Off the Beaten Path with Chris & Connie

Time has run out for these homes. Forgotten and empty the land on which they sit is slated for redevelopment and soon they’ll be reduced to a pile of splinters. The “gentrification monster” (thanks Micheal), insatiable in appetite, rears its head here in the Calgary community of Bowness. Nothing stands...

The southwest region of Calgary Team BIGDoer calls home dates from the late 1950s/early 1960s, but interspersed among all the ranch style dwellings, along with a few slightly newer Brady-esque multi-level-splits, are some dwellings that predate these neighbourhoods by many decades. When new these houses were out in the country,...

Kids and empty lots, it’s a natural pairing. These unused parcels become an place to hang out and have fun, unsupervised, that’s all theirs and with no adults around to spoil things or get in the way of the good times. Grown ups can be such a buzz-kill. The possibilities...

In an otherwise empty lot down some quiet back street in some town in the Alberta Badlands, remains of an old sign speaking of a business that was once stood here. We’ve driven passed it more times than we can count, oblivious it was there and only on taking a...

It’s seen by thousands and thousands of folks each and every day, but we suspect few know much about it. There, looming tall in an empty field next to a bus loop/LRT station and looking as though a rocket ready to launch into the great beyond, it’s the old Firestone...

On the road to somewhere, we make a brief stop in the little community of Granum Alberta (founded early 1900s), with just enough time to fire off a couple snapshots. The always beckoning highway calls. So for but a few moments we wander about “downtown”, with not another soul in...

On the road back from somewhere special, the most amazing Hanna Roundhouse (link below), a small detour to take in some old buildings we’ve not looked at for many years. Over there on the west end of Three Hills Alberta, down by the train tracks, two vintage wood grain elevators....

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...

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,...