Off the Beaten Path with Chris & Connie

It’s been wiped off the face of the earth. Where once there was hope and promise, now it’s little more than an empty field. If not for close inspection it’d be easy to miss, but underfoot are subtle reminders of what was. Here’s a row of cellar-pits where buildings once...

It’s an old shed down on the farm, something utterly plain and utilitarian, right? Even to us folks always on the lookout for hidden history (so us), it’s worth no more than a passing glance…bet it’s full of spiders too! Then on closer examination – a reminder to always do...

We’ve sat on this one for a long time. When you have dozens of posts coming down the pipes some things are bound to get set aside for later. In the interim we’ve been doing research about the place as time permits, digging, prying and asking around but so far...

There’s not many of these little corner stores left. Where as long ago you could find them in nearly every “old” neighbourhood across the country, they have been in decline for decades. Finding one today is a rare delight and in Calgary, the few that are still in business can...

We’re equally at home in the mountains as we are the prairies. It’s all a wonderful playground of fun and learning, each with its own unique personality. Here’s a subject deep in the Alberta Rockies of Banff Park, well “Off the Beaten Path” an old Ranger’s Cabin that this day...

There are ghost towns. Then there’s Carolside Alberta, a community so totally wiped off the map that it’s become lost in time. While there’s odd little hints of what was here, if one looks real close, there’s not a structure left standing nor much else. Over there in the grass...

There’s a huge number of abandoned railways in Canada, thousands and thousands of kilometres worth. Only upon looking at old maps does it become clear just how extensive the network was. These disused lines are particularly common in the grain growing regions of the west but can be found across...

First you mine the coal, then you bring it outside. Now what? Well, you dump it of course. And here’s the building where it happened, so it could then go on to be further processed. There was a number of ways to do it…end dumping was common at smaller operations,...