Off the Beaten Path with Chris & Connie

In this Then and Now we’re visiting the “almost” ghost town of Rowley Alberta. It’s a little north of Drumheller. Today, this dot-on-the-map community is home to a few people at most, but in the past was a more populace and much busier place. Many of the long vacant buildings...

Located in the Calgary community of Scarboro and overlooking downtown, there’s grand structure of sandstone dating back over a century. We’re speaking of Sunalta School and if you drive along Crowchild Trail near 17th Avenue SW you won’t miss it. There, on the east side at the pedestrian bridge. At...

Today we’re looking at the old Hotel Alexandra in Drumheller Alberta. In the comparison, it’s seen first in the 1930s, and again in 2025. While it still looks much the same today, it’s not a hotel anymore. You can still stop in for a cool refreshment and a nice meal...

The Red Lion Hotel in Cadogan Alberta closed a few years back. It’s kind of sad to see it play out like this, a once busy place now empty and quiet. It sits on the corner of Caversham and 4th Street, on what was the business district in town. In...

Today’s Then and Now historic comparison is of the Strome Hotel (former Selkirk Hotel) in little Strome Alberta. It shows little change after seventy one years, as you’ll see in the photo, and at the time of our visit, not open for business (sadly). The owners called it quits about...

The town of East Coulee is in the Alberta Badlands and split by the slow flowing Red Deer River. Space is at a premium in this valley and if you visit, you’ll see this first hand. Homes and businesses, the highway and in years past, the railway, were all located...

East Coulee Alberta is former coal mining town and the setting for today’s Then and Now post. You won’t see the community though, and instead we’re down at the railyards. Or former railyards in the today sense. In hand is a 1930s view and we’re duplicating the shot. The old...

Presenting a Eaton’s Earlsfield Catalogue Home from the 1910s, in a derelict state sadly, and found down a Western Saskatchewan backroad. The mighty T Eaton company dates back to 1869 and were a retail juggernaut that sold just about everything at some point. You name it and for a time...

Among the mighty peaks of British Columbia’s West Kootenay region, in a little place called Rosebery, there was a most unusual railway operation. For a time. On account of challenging topography, the Canadian Pacific Railway (under the Nakusp and Slocan Charter) built a branchline physically isolated from the rest of...

Originally published in 2015. Hello all and in this article we’ll be looking at a little school house located in the village of Netherhill Saskatchewan. Constructed over a century ago, it’s been many, many decades since classes were last taught here. It later functioned as a fraternal hall, for a...

In today’s post we’ll look at the Nordegg #3 portal at the Brazeau Collieries Coal Mine Heritage Site, about 110 years apart. This structure is a sealed entryway to a maze of underground workings and just one element in this sprawling coal plant. You can tour the complex and if...

We captured the Now image used in this historic comparison of downtown Cadillac Saskatchewan while shooting an installment of the Beer Parlour Project in town. It happened at the Cadillac Hotel, sort of out of view in this shot and back right in the distance. We’ve included a link from...

Today we’re looking at the Venini House, in Calgary’s Scarboro neighbourhood, and shooting a BIGDoer.com Then & Now. Woohoo! The goal of these posts is to compare or connect with something from the past and the creative process is wildly fun. 1) First, we take an old image sourced by...