Category: Then And Now

Rosedale Alberta Train Tracks

Rosedale Alberta 1948 & 2016

Sixty eight years separates the two images used in this Then and Now comparison. We set the scene in Rosedale Alberta, in the Red Deer River Valley badlands and we’re a bit east of Drumheller. The view is along the train tracks in 1948 and the 2016 shot is from...

Brokeback Meadows

Brokeback Mountain – Brokeback Meadows (x3)

Hooray, it’s time for another BIGDoer.com movie Then and Now. In this one we visit a location seen in the film Brokeback Mountain, specifically Brokeback Meadows and in the real world it’s a grassy swath on the flanks of Moose Mountain just west of Calgary. This site, with a bit...

Canadian Locomotive Company

Class of ’63 – Canadian Locomotive Co #3043

The Canadian Locomotive Company of Kingston Ontario constructed the tiny engine seen in this post. CLC #3043 (its build number) is one of the last they made and at that time of its construction, this storied firm had been at it for more than a century. It’s also noteworthy as...

Trails End Hotel

Trails End Hotel (Closed)

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,...

Ogden Military Hospital

Ogden Hotel Calgary 100+ Years Apart

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...

CPR Kootenay Central Line

Along the Kootenay Central w’ Greg McDonnell

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...

Nier Alberta Elevator

Nier Alberta’s Psychedelic Grain Elevator

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...

West End Calgary Downtown

A Downtown West End Alley (Calgary)

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...

Abandoned Stampede Speedway

Stampede Speedway Calgary (1982-1987)

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...

Calgary Transit Ogden Road

Ogden Road Calgary 1950 & 2016

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,...

Empress AB Alberta Saskatchewan Border

Empress Alberta at the 4th Meridian

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...

George's Grocery Lethbridge Alberta

Berte George’s William’s Grocery Lethbridge

The building seen in today’s post is located in Lethbridge Alberta and in the neighbourhood of Staffordville. It was a grocery store for much of its history, with numerous owners over the years, but it’s now a home. We’ve come armed with an old photo showing it in 1980 and...

Calgary Trinity Lutheran Church

Trinity Lutheran Calgary ~100 Years Apart

Trinity Lutheran Church in Calgary’s downtown west end ~100 Years Apart: the lead up. It’s a frigid winter’s afternoon, but there’s a reason we didn’t pick warmer weather to shoot this comparison. More in moment. We’re armed with a copy of an old photo and it’s covered in what appears...

Calgary Erlton

Crossley Slides: A Corner in Erlton

Presenting two comparison photos of the same intersection in Calgary, but shot sixty-three years apart. The dates are 1961 and 2024. There’s been plenty of change, but would anyone expect anything less in a city with such explosive growth? New replaces old and it’s a brutally swift process. Today’s Then...

Train Depot Moose Jaw SK

Moose Jaw SK Train Station (~90 Yrs Apart)

Roughly ninety years separates the two images seen in this then and now post. Today we’re looking at the former Canadian Pacific Railway station in Moose Jaw Saskatchewan, seen first in a vintage postcard and then how it appeared in 2014. This fine old structure looks as good today as...

Dominion Bridge Calgary Ramsay

Dominion Bridge Calgary (Ramsay) ca1960-2014

In this Then and Now attention is focused on the old Dominion Bridge Factory in the Calgary neighbourhood of Ramsay. The first photo is undated but we believe it’s from 1960 (we’ll explain) and ours is from 2014. There’s many buildings in the complex but in the photos only one...

Westmount School 1913

Westmount School Edmonton 100 Years Apart

It’s amazing how little Westmount School has changed in 100 years. Exactly a century separates the two images presented here and from this viewing angle, the building appears much as it was. We’re in Edmonton’s Inglewood neighbourhood, and shooting another BIGDoer,com Then & Now. Come tag along and have some...

Beiseker AB Train Station

Main Street Beiseker Alberta 110 Years Apart

The only connection between the old and new photos is the the train station way back there in the distance. Otherwise, all the other buildings in that earlier view are gone. Still the town, Beiseker Alberta (a little NE of Calgary) has that same feel to it, even if things...

