The company that makes Trilliums today (officially Outback Trailers by Team Trillium of Calgary), also repairs, renovates and fixes up older fiberglass trailers. And it’s not limited to examples bearing the Trillium name, other makes are done as well, including, of course Bolers. Seen here on a warm February 2015...
Built just over a hundred years ago, the old Number One Fire Hall, located in Calgary’s downtown core, was last used by the fire department in the 1970s. Now surrounded by looming office towers, it almost gets lost in the clutter. Today it’s a car rental outlet and appears in...
The Turner Valley Gas Plant was the first in Alberta, the one that started it all, and today is museum you can visit. We join a group of passionate amateur photographers (perhaps some pros too), from the Foothills Camera Club, who’ve arranged a private tour of the complex and invited...
In this early season warm up hike we follow the Death Valley Trail then loop back on the Pine Ridge Trail, where we gain some modest elevation, before dropping back down to our starting point. Our “summit” goal is a long and low undulating hill, Pine Ridge proper. Aligned in...
Old industrial remains are a natural attractant to the BIGDoer.com crew and in this post we take a quick look at an old tank car loading station. Located deep in the middle of nowhere on the Alberta prairies, it sits along an abandoned railway branch line. The station was fed...
As traditional style wood-cribbed grain elevators go, this example, located in the small prairie town of Stavely Alberta, is both huge and relatively new. Towering over a very busy highway, this massive “prairie sentinel” is seen by thousands of passing motorists each and every day but I doubt many pay...
Once the darling of the mining sector, Bre-X Minerals of Calgary was later the subject of one of the largest stock swindles in Canadian history. Born of obscurity, the company quickly rose to great heights before crashing back down – spectacularly. Millions, no billions of dollars were lost on one...
This was a plan “B” hike, quickly decided upon given our original goal, a modest sized hill/mountain would soon be surrounded by clouds and likely covered in snow due to ever worsening weather conditions. Better stay low, and better avoid any steep slopes. We didn’t know this when heading out,...
The old Parrish and Heimbecker (P&H) grain elevator in Stettler Alberta has seen close to a hundred years pass, boy it looks great, and today is a museum you can tour. Located right across the tracks from the Alberta Prairie Railway Excursions (APRE) station, tour trains, some of them steam...
One very distinct advantage to owning a Boler, given their small footprint, is that they can be placed nearly anywhere on a person’s property without getting in the way. They can be stored in the back yard or take up little space on the driveway, or one can do like...
In this train themed then and now we position ourselves at the east end of the Canadian Pacific Railway’s huge Alyth Yards Calgary, in an attempt to duplicate a photo, sent to us by a reader, that dates from the 1980s and shows that very location. Not only were we...
What a huge difference a couple short decades make. Back in the 1990s when the first photo in this then and now series was captured, Vulcan Alberta had a huge and much celebrated grain elevator row. It was giant – count them – there are five singles and three sets...
This is a follow up report to one we did approximately a year ago, where were do a casual survey of all the houses, either lived in, empty or converted to businesses, left in Calgary’s downtown core. There are not many left. We lost one since that last report, and...
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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