where the Lodge Hotel one is located. This suggests it will be painted over, and could explain why they didn’t pay it much mind. It’s going bye bye anyway…I guess…so who cares? Anyone able to confirm this? The new sign will honour an older one once located in the same spot that advertised the Pendennis Hotel.
It’s not clear when the Lodge Hotel closed but the 1990s is suggested. For a time it sat empty and about twenty years ago received a Municipal Historic Resource designation. Then nothing happened for a long, long time.
The 1912 Brown Block next door looks the same from photo to photo. Everything photographic? Everything? It’s a nice looking structure and reflects an optimistic time in the city’s history, with the future all bright and shiny.
The old Gibson Block behind our shooting position has nice restored signage on the west wall. This and all the other old buildings mentioned in this post were to be detailed subjects for our camera but construction kind of killed that. Too much was blocked from view and so we’ll return another time.
That nondescript block on the right is little changed and appeared empty on our visit.
The Lodge/Pendennis is in the oldest section of downtown Edmonton and by the 1960s this neighbourhood was really showing its age. It got real sketchy for a time, but being reborn present day and so the circle is complete. Jasper Avenue has always been a major east-west thoroughfare bisecting Edmonton’s core.
The bus captured by us is #4496, one of the more common transit models out there (a Flyer D40LF, made in Winnipeg Manitoba) with many on the ETS roster. This ones dates back to 2005 and seen along the #2 route that travels between West Edmonton Mall in the west and Commonwealth Stadium in the east.
There’s an app for that! You can track the locations of ETS buses in real time and we checked to see if #4496 was running at the time of posting, and there it is! It’s on the Mill Woods to downtown run as we type this.
This Then & Now turned out pretty well, although a environment with tall buildings is not an easy one to shoot in this style. Broad and distant scenes are easy, but ones close in and with lots of straight architectural lines make it challenging to match things up. Errors in alignment get magnified several fold as you get closer to a subject, so usually we shy away from deep-urban subjects.
We have to guess the focal length used in the original photo and while it can be roughly determined using field of view, it’s still often a roll of the dice. To cover our bases, we’ll shoot at several lengths and in most cases one will match up well. It comes to this: for every good Then & Now there’s countless rejects that in-camera looked to line up, but on closer examination too far off to use.
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Date of Adventure: May, 2021. Location: Edmonton, AB. Article references and thanks: Motor Bus Society, City of Edmonton, PendennisBuilding.com, Canadian Public Transit Discussion Board Wiki, TrolleyBuses.net and AGT for all those old phone books.
Those Eagles were interesting vehicles and I understand quite capable. There was one at last year’s Beater Challenge! I don’t know about them covering the sign – seems to suggests an indifference. It appears they might be painting over it anyway, so I guess it doesn’t matter. An artist rendering shows a different, smaller sign here, reminiscent of one that appeared on this wall when the hotel was quite new.
(A long read) After twelve years it's time to put a face to the name and come clean on something. That's rarely-seen Chris in the photo, one half of Team BIGDoer, my best friend for almost thirty years and orchestrator of everything you see here. For his entire adult life, he's battled a deep depression.
Mostly it's manageable, but there are extended bouts where it's crippling and his life comes to a grinding halt. Sometimes there are days or weeks where he's lost. Sleep does not come easy at this time and further aggravates the issue. As he ages, it's worsening and seems intent on destroying him from the inside.
If you see a lack of posts here, or ones poorly worded, confusing or simply off, it's from one of these periods.
Through all this, he remains as kind, thoughtful and loving as ever, but is somewhere else. To the family, it's just Chris and accepted as it should be. The kids and grandkids adore him no less. Until today, however, this has been hidden from the outside world, although closer friends and some readers were probably already suspect of his condition. I hope admitting this does not break the site.
He finds clarity when we're out and doing things, hiking or documenting something historic and it's only THE reason this page and our website exists. It's therapy. Then he's a new and passionate person, but the monster as he calls it always returns. The Beer Parlour Project has brought out a side I've never seen and when out in the field he's never been so on point and confident.
This post is not for sympathy but to inform. Just so you know where he is and here's what you can do to help (a last ditch request)...
If you see a missed comma or oddly worded sentence in a post, please be kind. You'll probably see his uncertainty when he's off and be nice there too. But if you like what you see, even if the write up could be presented better, post your encouragement. Say something and say it loud...it's important and will keep him sharing. Help Chris get better by cheering him on.
Other than some photos that are mine, everything else comes from him. All the tiring research and the writing (he admits he's NOT a writer), are his.
Chris puts every dollar he makes into this "project of a lifetime", and it's supplemented by donations from readers who enjoy the content. If you want to help...
Admittedly he was not thrilled with the idea of posting this but agrees it probably should be said, even if it makes him uneasy. He doesn't like appearing in photos either. He's so shy, thinks he looks goofy and hates his husky eyes. I love them and they're windows into a wonderful, complex and quiet, but tortured soul. It breaks my heart when he's in a bad space.
This image comes thanks to photographer Arturo Pianzola and was captured while exploring the historic Riverview Mental Hospital in Coquitlam BC. Chris thought since he was in the area last year, he'd stop by to visit with a grandfather he never really knew, who spent his last years at the facility and is buried on the grounds.
Thanks for listening and your understanding. Hopefully we'll see you next week. Johanna (Connie).
Journey of Natty Gann (Disney 1985) and the same location in the Crowsnest Pass 2014. We're visiting the Pass over the new year, as we often do, and this time we'll be staying at a house that appears (briefly) in the film. How cool, eh? Chris has decided it's time on this visit to reshoot this and other Natty Gann comparison shots we did from ten years ago. Stay tuned!
This scene was shot in historic downtown Coleman and shows the former Holyk's Grocery. It was built in the early 1900s and the store closed in the '60s. _______
Exploring history with Chris & Connie from Off the Beaten Path. Thanks, Johanna (Connie).
From 2015. Rob Pohl and his strange old-style view camera joined us in documenting the Laing House (with permission). Head down to the comments to see an amazing coincidence with something I found inside.
From the Crossley slides, it's an undated view of Towers School, out near Cluny Alberta. It was originally called Swastika School but that's before the word and symbol were ruined by negative connotations. Built 1922. Gone? _______
Exploring history with Chris & Connie from Off the Beaten Path. Thanks, Chris.
The same alley in downtown Calgary's west end, in the 1970s & today. You have to look hard to see the connection! The area was quite run down back then and is in stark contrast to all the shiny condo towers seen present day. Calgary Place West, an apartment block, appears in both images although it's barely a sliver in ours. Check the comments for more info.
Photo credit: James Tworow collection. _______
Exploring history with Chris & Connie from Off the Beaten Path. Thanks, Chris.
Lost highways (2022): a section of old #93 in Southeastern BC. That BIGDoer-mobile is gone now but quite famous and had a following of its own. Old mine roads, cow paths, 4x4ing across fields - no problem and people would recognize us out in remote areas just by this car. _______
Exploring history with Chris & Connie from Off the Beaten Path. Thanks, Chris.
My first car was a 1986 AMC Eagle wagon, it was a nice car, though my inexperience driving wrecked it in the end.
Additionally, that is nice how that new building extended itself past the old ghost sign on the old hotel so it wouldn’t be hidden/lost. A nice touch
Those Eagles were interesting vehicles and I understand quite capable. There was one at last year’s Beater Challenge! I don’t know about them covering the sign – seems to suggests an indifference. It appears they might be painting over it anyway, so I guess it doesn’t matter. An artist rendering shows a different, smaller sign here, reminiscent of one that appeared on this wall when the hotel was quite new.