Author: Chris Doering

Lakview Calgary Husky

Retro Service Stations: Lakeview Husky

It just might hold title as Calgary’s oldest gas/service station still in operation and original in form. Here, tucked away in a corner of Calgary’s Lakeview Community, set back from all the hustle and bustle of the big city and perhaps a bit lost in time, is Lakeview Husky. It’s...

Old Gas Station Monarch Alberta

Highway Gas

We’re in Monarch Alberta standing alongside what was once a busy highway made quiet on being rerouted many years ago. And we’re studying the remains of a small gas station that once served the needs of passing motorists that today stands silent and forgotten. It’s been a while since anyone...

Spain Iron Cross

España Day 4: Scruffy Peregrino

Having just started the El Camino de Santiago Trail your author’s already looking the part of the Scruffy Perigino. These strange growths on this ugly mug, wire like bristles stiff as though a BBQ brush, that some months can come in fast and thick – as it did during this...

Boler Trailer Calgary

Bolers, After Dark

We’ve always hope that one day we’d be able to shoot Boler out there in the wild under the stars. Picture it, the trailer’s softly lit up inside, a roaring fire out front, people gathered round chatting and socializing and overhead, the big dipper, maybe auroras and other celestial wonders....

Azure Alberta Grain Elevator

Azure & Bronze

Cruising along the Number Two south of High River Alberta you can see it over there in the west. Silhouetted by the Porcupine Hills, it’s a towering grain elevator found at a place called Azure, never really a town, more a siding along a (now gone) rail line. Dating from...

1935-1936 Ford Farm Truck

Forgotten Farm Truck

To work no more, so many miles travelled, now there’s time for rest. Here’s an ancient farm truck found out on the Alberta Prairie, stripped down, forgotten and abandoned, that once was a farmer’s pride and joy. Toiling away in obscurity taking grain from field to granary or to market...

Vulcan AB Star Trek

Vulcan Alberta “Trek”

The hikes & summits category has been awfully quiet lately. Our apologies. If you’ve been following what’s happening here, Connie’s health issues for those not in the know, you’ll completely understand why. It’s been a tough few months, but things are taking a turn for the better and soon we...

CPR Train Brooks Aqueduct

Brooks Aqueduct

It’s a marvel of engineering, a multi-kilometre long concrete structure a century old. Towering over the lone prairie it once brought life giving water to this parched region of Alberta, but today is unused. It was replaced – everything and everybody has that fate eventually – but stands as a...

CPR Tracks Downtown Calgary

Clear to Slow

The Canadian Pacific Railway arrived in Calgary in the 1880s. At the time the community was nothing more than a few scattered buildings out there on the open plain. My, how things have changed. Today, the tracks splits the city of 1.3 million right in half. The crossing seen behind...

Astorga Cathedral Spain

España Day 3: Hello Astorga

When you’re having a blast all sense of time is distorted, the hours and minutes speeding past and gone in the blink of an eye. Here were are on day three (already) of our most epic (and hectic) Spanish adventure and it seems like we only just arrived. This morning...

Neonex Boler

2017 Wrapped Up

Playing catch up here. This post wraps up 2017 and takes in the last of the Bolers and other little fibreglass trailers Team BIGDoer chronicled staring late summer and into fall and winter of that year. There’s a nice assortment here, random finds mostly, captured as we explored our wonderful...

Holy Trinity Church Calgary

Eight Houses

Another instalment in what’s become a most enjoyable series revisited each and every year. In these we wander Calgary’s downtown core in search of single detached dwellings to document, so houses, or places that were once houses and maybe repurposed but retain that “home sweet home” vibe. These are real...

Old Wood Boxcar Alberta

An Ancient Boxcar

Progress is a steam roller with anything in its sights standing zero chance. Here, a farm, one that was vacated only a short time ago and now sitting empty (but kept up), an ever-growing bedroom community expanding around it with the land under petition of redevelopment (according to Cochrane Alberta...

Saskatchewan Grain Elevator

Crazy Times in Coach, on Via’s Canadian

Sometimes the best laid plans…turn to crap. You do your homework, formulate, consider every single option and variable and get the ball rolling happily along. Then boom, almost immediately in it’s this realization you miscalculated and now it’s clear your naivete or a lack of forethought and research sold you out and this is not going to end well.

Chapel of Saint Blaise Mural

España Day 2: Toledo Cathedral

Morning comes bright and clear, the view out from our hotel balcony taking in old downtown, basking in the golden light, something we’ll never forget. Stretch, yawn, lean on the railing, look up and look down the boulevard, oddly quiet and devoid of traffic and pedestrians at 7am, the rumble...

