Category: Then And Now

In the old photo it’s labelled Main Street, but today it’s 50th. No matter the naming convention, we’re in downtown Elk Point Alberta, early one Sunday morning and with not a soul about, shooting a Then & Now. We’ll do our best to duplicate the old image in composition even...

What time is it? Time for another Then & Now, that’s what! In this one we’re looking at a location in Three Hills Alberta taken some seventy years apart and our only connecting element is the town’s water tower. Then, it functioned as the backdrop for some kind of community...

It’s estimated close to forty years separates the two photos seen in this comparison post. It’s a strange subject we’ve picked, an obscure little corner of our city, but we like out of the way places. Anyway, it looked like it had the potential for some silly fun, so for...

Before you venture in too deep, this is a nonsensical time wasting post and the amount of work to that went into it will make you chuckle. Our subject scene comes from the epic film Superman 1978 and it’s such brief one, you’ll be questioning our motivations. You wasted that...

We’re not sure where it was hiding all this time. Unknowingly misplaced years ago and recently rediscovered, it’s a Then & Now looking down 2nd Street West in Brooks Alberta. The Hotel Newell (or Newell Hotel, depending) is most prominent and sits at a (once) important spot right down by...

Serenaded by a church service playing out in the building directly behind, our shot is lined up. A little to the left, angle up slightly, review the original image and then check it in the eyepiece. Comes a bit more fiddling, a grid check and if zoned in, and only...

Tom Campbell Hill (alt: Tom Campbell’s Hill) is located a little northeast of downtown Calgary of which it overlooks. At one time it was pasture and got its name from a billboard erected here by a fellow with that name who was owner of a hat firm in town (chapeaus...

While randomly browsing a favourite website something catches our eye, a photo showing a group of apartment blocks in Medicine Hat Alberta about sixty years ago. It’s an otherwise unremarkable image of rather utilitarian buildings that strikes us as curious and asking: “I wonder what they look like today?” We’re...

When we get busy Then & Nows are sadly the first to be put on the back burner. Of all things we do they’re often the most joy (sometimes frustration too), but eat up a lot of precious time and resources. Still, we’ve continued to shoot them with the hope...

It’s freakin’ huge! We’re standing on the lip of a valley overlooking this towering structure, just a block or two distant, and its highest point is eye level with us. Wow! Imagine all the concrete and steel that went into it, back when, and one can’t help be impressed. What...

This post takes us back to last summer with the Team visiting Wolseley Saskatchewan. Always on the search for fun and adventure we soak up all this picturesque town has to offer. There’s old buildings by the score, many of stone(!), lots open to us (! again), charming tree lined...

The deeper we dig, the more we find. We’re talking about some “lost” Then & Nows shot years ago, promptly forgotten about for some odd reason*, and only recently rediscovered. There’s been a few of these published so far with more to come. In this example, we take a different...

File this under silly and fun. Here it’s another “lost” Then & Now shot long ago, somehow forgotten about and only recently rediscovered. When you’ve got diseased brains like us, it’s bound to happen! In this one we duplicate a scene from a 1980s sci-fi B-movie shlock-fest called Firebird 2015AD....

Here’s a pair of Then & Nows that somehow got lost for a time and while produced back in 2017, they’ve not seen the light of day until now. Presenting not one, but two of these wonderful comparison studies and the subject is Loverna Saskatchewan, a near ghost town. The...

In concept it’s pretty straightforward, and rather clever, but in execution demanding with failures all too common. We’re speaking on how a BIGDoer.com “Then & Now” is made . It’s where we take an old photograph showing some town scene from long ago and do our best to duplicate it...

The setting for this “then & now” is a quiet residential street in small town Alberta seen a century ago, and again present day. Admittedly it’s not the the most glamorous or spectacular subject we’ve ever picked for one of these posts. It’s just two rows of humble dwellings, in...

Those who follow our adventures know how much we love staying at old school motels/hotels when on the road. It’s not just due to budgetary reasons we do this (well, yes it is), but that we simply love the vibe. Heck, if we won the lotto tomorrow – and we’re...

For years now we’ve been going into local (to us) locations seen in the earlier Superman movies and showing what they look like today. We’ve long since visited most of the easily accessible sites and have been slowly chipping away at those which are harder to get to or appear...

We have a conflicting love/hate relationship with these then and now articles. Sure, they’re an absolute delight to do, when all the pieces fall together that is, but at times they’re a bringer of great frustration. For every one that works, there’s many that don’t. We strive not to just...

Among the mighty peaks in the West Kootenays of British Columbia, there was for a time a most unusual railway operation. On account of challenging topography, the Canadian Pacific Railway (under the Nakusp and Slocan Charter) built a line isolated from the rest of its network with trains coming and...

One of our favourite ghost towns is a storied place called Sandon British Columbia. There, nestled in the craggy mountains of the West Kootenays and shoe-horned into a narrow valley, it’s many reminders of what was. Mining was the catalyst, all that silver, lead and zinc (other metals too) that...

We do them out of fun and for that alone these “then and now” posts are sadly the first ones to be put on hold should other projects come up. It frustrates us, but we have little choice. The last was published in 2018 (yikes!) but here we (cautiously) announce...

There’s been a real scarcity of “Then and Now” posts at BIGDoer.com lately. For years they’ve been a staple here, and we did a good number of them, but for the last while our output has slowed to a near trickle. Worry not, we’ve not totally forgotten about the genre....

Flashback, September 2017! We’re in Eastern Saskatchewan, in the town of Unity (no, the “community of Unity”), a copy of a vintage postcard in hand. We’re here to shoot a trademark BIGDoer.com then and now and that old picture is the fodder. The subject of our attention, what’s seen in...

Yes, we’ve been neglecting the then and now posts. We’ve read the many emails asking why. There’s a couple reasons. First, we’re busier than we’ve ever been documenting old historic places and as a result, sadly, other things we do have to take a back seat. We have to go...

Been a while. A very long while. Far too long in fact. So here, for the first time in eons, a couple years maybe, make room for another Superman then and now. We used to do them a lot, but have been neglecting the series lately. Anyway, here we take...

An old farm, forgotten, falling down, weather beaten, open to the elements, home only to pigeons, the wind and maybe unseen ghosts. It’s a sombre place, they always are, the property overgrown, the last occupants long moved away, passed on and but a memory. Without exception these two sentences pretty...

Nier Alberta was not so much a town, but more a locality. Think of it as a dot on the map, the centre of an area, perhaps with a post office, but not really by definition a community with houses and businesses. Located not that far north of Calgary, the...

We’re standing smack dab in the middle of Second Street West, Munson Alberta, much to the amusement of some locals, shooting a trademark BIGDoer.com then and now. We’ve come armed with an old photo, taken close to a century ago, have plopped ourselves down in the spot where it was...

East Coulee, in the Alberta Badlands, is split by the slow flowing Red Deer River. Space was limited in this deep valley, so homes and businesses, the highway and in years past, the railway, were all located on the north side, while on the south there were coal mines and...