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Off the Beaten Path with Chris & Connie/BIGDoer.com Over 1740 articles! Over one point three million words! Over 25k photos! Tens of thousands of hours invested! Tens of thousands of visitors per month! 37k registered users! On the menu every day: Abandoned Places Hiking Adventures Vintage Machinery Historic Sites Then...
It’s been a custom for years to offer a gift to anyone who is the owner of a subject that appears on this website. We’re a poor broke society, so it’s a small token, but we hope it shows how much we appreciated the opportunity. We have a blast photographing...
Presenting: Rosies and The Griffon Spitfire. Here’s a bunch of folks, friends, family and associates, getting together for a charity photoshoot (and admittedly a good time) with a sleek World War Two fighter as a backdrop. The girls are stepping into the past and playing the part of a storied...
Coming in 2024 (part two): more amazing places the Team has visited and will be posting about in the next couple months or so. As always, it’s a varied menu of subjects, to keep things interesting, and here’s the list. There’s mining remains, lost cemeteries, roadside memories, something “super”, mountain...
Coming in 2024 (1st installment): presenting places we’ve explored the last year or so and the posts that will come from these incredible adventures. We’re talking a wild assortment and we’re sure you’ll enjoy every single one as much as we did documenting them. We simply love what we do,...
The Greenhill Hotel has been a prominent landmark in Blairmore Alberta for just over a century now. This structure, distinctive with its columns and barn-like gambrel roof, is quite a standout. It’s located between the road and railway tracks and noticeable not only by its design but by location. You...
The scene presented in this post was captured on the road home and the timing attributed to dumb luck. Burning down the highway – hard left into town, hard right along the tracks, and something magic unfolds. There’s the Pioneer grain elevator, there’s a passing train and the sun, a...
Bow River Loop SE Calgary: it’s an in-city hike but doesn’t always feel it. The route described here passes through parks, green spaces and natural areas, so it insulates one from all the urban nonsense. The city is all around, but here it’s a place of cottonwoods and grasslands, instead...
The quest: search out locations in Alberta used in making the blockbuster movie Superman 1978 for a series of Then & Now posts. Or rather a do-over of Then & Now posts. The Team did a good number on this very subject far in the past but it’s time for...
Seen under the Blush Spa sign in Cranbrook, BC. It’s the summer of 2022 (July I think), we’re coming back to our home base in town after some backroad adventures, and there it is. Today, it’s a drive-by capture, done while still in motion. Good thing we keep a camera...
Just inside Saskatchewan and we’re talking no more than a hair’s-width from the Alberta border, there’s a curious structure. You can’t miss it, standing sentinel just outside the little community of Alsask along the highway between Calgary and Saskatoon. Just a little to the north and it’s that big giant...
You are here: standing at the Corral 4 Drive-in Theatre in Calgary and looking down the entryway. Screens one, two, three or four? You pick’em. Imagine this same view but many decades ago and on a summer Saturday night. The cars, the chaos, the anticipation, the noise, the smell of...
Coming soon: Downtown Coleman Alberta 100 Years Apart. We’re working on the write up for this piece, but in the meantime enjoy the photos. We appreciate you dropping by! Thanks to Zeke for helping out and making this post possible. Be like Zeke… Know more about the town (new window):...
There’s not much going on in downtown Edberg Alberta these days, but it wasn’t always the case. If one were stand where we did, but many, many decades removed, what a different scene it’d be. Let’s go back to when the town was founded over a century ago, or during...
This in-town walk along the Canmore Pathways system offers lots of variety and enjoyment. Along the way, there’s parks, green spaces, mountain views, riverside fun, a boardwalk to play on and lots of nature. For those big into history, parts of an old railway line, now incorporated into the trail,...
In this post we’re in the shadow of downtown Calgary and at a location appearing in an old photo sent to the Team many years ago. We’re alongside the Canadian Pacific Railwayβs east/west mainline and back in 2014 duplicated that shot from 1977. It’s presented below and what a difference...
Their compact size means a Boler or any similar type trailer is generally easy to store. Any old spot that can fit a car will do in a pinch. For those with houses, driveways are the obvious choice, but often back alleys are where you find them. Just sock them...
The town of Morrissey British Columbia only existed for a short time in the early 1900s, had a brief but sad reprieve of sorts less than a decade later, and then was gone. It’s now relegated to history. Nature has taken back the townsite and there’s scant evidence to be...
This hike takes place in the West Bragg Creek trail network, convenient to Calgary and accessible all year round. They’re an easy choice for the short days of winter and we put the trails here to use to keep in shape awaiting spring and more ambitious adventurers further afield. This...
Close to seventy years separates the images used in this BIGDoer.com Then & Now. The theme, one of our favourites and by the numbers equally a hit with our readers, is Calgary Transit or public transit in general. The location is the historic century plus old MacDonald Bridge (or MacDonald...
