Off the Beaten Path with Chris & Connie

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 “prospect” 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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...