In this piece we’re revisiting Beachwood Estates High River Alberta, a once thriving community built in a flood zone. A known flood zone – anyone find that funny? Then guess what, the river flooded – the watercourse does have High in its title after all. This happened in 2013, and...
Welcome to this post, titled “Historic Hotels Cranbrook BC” and it’s going to be a fun one. Here’s today’s line up: The King Edward (King Eddy), Byng, Cosmopolitan (Cos, Kos or mockingly, da’Kos), The York, Sam Steele (aka The Steele or Sammy), The Cranbrook and rounding it out, The Mount...
Presenting another in-town Calgary Pathways adventure. The route described presently takes one from Montgomery to Bowness (and back) while exploring green spaces, wetlands and escarpments. Paralleling the Bow River it visits Bowmont, Baker and Bowness Parks on pavement or gravel track. While the city is often in view, it feels...
Here’s how we make a Then & Now. 1) We first take an old image supplied by a reader or sourced by the Team itself and visit the location seen to document what things look like today. 2) We shoot a new photo, while doing our best to duplicate the...
Our subject, the Blue Bridge to Nowhere, is about a century old, but as you’ll note it’s not seen use for some time now. Many decades ago the road along here got bypassed, yet interestingly the span didn’t get removed at the time. Old records suggest it still had a...
Today’s location is downtown Coleman Alberta and in this piece we’ll be comparing two photos separated by maybe 75 or 80 years. It’s just an everyday street scene, here in this former coal mining town and really, it’s hardly worthy of attention, yet here we are. The prominent players in...
That heat’s insufferable and smoke from forest fires happening somewhere else on the continent hangs heavy the air. It’s hot and stuffy. Just ;ook up to that ugly brown sky and feel the oppression as it sucks the life out of you. We’re in Castlegar BC, it’s the summer of...
Which Way to Wainwright? We’ve come to this spot (marked Philips Alberta on maps) to watch trains, but they no-showed and instead kept an eye on something else playing out not far from the tracks. How curious! It seems a transport with a military load bound for a nearby Forces...
Here’s another photo from our archives picked completely at random and presented here in all its glory. We close our eyes, point and pray what ever is chosen is worth seeing. So far it’s worked. It has be previously unpublished, but otherwise all images, good, bad or even cringe-worthy, are...
The location is a residential street in Bassano Alberta and we’re armed with an old photo to be used in a special way. That can only mean one thing, you know…it’s Then and Now time! Presenting two images showing the same location, the same subjects and and taken from the...
Team BIGDoer lives to explore and this fine day we’re with friends roaming the backroads northeast of Edmonton. It’s an area known for many “onion dome” churches and these connect back to early settlers who were of varying Eastern-Orthodox faiths. On the road ahead our subject comes into view, Saint...
In this post we’re looking at a lowly farm gate. Have we hit bottom and run out of subjects to babble on about? Never! Anyway, there’s a million of them protecting home, field or pasture, they’re strictly utilitarian and because they blend into the background hardly ever get noticed. Unless...
The date is summer 2021 (we’re so behind), the place is beautiful BC, Columbia region, and we’re out Boler hunting. Of course, it’s only just one of the things we do and we’ll keep busy exploring backroads, seeking out adventures and never sitting still. It’s what we do and this...
Today we’re in the Calgary community of Victoria Park and right beside the Stampede Grounds. Stampede? It’s a low-key, intimate event that’s been around for a few years, so maybe you haven’t heard of it. The first of our subjects is a replica of Westbourne Church that once stood a...
Presenting two photos of the CC Snowdon Building in Calgary, shot from the same spot and separated by over 100 years. There’s been change, as you’ll see, yet certain elements remain timeless. Even with the building that is our subject overshadowed by something much newer and to which its attached,...
Fabyan Bridge (for trains – aka Battle River Trestle) is a bit short of a kilometre long and on such a scale that it kind of defies description. It’s not the grandest of its kind, and that title belongs to the Lethbridge Viaduct in southern Alberta, which wins by a...
A ride on any of the BC Inland Ferries is an adventure and we do it every chance we get. It’s hard to explain the appeal and silly perhaps, yet if we’re out that way and there’s a route that includes a ferry crossing, we’ll choose it over any other....