It’s a random backroad find, unexpected but hardly unwelcome. It’s a former one room school in Mayook BC (a bit south of Cranbrook) and it’s gorgeous. The building came here from somewhere else in the late 1910s although the exact original location make no mention. β…Mayook School was moved from...
A hundred and twenty years, approximately, separates the two images used in this Then & Now. In the original we’re looking at the Canadian Pacific Railway’s Illecillewaet Bridge in Revelstoke British Columbia and in the second the Mark Kingsbury Memorial Bridge occupies that same spot today. The latter is for...
A few factories in Canada were involved in Boler production at various times and making sense of who built what and when is sometimes a tall order. Depending on the year and/or model, they could come from plants in Ontario, Manitoba, Alberta or BC. There might have been others too....
Welcome to the Camrest Motel, Camrose Alberta and please enjoy your stay. It’s a budget friendly kind of place, down by the tracks, in the old part of town and a little run down. You know, it’s the digs you might find us staying at when on the road and...
Presenting two photos of the same building, but captured many, many years apart. The location is Calgary’s historic Inglewood community and our attention is focused on the the Victory Block (former Haskins Block) built in 1908-1910. While there’s been change from era to era, it’s minimal and the building appears...
The location is British Columbia’s scenic Fraser Canyon and our subject, the historic Alexandra Bridge. It spans the turbulent river at a point where it narrows and when standing there it’s a long drop down to the water below. The deck is of grated metal and when crossing it almost...
When money’s tight necessity spawns creative solutions. No one was more dirt poor than the lowly coal miner of old and when something was needed, they upcycled, recycled or salvaged something and made due. Or you did without and those are the only options. Here’s a simple and straight to...
This time we’re in the Crowsnest Pass of Alberta and our subject for this comparison, albeit off in the distance, is the former Coleman Miners’ Hospital. It and the hill in back are the only things visible in both images to tie the two eras together. A hundred years sperate...
The location is Vancouver Island in British Columbia and specifically MacMillan Provincial Park. It’s a little east of Port Alberni and this spot home to an amazing stand of massive trees many centuries old. These are the giants of Cathedral Grove and we’re happy to show you around. Today’s subject...
The Canadian Civil Defence Museum And Archives is once again offering tours of the RCAF/CFS Alsask Radar Dome just outside Alsask Saskatchewan. This Victoria weekend coming up and select weekends after. Contact them for info.
The dome is the last of its kind and an amazing look into the Cold War mindset of the 1960s-1980s period. The world was on edge and nuclear war one everyone's minds. It's not if the bombs would drop, but when. This radar building was one of many in a network and which scanned the skies for approaching enemy aircraft or missiles. The Soviet Bloc was the main enemy and if they came, it'd be up and over the pole. That put Canada in between two hated foes.
Thanks to Coinoath Sarsfield for helping with this shoot! If not for his lighting experience, we'd have never pulled it off.
Link to more history and photos in the comments. π
Exploring history with Off the Beaten Path with Chris & Connie. Photo: 2023. Posted by Johanna (Connie).
The Chinook Motel, Crowsnest Pass Alberta, about fifty years apart. It was operating back when the original was captured, but long closed on our visit (on what happened to be one of the coldest days of the year) although the main building and one little cabin remains.
Exploring history with Off the Beaten Path with Chris & Connie. Photo: 1960s and 2015. Posted by Johanna (Connie).
The old tramway tower at a Drumheller area coal mine. Rosedale Collieries was in production for just over forty years starting in 1912 and produced over three millions tonnes of material in that time. It was a large operation with a company town and little bits of it still remain. The owner let us freely explore the site but was adamant that we not venture up to the tower, which we would have done in a heartbeat if we could.
This tower helped with removal of waste material brought up from underground - coal fines and shale. This includes the red-ish material you see below the structure. There was a mountain of it here once, but most of it was shipped off in recent times to be used for ball diamonds and civic pathways. Had we stood at this point in the 1960s, we'd be buried under the material.
Exploring history with Off the Beaten Path with Chris & Connie. Photo: 2022. Posted by Johanna (Connie).
One day a few years ago, on a crazy notion I guess, we decided to walk the entire length of Centre Street North Calgary in search of sidewalk stamps. From new to old, Beddington to Downtown, so about nine or ten clicks. We began in the 1990s and went all the way back to the 1920s before they petered out. No ones older were found and this is likely due to redevelopment in downtown obliterating any trace. Still, we looked.
Here's one from '62 and later that day that very same bus would later take us back to our starting point.
Back in time with Off the Beaten Path with Chris & Connie. Photo: 2016. Posted by Johanna (Connie).
Another Beer Parlour Project moment. Rob Pohl's view camera always draws attention and between shots he's kept busy showing it off to curious bystanders. It's easy to be confused by the image displayed on the back panel as it's both backwards and upside down. Here's a behind-the-scenes from our visit to the The Greenhill Hotel in the Crowsnest Pass and we'll be posting about this visit soon on our website.
Exploring history with Off the Beaten Path with Chris & Connie. Photo: 2023. Posted by Johanna (Connie).
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