There were once many grain elevators in Crossfield Alberta, now there is but one. Standing fast against time and progress, the town’s very last “prairie sentinel” is also its newest, surviving as a private seed cleaning plant. It’s sits along side a busy rail line, as though waiting to load...
Can you spot the Boler in this collection of motorhomes and trailers? Sure you can! This a 17′ model which in my opinion is not as cute as it smaller cousin, the egg-shaped 13″ version we all know and love. This one was spotted in just north of Calgary in...
Our goal for this trip is the abandoned CPR railway bridge at Bullpound Alberta. Located in a remote section of the Red Deer River valley, far from any civilization, or even a road, getting there will require hiking in across empty featureless plains. Bullpound was nothing more than a nondescript...
The hamlet of Chancellor Alberta is tiny a dot on the map. It’s home to a handful of people, an interesting community hall and sitting alongside an abandoned railway branch line, an old grain elevator. The latter two structures will be the subject of this report. First up is the...
We called this the Wimborne farm, not because that’s the name of the people who lived here – we don’t know them, who they were or what’s their story. Rather, we simply call it this because it’s located near that small Alberta town. Like most abandoned farms we stumble across,...
Normally you’d only find us here either early in the spring or late in the fall, when more westerly trails, which are more interesting, are under snow or inaccessible due to seasonal road closures. With Connie feeling a little off due to her acupuncture treatment from the day before, she...
This bright yellow Boler was seen in the small town of Crossfield Alberta and it looks tiny and almost insignificant when compared to the massive motor home sitting nearby. In fact, the latter appears ready to devour its little neighbour. It’s not known (to us anyway) if this vivid colour...
The building we see here, doubling as Monroe’s Grocery in the film Brokeback Mountain, is actually located in the small Alberta town of Crossfield. In the movie the setting is Riverton Wyoming and both the exterior and interior were used in the production. In those scenes, main character Ennis del...
For this report we’ll show some of the assorted old trucks and interesting vehicles we’ve stumbled across while out on exploring. We did not go looking for them, but rather they were all discovered by chance while out travelling the back roads of Alberta and BC, on our field trips...
So many beautiful flowers – pink and red and yellow and orange blooms, all arranged around an interesting and and very unusual centre piece, a tiny little red and white Boler. How cute! This trailer was spotted in Fernie BC in September 2013. Boler: A small cute-as-a-bug fibreglass travel trailer...
Hanna Alberta was once a busy railway division point and the facility seen here, the old roundhouse and turntable, were used to service the steam locomotives that would work this section of line. This was an important place for the railway. Today the trains are gone, but the roundhouse remains....
If you like to find interesting things to explore and photograph, travelling quiet secondary roads is often very rewarding. You’ll always stumble across something delightful – ghost towns, old trucks and machinery, photogenic farms, striking landscapes. And then there are the Bolers. These trailers seem to turn up with amazing...
This trip was a bit of a disappointment for us. This was our third attempt over the years to get to the historic Dibble Mine site, via the gruelling and unforgiving Sunken (Lost) Creek hiking trail. And while we did get to our goal this time, it was a hollow...
This amazing day has us visiting the Headwall Lakes in Kananaskis, two lovely green pools nestled is a steep-walled valley, surrounded by grey and barren limestone peaks. Along the way we’ll hike easy logging roads, we’ll make your way across scree slopes and we’ll climb steep trails, all to get...
For this adventure we explore the surface plant ruins of the Hosmer Mines Ltd. operation in (where else) Hosmer BC. While the mine only operated for a half dozen years, a lot remains of it, including several substantial concrete buildings and a long row of coke ovens. Clearly everything here...
In early August, Connie and I were out exploring a lonely section of Alberta, the dry belt region southeast of Hanna. It’s a forgotten and empty place with few inhabitants, ghost towns and seemingly more abandoned farms then those that are lived in. In other words, it’s the perfect playground...
While biking the Cranbrook to Kimberley rails-to-trails pathway we found both a Trillium and a Boler (and a deer) not far away from each other, in the small community of Marysville. The old rail line here takes a high path behind the town and from this lofty vantage point it...
I’ve noticed that you always seem to stumble across a Boler when you’re not looking for one and that’s proven here. This example was spotted completely by chance (as is often the case), while we drove around Cranbrook BC in September 2013. It’s in the common grey and white factory...
It’s been many, many years…no…actually its been two decades since I last visited Moyie Falls near Cranbrook BC. I’ve been meaning to return and have made plans to do so many times over the years, but for one reason or another, something always got in the way that prevented this...
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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