As recently as a few decades ago there was something close to a thousand wood-cribbed grain elevators in Alberta. Most of theses buildings, dating from the early 1900s to the mid-1980s, are gone now, having been replaced by newer, larger and more efficient “grain terminals” made of concrete or steel....
A metal leviathan, this steam tractor was built close to a hundred years ago. Today it resides at Pioneer Acres Museum in Irricana Alberta where on occasion it’s fired-up, transforming it into a fire-breathing, steam hissing, smoke belching monster put to work entertaining visitors to the venue. At rest on...
Loaf & Jug were a small chain of corner grocery stores in Calgary Alberta. Little information is available on the firm (alternately called Loaf and Jug or sometimes Loaf ‘n’ Jug), but piecing bits and pieces together it seems that they were in business from the early 1970s to perhaps...
Flashback Cranbrook BC August 2015, it was hot as Hades, stifling and muggy, the blast-furnace-like temperatures forcing us to rethink our day. Plus thirty degree weather is our Kryptonite and venturing out into the woods for a hike or even simple exploration seemed like sheer lunacy. Sweat and fatigue and...
Come along with us as we wander the remains of the old surface plant connected to the Hillcrest Collieries Mine in the Crowsnest Pass of Alberta. Closed down some seventy five years ago, a couple concrete buildings can be found at the site, all well overgrown, along with some bits...
What’s this? A ghost sign from an old Radio Shack, a firm that closed down in Canada over a dozen years ago, this one being exposed during renovations at Calgary’s Westbrook Mall. We’re looking at a time capsule here, a reminder taking us back to when the “Shack” was the...
Found at Pioneer Acres Museum in Irricana Alberta (a great place, BTW, if you love old metal), the leviathan earth mover we’ll be documenting is known as a DNR Excavator. Curious looking, as though random bits of machinery were thrown together by someone without a clue as to what they...
Today we document the remains of a forgotten Monastery connected to the Orthodox Church, found in a remote corner of Northern Alberta. Deep in a wooded grove along a lonely back road, this unassuming cluster of small cobbled-together buildings are in varying states of advanced decay and most likely won’t...
A series of summits interconnected by ridges in the Highwood area of Kananaskis, the Bull Creek Hills are a great hiking objective at any time of the year. There are many ways up including this lesser used approach, tackling an easterly rib straight on. Trails on this route are sometimes...
This short and stocky brute, a GMC L7000, can be found at Pioneer Acres Museum in Irricana Alberta. A bit tattered with faded orange paint, it looks as though it’d be ready to get back to work with minimal notice. Where’s that next load going? Hidden from view behind some...
Fishburn United, a tiny country church found along a lonely Alberta backroad, southwest corner of the province, where the mountains and plains meet and not far from the Crowsnest Pass. Built well over a hundred years ago, it was originally a shared facility used by those of the Presbyterian, Methodist...
Time for a brief stop at the former Moccasin Flats Gas and Confectionery in Bellevue Alberta. It’s a place that’s been on our radar for sometime now – of course every old and empty, overgrown and boarded up building is – and while this stop was brief we fully expect...
All manner of classic vehicles about, hod rods from many different eras, all shiny and done up, Detroit Metal to the extreme…and we’re fixated on some small fibreglass trailers seen nearby. It’s our addiction for which we understand there is no cure. Must seek out Bolers, and their kin, and...
Exploring History / Then And Now
by Chris Doering · Published May 16, 2016 · Last modified August 9, 2024
Today we’ll be looking at Hillhurst United Church, a charming heritage building with amazing stained glass, wonderful woodwork, an impressive vintage pipe-organ, and a vibrant spirit. Just over a hundred years old and clearly well loved and cared for, it’s located is in an equally dynamic community of which it...
It’s a modest-sized lump of limestone in the foothills of Kananaskis. That’s Gunnery Mountain and hiking it is nothing short of pure and unadulterated fun. Sure, it’s a bit rugged looking as seen from the highway, what with all those steep cliff bands, rock outcroppings and scree slopes. But…using a...
Two photos shot at almost the exact same location but some sixty five years apart, each showing a passing Calgary Transit vehicle. The location here is the community of Ogden, along Ogden Road to be exact, the background showing a railway bridge and in the older photo, bits from a...
A BIGDoer.com then and now – where we take an old photo showing a building or street scene from way back when, return so the location seen and shoot an image that’s similarly composed. Fun or what? The subject this day is an interesting one and for the then bits...
Presenting the almost perfect timeless scene: a vintage truck, former service station and an old school wood grain elevator. Taken not twenty or thirty years ago, but in 2016. One corner in Bashaw Alberta, a small community approximately in the middle of the province, founded about a hundred years ago...
Here’s an interesting find in the field of tiny vintage fibreglass camping trailers, a rarely seen model by the name of “Carefree”. Made in the southern British Columbia town of Trail during the mid to late 1970s, or thereabouts, they came in at least a couple sizes, all of them...
Built in the late 1920s, the grain elevator we’ll be looking at briefly here was once found along the train tracks in the tiny community of Warwick Alberta. Today it sits in farmyard a short distance away. A former Alberta Wheat Pool facility, it still wears the old company colours...
This hike takes in two long and low bumps, side-by-side Carry Ridge and Muley Ridge, right at the entrance to Kananaskis in the Sheep River area west of Turner Valley. They’re not terribly high and often times you’ll be in the trees, but still there are some surprisingly far reaching...
Certainly the most interesting element found in this abandoned Alberta farm yard is a building that was once a wind powered grist mill. Unique in form, with an almost European flavour, for much of its history it was actually a blacksmith and metal shop. Come with us as we explore...
Calgary is perhaps not the best place for an outdoor water park, what with all the strange and unpredictable weather and rather brief summer season. None the less, one such business operated in the southern half of the city for a time. Presenting: the the Banzai (or Bonzai) Water Park,...
Normally done as two short and separate trips, parallel ridges Foran Grade and Windy Point Ridge, in the Sheep River region of Kananaskis, can be combined into a single and longer outing by following our special approach. Neither is that high, they are humble foothills summits after all, but the...
Here’s a look at Spaca Moskalyk Ukrainian Catholic Church, impressive, photogenic, that when explored by the Team a few years ago had an uncertain future. Much like its fate, bleak was the day. Located along a lonely back road on the vast northern Alberta plains, the majestic building is not...
The elevator seen here really stands out as unique and was in the 1980s a highly innovative design, the future of the Alberta grain industry. The Buffalo 2000, the dawn of a bold new era, modern and efficient, a new way to do it. It was not just a means...
The Rothney Astrophysical Observatory is located just southwest of Calgary near the tiny community of Priddis. Owned and operated by the University of Calgary, it’s used as both a research and teaching facility and is home to a collection of telescopes of many forms, types and sizes. We’ll spend a...
Another adventure, this one an urban hike, which we did in the depths of winter but you can do anytime. A short “stroll” (for us), follow the Bow River making a loop of sorts where one travels down one side and up the other. Along the way we’re witness to...
Unfinished Railway Line Calgary and file this under obscure. We’re looking at the roadbed remains of a Canadian Northern Railway branchline that was to break the Canadian Pacific Railway’s monopoly in southern Alberta. Some sections, including this one inside Calgary city limits and being encroached on by development, were built,...
Rocky Mountain Raceway Park, we never really knew you. In operation for only a few short years, it was one of the last racetracks in the Calgary area. Now there are none. Built from passion by two dedicated enthusiasts, it was shuttered not really due to a lack of business,...
Kenopsia: "the eerie atmosphere of a place that's usually bustling with people but now vacant or abandoned."
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