Category: Short Subjects

A BIGDoer classic from 2016, about ice cream and the dreams of a little kid. Here’s a rare look inside our lives and for a short time when I (Chris) was about seven or so, me and my family lived in Nelson BC just across from a Dairy Queen. One...

The courthouse in Fernie BC dates back almost a hundred and fifteen years. It’s just one majestic building, of many, in this charming and historic mountain town. They mined coal in area long ago, and many of the buildings taking us back to this time still exist, but today it’s...

You know, that building looks suspiciously like a train station and as it turns, it is – the local history book later confirmed it. We were staying in Cadillac Saskatchewan for the Beer Parlour Project and spotted this familiar-looking structure while out for a little evening walk. Most Canadian Pacific...

Today we’re looking at the (former) Crescent Heights Safeway on the west side of Medicine Hat Alberta. The store opened 1960 and closed 2014. It’s a smaller community Safeway built without the iconic “Marina” arched roof, but still a very ’60s design. The style of the time, be it for...

We’re looking at one of the last buildings connected to the Coleman Collieries coal processing plant in the Crowsnest Pass of Alberta. It was a giant complex built over a broad span of time starting in the early 1900s. When closed down in the 1980s it was the last coal...

It seems every small town on the prairies once had a service station similar to this, but they’re becoming a rare sight these days. Open ones at least and we do see lots of empty stations. This is one and it’s on 1st Avenue and Prince Street, a short distance...

The Avalon Theatre in Coronation Alberta is closed. It’s of another era and you can tell simply by looking at the structure. That’s mid-century architecture. Going to movies isn’t the event it once was and like many small town businesses that once flourished, its run has ended. Tastes change and...

We’re looking at a former business called Dick’s Service in Climax Saskatchewan. That’s actually the names of it and this little prairie community. That the town has a rather evocative title in not lost on visitors and the local populace alike. When speaking of it, the innuendos are usually anything...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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....

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...

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....

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...

Flashback to 2014 and we’re exploring out near Moose Jaw Saskatchewan. Ahead and to the left…a childhood memory…a Bonanza Steakhouse? Steakhouse? That’s a stretch. It’s been at least twenty years since we’ve seen one and we thought them extinct in Canada. Remember: you’d pair a shoe-leather slice of Chuck and...

Many towns across the prairies once had small community airports but the numbers are thinning. Included in the tally is the one in Hodgeville Saskatchewan, the remains of which include a road sign, a concrete foundation and one standing structure. The latter was presumably the office and control centre (the...

The building seen here dates back to the mid-1890s (one report says about a decade later) and on this visit in 2014, looked every bit its age. It must have been in the running as the one of the oldest buildings in the community, yet rather hidden away from the...

This history exploring gig can be demanding and tiring work. There’s the endless road, it just goes on and on and on; there’s the walking and climbing, the jumping of fences, dust by the dumptruck load, all manner of dangers to think about, bugs and heat, and wind and rain....

In the days before 7-11s and Circle Ks (or earlier Mac’s), you might shop for convenience goods at local mom and pop corner store located right in your own neighbourhood. They were everywhere and a place to pick up a jug or loaf on the way home from work. The...

Presenting another random pick from our huge library of photos and once again we’ve cheated the devil. There’s nothing embarrassing, damning or incriminating here. There’s a surprising number of photos in our collection that fall into one or more of those categories, so it’s bound to happen. Just not today....

It’s no secret we’re vintage RV obsessed. Original or restored, something pulled or driven and no matter the make, we’re interested. Of course, its Bolers and their little fibreglass trailer brethren that seem to occupy our thoughts the most, but anything of the type will do. Here’s a nice GMC...

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...

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...

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. “…Mayook School was moved from...

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...