CF-5 Military Museum Calgary

CF-5 Freedom Fighter

Here in Calgary, alongside always busy Crowchild Trail, on the grounds of the Military Museums, there’s a plane. It’s not just any old thing with wings, but a fighter jet, a CF-5 Freedom Fighter, stuffed and mounted to appear as though streaking off into the heavens. Whoosh! Here, it’s a...

Burnsland Military Graves

A Moment of Time

It’s a pittance really, a short one hundred and twenty seconds, a mere two minutes*. It’s what’s asked of you and I to give, come 11am November 11th, that you stop, and there in total silence and contemplation, you take that moment, no, embrace the moment, in honour of those...

Fisherville Grave Yard

Fisherville BC Cemetery

Deep in the mountains of the East Kootenays of British Columbia, up the Wildhorse River, there’s a special place, a town that used to be. This is Fisherville, dating from the 1860s and on this world for but a mere moment in time. It came and went quickly. And here...

Wardner BC SawMill Powerhouse

Wardner BC Mill Powerhouse

All that’s left is a concrete shell, remains connecting back to a huge lumber mill that once operated on this property long ago. We’re looking at the Powerhouse Building put in by the Crowsnest Pass Lumber Company here in Wardner British Columbia, about a century ago. Considered too expensive to...

Almudena Cathedral Stained Glass

España Day 1: Wandering Madrid

Already it seems like long ago. Back in time, June 2018, we’ve touched down in Madrid, C&C and our gracious hosts Chris’ sis Trina and her husband Grant (a huge shout out to both and big thanks) and we’re visiting Spain to take in the Camino de Santiago Trail. But...

1963 Pontiac Calgary

Roam at Night

Another in the Roam at Night series were we head out into town, picking some random area, no rhyme or reasons to it all and search out interesting subjects to photograph after dark. Here, it’s two vintage rides we found, one as old as your author and part of an...

King of Bolertown

King of Bolertown

It’s our own personal slice of heaven just outside Calgary. Where we’re standing, a firm, Team Trillium, manufactures those little Trillium Trailers you might see out there on the highway or in some campground. In production since like forever, they’re officially called Outback Trilliums today. And besides producing them new,...

Rowley Alberta School

A Rowley State of Mind

There’s this charming little ghost town out there on the Alberta Plains that like the mythical Scottish Village of Brigadoon springs to life, not once every hundred years, but one Saturday per month*. The people they come for “Pizza Night” and to partake in the ambience, all those amazing old...

11th St SE Blackfoot Market

Blackfoot Farmer’s Market Today

Given the sheer number of forgotten and abandoned places we get to visit (and we so love being that busy), it’s inevitable we cross paths with ones we’ve documented before. Quite honestly it’s sometimes hard to return as often the building or site is rarely as it was – for...

Amor y España 2018 BIGDoer.com

Off The Beaten Path en España

Let’s go back in time about a year, give or take. Rather unexpectedly an invite arrives from Chris’ sister, a most seasoned world traveller…“Come spring, let’s go to Spain!” Tales of hiking and adventure, travelling the legendary “El Camino”, getting out, seeing the country, touching on what it’s all about...

Old Farm House Alberta

Where Nobody Lives

Presenting a most fantastic find, an old house and outbuildings, long abandoned, lonely and isolated, sitting there in a field with nothing else speaking of human habitation to be seen in any direction. And take in those stunning Alberta Badlands as a backdrop…a more picturesque setting could not be imagined....

Old Cabin Kananaskis

Lefthand’s Cabin

Deep in South Kananaskis Alberta, in a most scenic setting amidst wooded hills and rolling ridges there’s this tiny cabin. A most compact and sturdy dwelling, it was once the base camp for a Stoney Nakoda First Nation’s hunter by the name of Lefthand…John Lefthand we believe. Details are sketchy...

World's Biggest Gold Nugget?

Gold Prospecting Ain’t So Hard

The Wildhorse River in the East Kootenays of BC was historically one of the better gold producers in the province. Placer mining – panning or sluicing of gravels to separate “alluvial” gold – took place up and down this rugged waterway starting in the 1860s. In the first couple decades...

Grave Yard Moyie BC

The Little Cemetery Moyie BC

Moyie is a charming little town in the East Kootenays of British Columbia. Tied to mining for its first few decades – the St Eugene was a huge producer of lead and zinc, silver and gold – today it’s a sleepy little community with a retirement vibe, split by a...

Katie's Crossing Boxcar

Rail Equipment @ Katie’s Crossing

There’s this sleepy community, home to some four hundred folk, a most pleasant little burg just a short drive southeast of Edmonton. And sitting there, within sight of the busy Canadian National Railway’s transcontinental mainline is Katie’s Crossing, in business come on seventeen years and a great place to enjoy...

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