Calgary’s Heritage Park is a wonderful living history museum. With so many exhibits and things to explore, it would be hard to see it all in a single day. Many movies and TV shows have been shot here, including the mid 1970s CBC mini series, the National Dream. For this...
Silently standing vigil for almost ninety years, the lonely grain elevator at Kirkpatrick Alberta is a survivor. It outlasted the rail line it used to sit along and has endured while so many other wooden elevators on the prairies have fallen. Privately owned, this is no doubt the reason why...
Dorothy Alberta is a charming little town – not quite a ghost town but pretty darn close. It’s home to a number of well known and often photographed landmarks, in particular its two quaint churches and the solitary grain elevator that looms over the highway. Under gorgeous blue skies we...
This Boler, held together in places with liberal amounts of duct tape, could perhaps use a little TLC. A 17′ model, which we have been seeing a lot of lately, it looks a little rough around the edges but is probably not that bad off. The beauty of a Boler...
Cloudy skies, cool temperatures and light rain all conspired to make for a gloomy day. It was not a promising outlook and it seemed a waste heading into the hills. With that in mind, perhaps this would be a good time to explore Calgary’s living history museum, Heritage Park. It’s...
This Boler was seen while travelling the up and down the Red Deer River Valley near Drumheller Alberta. Spotted far off the highway, it was only dumb luck (or our Boler-radar) that allowed us to catch it. I am sure we could have driven past a hundred times and not...
We found another filming location from the movie Brokeback Mountain. In this scene, a flashback, a young Ennis is lead by his father to view the body of a murdered rancher. The movie location is set in Wyoming, but in reality the scene was shot in the badlands of Alberta,...
In this then and now series our subject is Rosebud Alberta, specifically the railway line and the town’s grain elevators. In the first image we see a CNR train passing by and for our attempt we do our best to capture that same shot. It’s difficult since all the structures...
This is only the second Triple E Surfside we’ve seen and this example was found only weeks after our first sighting. Among the “look-a-likes”, this model would only be confused with a true Boler from a distance, since it’s a little too squared in shape. Note how it’s chained up...
This post has been updated and can be found here: Looking Down on Wayne Alberta. Then & Now time! Old Slocan Highway. Calgary Then & Now: From Tom Campbell Hill. Crowsnest Pass then and now – Chinook Motel. If you wish more information about this place, by all means contact...
The location of this Boler was submitted by a reader of this blog and this person took up my challenge to find one of these trailers using Google Streetview. Essentially, one travels around randomly on their computer using Google Streetview, until they spot one. Try to find one yourself, it’s...
The second instalment in this series, pro photographer John Sharpe and I continue our quest to document old farms, buildings and abandoned things southeast of Calgary. It’s been a productive trip and we contently snap away, discovering lots of gems to shoot as we go. Driving about with no particular...
Calgary’s Heritage Park is a wonderful living museum with numerous exhibits and displays documenting this area’s fascinating past. There are far too many things to see in a single day so for this pass our goal was to document some of the park’s extensive collection of railway equipment. The big...
This trip has us exploring the flanks of Junction Hill in the front ranges near the Highwood River area of Kananaskis. A reconnaissance mission, one goal we had was to see if we could gain said summit via a series of old coal exploration roads on the east side of...
I’m hanging with pro John Sharpe and our goal is to discover old farms and other interesting places to photograph. With no specific route in mind we just point the van in a direction and drive. Finding ourselves southeast of Calgary between the towns of High River and Vulcan, we...
This year is looking to be a great one for Boler spotting and the tally as of May 2013 is twelve seen and eleven photographed, the most recent being this example here. In contrast, last year at this time we had documented only half as many overall. This Boler is...
On this adventure I was accompanied by professional photographer John Sharpe. We share similar interests, old farms and the like for example, and we’ve been planning a trip for some time now. That day finally arrived and this would be a great chance to get out and have fun, but...
At this time of year access to the mountains is limited, either by snow or due to seasonal road closures. This means we have to settle for hikes in the foothills, not that it’s such a bad thing. Any hike is a good one and while the views along this...
Until this tiny beast showed up in our neighbourhood just a few days ago, I had never heard of this Boler look-alike. It’s called the Triple E Surfside but given it’s more squared lines I thought it was a similar looking Trillium at first (the most common Boler-ish brand seen)....
Setting the time machine back to August 1989, you’ll find me in Princeton BC looking at the remains of the old rail line that passed through here. Abandoned only months before my visit, all of the track remained in place as though waiting for a train to come. And the...
