It’s a nothing photo that shows zero technical merit nor any mastery of composition. Label it unremarkable. Yet there’s something really cool and interesting here – if you look for it – that if seen back in the day would have had you standing in awe. Just picture it in...
Some business finds us in the tiny community of Enchant Alberta, a dot on the map type place out there on the endless Alberta Plains, no where close to a major population base. Post lunch at the town’s only eatery, the most satisfyingly bowl of Wor Wonton Soup ever, we...
They’re tucked away on an otherwise disused siding, way back behind a huge maze of pipes, valves and vessels and for the most part were well hidden from view. Here, at a recently decommissioned gas plant a little south of Calgary, a most amazing collection of vintage railway equipment. With...
Where’s this now? Onarch? Wait, no, it’s Onarc. Moving about a bit…ohhhh, Monarch…now we get it. Guess we should open our eyes more. Here’s a little village in Alberta, home a couple hundred folks, just a bit west of Lethbridge. At one time the highway ran right through the place,...
by Chris Doering · Published January 22, 2019 · Last modified February 11, 2020
Time does fly. Here we’re a week into our Spanish trip and day three trekking the El Camino Pilgrimage Trail and it seems like we just arrived. Where as the first two days had us going up and over some mountains, here the land changes and is gently rolling in...
One evening in Coleman Alberta, in the wondrous Crowsnest Pass. With no goals or plans in mind we simply wander the historic downtown taking in this and that, passing trains and old buildings from the boom days when coal mining drove the local economy. It’s about getting out, working those...
Amazingly one can find the remains of long abandoned railway lines deep inside the city of Calgary. And here’s a most interesting section. There’s the old roadbed, grassed over and a dumping ground for things unwanted and most fascinating to the railway archaeologist, telegraph poles, cross-bucks and all still standing...
Here’s another enjoyable in-the-city hike taking in the neighbourhoods of Mount Royal and Bankview, as mentioned in the title, along with some of Sunalta and a chunk of the Beltline. Along the way those following this route will pass many old homes just chock full of personality, some of them...
One amazing weekend…and seems so long ago now. We’re in Dinosaur Provincial Park in late May 2018, and we’re here to take in anything and everything it has to offer. Out there along the Red Deer River near the town of Brooks we pay this most special place a visit,...
It’s July 2018, we’re just back from Spain and still basking in that El Camino glow and already we’re out exploring. We rarely sit still. This weekend it’s the Ghost Town Convention, as it’s called (Alberta edition), where friends get together and tour abandoned places. It’s as much about the...
by Chris Doering · Published January 4, 2019 · Last modified February 11, 2020
Dawn arrives clear and cool and we’re already wide awake in giddy anticipation of the day to come. It’ll be wonderful….we just know it…friends, we can feel it in our bones. Team BIGDoer is in Spain, a most amazing country, we’re trekking the legendary El Camino de Santiago Pilgrimage Trail...
No, we’re not heading to the afterlife here, even if the biting cold this day had us thinking it might not be a bad place to get away from these frozen limbs and frostbitten noses (and mine’s a biggie). Hell sounds so nice this time of year. No sir, we’re...
It’s approaching the end of its service life. Down in the Red Deer River Valley near Morrin Alberta, the scenic badlands a backdrop, it’s the Morrin Bridge along Highway #27, due for replacement soon with work already begun. So before being sent to the scrap yard a quick look at...
We’ve visited the Payroll Property a number of times before. The mine here never amounted to much, even if one shipment of ore was sent out to the smelter long ago. They were testing the waters for its development potential and came up short. It was a โprospectโ mine…finger’s crossed...
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...
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...
by Chris Doering · Published December 11, 2018 · Last modified February 11, 2020
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...
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....
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
by Chris Doering · Published November 27, 2018 · Last modified February 11, 2020
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...
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...
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 โhome sweet homeโ vibe. These are real...
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...
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.
by Chris Doering · Published November 9, 2018 · Last modified February 11, 2020
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...
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...
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