The stately structure that is the focus of this “Then & Now” is buried deep within a Calgary campus and known as SAIT Heritage Hall. Earlier home to the Alberta Normal School and Provincial Institute of Technology, today it’s just one part of the sprawling Southern Alberta Institute of Technology...
Bowness Shopping Centre on Bowness Road and in the neighbourhood of (guess where) Bowness, was established before the community even became part of Calgary. The city annexed the land here part way into the ’60s, but before that time it was a town on its own. The shopping centre is...
We could only manage a quick stop at the Coronation Roadmaster’s House Museum on this extended road trip, but you can count on us paying it a revisit next time we’re in the area. We’re out in the east-central reaches of Alberta and it’s a section of flat prairie extending...
We have this thing for trains and photograph them every chance we get. Some might call it a silly obsession and looking inwards, even we think so at times. Truth be told most photos we capture on the subject are not interesting enough to post, but what ever reason they...
Yellow! Don’t you agree it’s good to colour coordinate? Here’s a nice little Boler found in the British Columbia mountain community of Revelstoke and it’s pretty close to the BIGDoer shade, so of course we approve. All around here there’s majestic mountain scenery and here we are obsessing over a...
It happens in Edgemont Ravine, Northwest Calgary, and the hike presented here a nice easy one through park and natural green spaces. You might be deep in the city but it often feels far removed from the usual hustle and bustle. Stop and breathe. To extend the fun one can...
The Team’s out in Big Valley Alberta and having stupid fun in a downpour photographing some elderly motorhomes. What’s not to like? At any rate, it was being done for a project that ultimately got shelved (long story), but at the time we didn’t know it and jumped in with...
Bustling Downtown Argenta British Columbia: well…maybe the word bustling…and downtown for that matter…don’t really apply here, but we’re definitely in Argenta BC, so the title’s at least partly right. Welcome to this little East Kootenay Community, quite remote and off the beaten path and we’re here just because. Look, it’s...
Here’s a home with a view or rather it was previously a home with a view and now just an empty shell. Everyone up and left, so it’s been abandoned for some time now, this once grand farm house on the very edge of a scenic coulee. That it’s devoid...
This Boler was spotted in a Calgary neighbourhood during one of our annual El Camino appreciation walks. We did the legendary trail in Spain in 2018 and getting out like this each year always takes us back. It’s like reliving the experience and for a day, we’re Perigrinos once again....
West Bragg Creek Snowy Owl: for the most part it takes place along the aforementioned trail, in an extensive network of trails convenient to and just a little west of Calgary. The location is the foothills of the Rockies and the loop presented here makes for a pleasant winter’s walk...
Welcome to Main Street in Trochu Alberta and today we’re presenting two photos captured from the same location, but separated by a hundred plus years. As the saying goes, some things change and some stay the same, but here it’s more of one than the other. Much of what’s seen...
Come take a look at a hair raising section of road blasted out of the rock years ago, out in the West Kootenay region of British Columbia and near the community of Slocan City. It’s a narrow winding shelf, barely wide enough for two cars to pass and right there...
Posted
Sharon Wingenbach: You Are Here: Corral 4 Drive-in Calgary
Rob Pohl & Arturo Pianzola: Alexandra Bridge Fraser Canyon BC
Bob Fortin: CPR Illecillewaet Bridge Revelstoke BC
Rory Brown: Downtown Calgary & CPR Tracks 1977-2014
Dale: The Forgotten Cemetery of Morrissey BC
Sharon Wingenbach: MacDonald Bridge Calgary ~70 Years Apart
Gary Small: Polish Hall Coleman Alberta (1927)
Twold7: Calgary Inglewood Haskins/Victory Block
Gary Small: CPR Bow River Bridge (Abandoned)
Ken Newel: Grain Elevators of Turin Alberta
Gary Small: Silver Creek Coal Mine Skunk Hollow
Bonita Hudson: Coleman Miners’ Hospital 100 Years Apart
Gary Small: Dunshalt Alberta 1974 and 2013
Rob Pohl & Arturo Pianzola: The Giants of Cathedral Grove (BC)
Gary Small: Highway History (BC): the Garbage Gobbler
Posting soon!
Byron Robb - Zeke - Rob Pohl & Arturo Pianzola - Don Wilson - Johanna (Connie) Biggart - Dale
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