Carbon Alberta Railway

Carbon Alberta 1946, 1992 & 2024

Let’s focus attention on the little community of Carbon Alberta and more specifically, the town’s grain elevator row. Down there by the tracks, or in the present context where they and those structures used to be. Those prairie sentinels, the train station, the railway itself and the section house far...

Saskatchewan Centennial Maple Leaf

Robsart Saskatchewan 61 Years Apart

The tiny-dot-on-the-map community of Robsart Saskatchewan goes back just over one hundred and ten years, had an early but brief foray with success, and today is a shadow of its former self. It’s home to many more ghosts than people and this made quite evident by simply wandering its empty...

BIGDoer Then & Now

A Corner in North Glenmore ~50 Years Apart

The two photos that make up this Then & Now were shot from the same position, but at least fifty years apart. It’s repeated here all too often, but it’s a great thrill to stand where an old photo was captured, and take one that’s similar. Call it weird. In...

Legends of the Fall Locations

Legends of the Fall (1994) Family Cemetery

Flashback to 2014! It’s a glorious Alberta day and our goal is to find and photograph a special location from the 1994 film Legends of the Fall. Target: the Ludlow Family Cemetery. There’s no roads to guide the way and only faint cart tracks or cow paths through the grass...

Okotoks Alberta Train Station

Silver Streak 1976 Train Station Okotoks AB

Numerous scenes in the 1976 movie Silver Streak were filmed in and around Southern Alberta. Interestingly, they all play US locations. As you might guess, we searched out these spots, many years back in fact, and used them for a number of now outdated Then & Now posts. Those ones...

Blairmore AB Greenhill Hotel

The Greenhill Hotel Blairmore AB is Timeless

The Greenhill Hotel has been a prominent landmark in Blairmore Alberta for just over a century now. This structure, distinctive with its columns and barn-like gambrel roof, is quite a standout. It’s located between the road and railway tracks and noticeable not only by its design but by location. You...

Connie BIGDoer.com

Superman 1978: Cemetery Scenes

The quest: search out locations in Alberta used in making the blockbuster movie Superman 1978 for a series of Then & Now posts. Or rather a do-over of Then & Now posts. The Team did a good number on this very subject far in the past but it’s time for...

Corral 4 Drive-In Calgary

You Are Here: Corral 4 Drive-in Calgary

You are here: standing at the Corral 4 Drive-in Theatre in Calgary and looking down the entryway. Screens one, two, three or four? You pick’em. Imagine this same view but many decades ago and on a summer Saturday night. The cars, the chaos, the anticipation, the noise, the smell of...

Coleman Alberta

Downtown Coleman Alberta 100 Years Apart

We like a good round number and this Then & Now spans one full century. Not ninety one, not ninety seven, but one hundred years exactly separates the two images seen. The original was shot in spring and ours on the morning of the very last day of 2023, but...

Calgary Downtown

Downtown Calgary & CPR Tracks 1977-2014

In this post we’re in the shadow of downtown Calgary and at a location appearing in an old photo sent to the Team many years ago. We’re alongside the Canadian Pacific Railway’s east/west mainline and back in 2014 duplicated that shot from 1977. It’s presented below and what a difference...

Algoma Steel Bridge 1911

MacDonald Bridge Calgary ~70 Years Apart

Close to seventy years separates the images used in this BIGDoer.com Then & Now. The theme, one of our favourites and by the numbers equally a hit with our readers, is Calgary Transit or public transit in general. The location is the historic century plus old MacDonald Bridge (or MacDonald...

Illecillewaet Pedestrian Bridge

CPR Illecillewaet Bridge Revelstoke BC

A hundred and twenty years, approximately, separates the two images used in this Then & Now. In the original we’re looking at the Canadian Pacific Railway’s Illecillewaet Bridge in Revelstoke British Columbia and in the second the Mark Kingsbury Memorial Bridge occupies that same spot today. The latter is for...

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