Off the Beaten Path with Chris & Connie/BIGDoer.com Hundreds and hundreds of articles! Over one point three million words! Over 25k photos! Tens of thousands of hours invested! Tens of thousands of visitors per month! On the menu every day: Abandoned Places Hiking Adventures Vintage Machinery Historic Sites Then &...
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...
The Beer Parlour Project, by Chris Doering, Johanna (Connie) Biggart and Rob Pohl. We’re channeling an unbridled passion to document old-time, small town hotels and hotel taverns. It won’t just be photos of these historic structures and we’ll be connecting with patrons too. The buildings, the people, the history and...
From appearances the McLear Block Annex in Lacombe Alberta is surely no larger than a walk-in closet and dwarfed by the adjacent Denike Block. It dates to the 1910s and built about the same time as the much more spacious McLear Block to which its attached (to the right). The...
by Chris Doering · Published April 25, 2025 · Last modified June 2, 2025
Presenting two scenes, one from the 1940s and the other, 1932, showing two buildings connected to a sprawling mental health facility. We’re looking at West Lawn and Centre Lawn, at a place called Riverview Hospital (formerly Essondale). There out in Coquitlam British Columbia on the west coast. It’s a big...
We have a thing for bridges and admittedly it’s a strange interest. We search them out at every opportunity. This former bridge was a mighty one and an incredible piece of engineering. It’s found along the former Empress Subdivision of the Canadian Pacific Railway and very near the Saskatchewan –...
This empty can of black blasting powder from Canadian Explosives Limited was found while exploring the old railway line from Rocky Mountain House Alberta to Nordegg. Canadian Northern laid the track in the 1910s to tap the Saunders and Brazeau coal fields. Lots of that material moved along the branch...
Sixty eight years separates the two images used in this Then and Now comparison. We set the scene in Rosedale Alberta, in the Red Deer River Valley badlands and we’re a bit east of Drumheller. The view is along the train tracks in 1948 and the 2016 shot is from...
The Buffalo 2000 grain elevator was a bold design for the time and if it worked as anticipated, would herald in a new era for the Alberta Wheat Pool. Data suggested it’d be a success, and building this one would put theory into practice. It was not just envisioned as...
Hooray, it’s time for another BIGDoer.com movie Then and Now. In this one we visit a location seen in the film Brokeback Mountain, specifically Brokeback Meadows and in the real world it’s a grassy swath on the flanks of Moose Mountain just west of Calgary. This site, with a bit...
Today’s random pick – that is a photo pulled by chance from our library with zero consideration of what it contains – is of Canadian Pacific Kansas City’s Empress #2816. This steam locomotive travelled all around North America in 2024 (the Final Spike Steam Tour) and it’s seen here passing...
There’s something in the water in Didsbury Alberta, or so one would think in looking at the century+ old image used in this comparison. Take a peek and it’s evidently clear that something was going on in town long ago. There’s a big line up of moms and tots in...
It may not look that evil, but it wants you hurt. In the danger-filled playgrounds of old, the metal rocking horse was one of the most sinister of all, and many people still bear the scars (including the person writing this). The designer was sadistic to the core and deeply...
by Chris Doering · Published April 13, 2025 · Last modified April 14, 2025
The Canadian Locomotive Company of Kingston Ontario constructed the tiny engine seen in this post. CLC #3043 (its build number) is one of the last they made and at that time of its construction, this storied firm had been at it for more than a century. It’s also noteworthy as...
West Canadian Collieries #1 came from the Canadian Locomotive Company of Kingston Ontario and has called the Crowsnest Pass home for over a century. The locomotive worked for a couple of coal mining firms locally, WCC being the last, before being put on display. It looks a tad forgotten, hidden...
The building we’re documenting today is well over a hundred years old, and early on, but very briefly, functioned as the Ogden Hotel. They offered lodging and the Beer Parlour, thanks to its strategic location and circumstance, did well. More on this on a moment. During World War One the...
There’s a network of interconnecting trails in the Rotary Forest Community Pathways on the west side of High River Alberta. They’re on the Highwood River flats and the route described here makes a good-sized loop using several. The Rotary Forest is a place of meadows, wooded groves, and it’s the...
On the west arm of Kootenay Lake (British Columbia) and close to Nelson, there’s remains of an ancient tugboat. This craft, the wood-hulled SS Hosmer, was launched well over a century ago and for decades employed by the Canadian Pacific Railway. It hauled barges for that firm, loaded with rail...
Welcome to Family Groceteria, Centre Street north in Calgary, a traditional Mom ‘m’ Pop corner store from the post World War Two boom period. These businesses were once common to many older neighbourhoods, but most have gone the way of the dinosaur. They’ve been replaced by corporate gas station/convenience store...
This railway themed Then and Now takes us to the East Kootenay region of British Columbia. A gorgeous place! Team BIGDoer was sent an old photo showing a train along the Canadian Pacific’s Kootenay Central lines in the 1970s and given permission to use it in a comparison. Woohoo, and...
Straight and Narrow: a way of living that is honest and morally proper (Merriam-Webster Dictionary). Morally proper…like being nice and all? Really? They’re not looking at us when they say that. These signs are not actually real and were put up for a bit of fun here in Mendham Saskatchewan....
For today’s subject we touch on a little known, but fascinating chapter in Alberta’s history. We’re speaking of a person, one Anastasia Holoboff (or Holuboff, sometimes Holobova, less common Golubova) or as most knew her, Anastasia Lords. She was the one time spiritual leader of an Alberta based Doukhobor group...
The Wi-Fi password is “Mother” and and the contact email is “askfornorman at thebaitsmotel.ca”. We made up the first one, but the second is 100% true and is on their webpage. We love old-school motor courts and the Baits Motel in Spences Bridge British Columbia is a beauty. There’s the...
Nier Alberta was not a town as such, but a railway siding. Perhaps they had a post office, but it was not really by definition a community with houses and businesses. Located a bit north of Calgary, it had one modest claim to fame, nothing big or in a world...
In this then and now comparison we’re hanging around an alley in Calgary’s downtown west end. Admittedly it’s a strange beginning but we’re in search of a location seen in some old photos shared with us by a friend. There’s sure been a lot of change in the fifty some...
Stampede Speedway Calgary operated in the 1980s and in the blink of an eye was gone. A 3/8 of a mile dirt oval, it was located well away from any neighbourhoods at the time and while that’s still the case, the city is rapidly approaching. The people behind it picked...
The berms seen in these photos are some of the last remnants of the former Grand Trunk Pacific Railway line into downtown Calgary. Built in the early 1910s, the track came from Northern Alberta (near Edmonton), entered the city in the east, before bending northwards and paralleling the Bow River....
Today we’re looking at a structure built as a wind-powered grist mill, but never used in that capacity or even completed. It’s unique in form, with an almost European flavour and last functioned as a blacksmith shop on the farm. Come join us as we explore it and the the...
There’s not much left of this tumbled down old cabin in the woods. The location is the Crownest Pass of Alberta and it’s not too far from the British Columbia border. Found along an old pack trail, the structure is seemingly connected to a small coal mine on the same...
Calgary has an extensive pathway system and this urban trek makes use of the section running alongside the Elbow River. The adventure begins at the Glenmore Dam, winds its way north and heads into the community of Mission on the edge of downtown. The river is always in view or...
Kenopsia: "the eerie atmosphere of a place that's usually bustling with people but now vacant or abandoned."
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