Neidpath is a tiny ghost town on the vast Saskatchewan prairies and is home to a pair of fine looking grain elevators that are the subject of this report. Abandoned for decades, these old structures have seen better days, but it’s that very thing, that they are so run down...
Join us for this winter walk as we circle pretty much the entire town of High River on the Happy Trails pathway system. We’ll pass through residential neighbourhoods, one badly damaged by last year’s floods, commercial strips, and one section where no development has taken place at all (yet). We’ll...
The two old locomotives discussed in this report, Canadian Pacific Railway #1418 and #1424, once pulled crack passenger trains but today are retired and on display at a riverside park in Medicine Hat Alberta. Their paint is faded and rust is bubbling up here and there, but these fine old...
This history exploring can be 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. A person can...
The MacDonald Avenue Bridge, or simply the MacDonald Bridge, spans the Elbow River east of downtown Calgary and is just over a century old. We look at it, first in the early 1980s via an old photo sent to us by a reader, and again in 2014. While the structure...
This post has been updated and can be found here: Pointless Challenge (Reworked). Fun stuff… Coleman Alberta (Sam’s Service Station). Slocan British Columbia 81 Years Apart. Edmonton Transit: 95th Street. If you wish more information on what you’ve seen here, by all means contact us! Date of adventure: November, 2014....
Join us as we spend a day with the Battle River Railway in central Alberta, tagging along with the train crew to tour the line and touch on exactly what it is that makes a company like this tick. We’ll look at the men and their massive machines, and the...
Besides hiking and climbing up ridges and mountains, and exploring old and abandoned places, Connie and I also bike. Like we don’t have enough hobbies already! This is an activity we don’t feel we do enough of, a situation that we are hoping to change in 2015. We need to...
The title of this this report, “Warner Elevator Row”, as of mid-November, is technically incorrect. Something bad’s happened to the buildings that make up the complex in the town of Warner Alberta, something unexpected, out of the blue and only recent. Yup, they’ve demolished two of the prairie sentinels that...
The near century old Notre Dame de Savoie Catholic Church, weather-beaten, abandoned and forgotten, stands at a lonely prairie crossroads. Last used for services some fifty years ago, the building has seen few visitors since then – only the occasional passing coal mine or oilfield worker, farmers or history enthusiasts...
It’s a summer evening and I’m exploring gritty industrial areas of Calgary in search of trains and anything else of interest. And I’m in looking for Bolers too. Interestingly, we often find them, many over the years in fact, tucked away in the back lots of factories and such. An...
This short subject post we check out a rather…well…wonky looking train bridge in the town of Moose Jaw Saskatchewan. Located along the Southern Rail’s Cooperative former CNR Avonlea Subdivision branch and spanning the Moose Jaw River, the bridge still sees use. Admittedly the dip in the roadbed approach and the...
We’ve visited the former CPR Bassano Alberta Railway Station located in the small town of Beiseker several times before. It’s recently been placed on its foundation after sitting on blocks beside it for some years and we wanted to check this out. We were curious. Why, after a long lull...
This adventure we head to Glenbow Ranch, a nice natural oasis roughly halfway between Calgary and Cochrane, to hike a number of trails within the park (there are many. We’ll trek in an eastbound direction and paralleling the Bow River for the most part, taking in the Glenbow, Yodel Loop...
A short couple years ago we documented the Big Pink Trailer of Barons Alberta, an amazing retro camper that I wished I owned. This RV dates from around 1960 and was made in Ontario. Built of aircraft aluminum, it’s in surprisingly good shape and looks fine even now, especially given...
At one time many towns across the prairies had small community airports, most of which it seems are now closed. Included in that tally is this one in Hodgeville Saskatchewan, the remains of which include a road sign, a cement foundation and one standing structure, presumably the office and control...
Located close to Chancellor Alberta and within sight of the town’s grain elevator, the two graves (or grave markers) seen here belong to railway workers who perished on the job. Who they are and what where the exact circumstances of their death is a bit of a mystery. We’ve heard...
A pair o’ Bolers, one of them a 17 foot model, the other 13 foot example, the latter all stripped down and devoid of interior, were found in an alley in the community of Inglewood. The smaller one is clearly being refurbished, something that can be done to these trailers...
The subject for this then and now report is the National Hotel, aka the “Nash” in Inglewood, first how it was in the early 1980s and again how it appears today. This venerable old building back then was a dive, but today has been fixed up and will soon be...
The subject for this movie then and now is the 1985 flick Journey of Natty Gann. Specifically we look the brief “old road” scene, which was shot in the Crowsnest Pass of Alberta. In it we see the two main characters during their cross-country trek and we return to that...
On this adventure we explore a forgotten community, Comrey Alberta, deep in the sparsely populated and seldom visited southeast corner of the province. This is surely the most lonely and remote frontier Connie and I have ever visited. The sense of isolation on visiting these vast open spaces is simply...
Today we hike in town. On a crisp fall morning we head out to walk a loop route with an out and back section, using the Bow River and Nose Creek pathways just east of downtown Calgary. We’ll pass through quiet wooded areas, charming residential neighbourhoods, trendy commercial strips, noisy...
Our very first Days of Heaven then and now (I am sure there will be more) interestingly and perhaps more so, strangely, takes in the ending scene from that movie. Sort of a backwards way to start a series, I guess, but what the heck. The filming location was Calgary’s...
Time has finally run out for Calgary Transit’s fleet of venerable MCI Classic buses and after some twenty five years of service they are being retired. In the last few years they’ve been used for peak service mostly and the number on the road varied depending on service levels and...
Another day, another Boler. We never ever tire of it (and hope you don’t too). This lovely little trailer was spotted, as we headed into the Sheep River area of Kananaskis to do a a hike, in the tiny community of Turner Valley, which is located just south of Calgary....
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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