It’s the early fall of 1992 and I am on a road trip Northeast of Calgary. With no particular destination in mind I travel along random roads to see where they take me. Ultimately I end up in the Red Deer River valley near Drumheller, but before that I find...
At the gateway to Calgary’s Heritage Park are two locomotives. One is from the celebrated Selkirk class, a mountain conquering steam and smoke belching monster. At the time, her and her sisters were the biggest such engines on the CPR system and this example was one of the last steam...
In this, the third instalment in the “In search of Mitford” series, we hike into the location of the Bow River Coal Mine/Mitford Colliery to explore what’s left. The first was one of the earliest operations of its type in the province and quite short lived, coming into production in...
While not a terribly exciting hike, the route described here was none the less a delight for us. After all, it had been many months, back in 2012 in fact, since we got into the mountains, the heavy snow pack holding us at bay for that time. With that in...
Not one, not two, but SEVEN Bolers were spotted in a single day, in fact all within minutes of each other. And remarkably to see them all we covered only two city blocks! This is a personal record for us and since we started the Boler Spotting Game some years...
Chris rushed in excitedly and showed me this comparison, but after a short pause, his look changed. It's that confused expression one gets just before the face-palm, when they realize something they did just doesn't add up.
One year shy of a century separates the two images but as it turns out, they're not even of the same building. The top is Westmount School and the bottom McDougall School, both in Edmonton and not far from each other.
It took this long to realize we'd been shooting at the wrong place all this time! The two schools were built in the same year and very close in design, so it's still an interesting comparison. We had a good laugh and we'll give Chris a mulligan on this one.
Looks like we're going have to head back for a do-over.
Exploring history with Off the Beaten Path with Chris & Connie. Photos: 1924 and 2023. Submitted by Connie.
It's amazing how many of these Canada Centennial Maples Leafs still exist out in the wild across the prairies. We could fill an album with the ones we've photographed. It seems rural folks embraced patriotism with more fervor than their urban counterparts, but that's just an observation.
This example was found in a small Saskatchewan town. When they placed this up above the community hall there was a certain optimism that's not seen now. Today, only a handful of people call the community home, and it's that close to being a true ghost town. Almost sixty years in place and this memorial to a 100 year celebration is still here.
If our readers have found any of these while out exploring, please share in the comments. We'd love to see them.
Exploring history with Off the Beaten Path with Chris & Connie. Photo: 2014. Submitted by Connie.
Billy Clark’s Cabin in Meadow Creek BC and it dates back over a century. Now at the local museum it formerly stood in a valley a little to east and on the shores of Duncan Lake (now Ducan Lake Reservoir).
Billy was a trapper, hunter, and woodsman. All he had was this tiny log house, a small plot of land, the surrounding wilderness, and his wits for survival. Nothing more. That spirit of self reliance seems to be a lost art today.
Exploring history with Off the Beaten Path with Chris & Connie. Photo: 2022. Submitted by Connie.
Both Chris and I both grew up in the malaise era for cars and get giddy when we spot one from that time out in the wild. It's like meeting an old friend. This '80s beauty was found out in a hiking area of Kananaskis and by all appearances, looks to be driven regularly.
The malaise era is marked by cars with uninspired design, quirky traits, hobbled performance and often questionable quality. Depressing stuff. This Cutlass is probably one of the better GM cars of the time, and both Chris and our son Will have owned examples in the past.
Have a malaise era story or photo to share? Post it in the comments!
Out in nature with Off the Beaten Path with Chris & Connie. Photo: 2023. Submitted by Connie.
We come over many rises on a the prairies and on doing so surprised by many interesting things. This one caused a double take.
This lonely locomotives sits at the then very end of track outside Leader SK and was out of service at the time. Guess they socked it away out of sight to forget about it. We found photos showing it in service the year before our visit but here it was cold and dead.
Since this photo was taken, the Great Sandhills Railway has extended the track across the road and set up some kind of transloading operation. In years passed, the track (under CP ownership) continued west all the way into Alberta, but that's a distant memory.
Exploring history with Off the Beaten Path with Chris & Connie. Photo: 2014. Submitted by Connie.
The messages have been coming fast and often. No, the book we produced a couple years back is not being published after all, in spite of appearing on many websites recently. Oddly some are showing it with the cover from another volume altogether. Please don't order and it must be a glitch.
The other two books shown in our capture are available however (and are awesome) and were produced by some friends. Interestingly, Chris contributed to each and those you can order.
Exploring history with Off the Beaten Path with Chris & Connie. Submitted by Connie.
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