Monthly Archive: March 2016

Grist Mill Alberta

Grist Mill Farm

Certainly the most interesting element found in this abandoned Alberta farm yard is a building that was once a wind powered grist mill. Unique in form, with an almost European flavour, for much of its history it was actually a blacksmith and metal shop. Come with us as we explore...

Banzai Water Slide

Banzai Water Slide Park

Calgary is perhaps not the best place for an outdoor water park, what with all the strange and unpredictable weather and rather brief summer season. None the less, one such business operated in the southern half of the city for a time. Presenting: the the Banzai (or Bonzai) Water Park,...

Calgary Transit

Calgary Transit then and now – MacDonald Bridge

Something close to seventy years separate the two images used in this BIGDoer.com then and now. The theme, one of our favourites for this type of report, and by traffic numbers something similar with our readers, is Calgary Transit or public transit in general. The location is the historic century...

Cliffs Windy Point Ridge

Foran Grade to Windy Point Ridge

Normally done as two short and separate trips, parallel ridges Foran Grade and Windy Point Ridge, in the Sheep River region of Kananaskis, can be combined into a single and longer outing by following our special approach. Neither is that high, they are humble foothills summits after all, but the...

Designs by Manuel

Seven Houses

The third report in what’s turning out to be an ongoing yearly series, it just kinda happened, where we casually catalogue all the houses still standing in downtown Calgary. The count today is seven, down one from the previous year. Some of them are still lived-in, some are now used...

Spaca Moskalyk Church Lamont County

Spaca Moskalyk Church

Here’s a look at Spaca Moskalyk Ukrainian Catholic Church, impressive, photogenic, that when explored by the Team a few years ago had an uncertain future. Much like its fate, bleak was the day. Located along a lonely back road on the vast northern Alberta plains, the majestic building is not...

Buffalo 2000 Lyalta Alberta

Buffalo 2000

The elevator seen here really stands out as unique and was in the 1980s a highly innovative design, the future of the Alberta grain industry. The Buffalo 2000, the dawn of a bold new era, modern and efficient, a new way to do it. It was not just a means...

Railway Turntable

Medicine Hat Turntable

The large steel structure seen here is a railway turntable. It would be used to turn locomotives around and would be located, often along with a roundhouse, at strategic railway divisional points and most major yards. Typically associated with smoke belching steam locomotives, there used to be hundreds of these...

Rothney Cross Telescope

Rothney Astrophysical Observatory

The Rothney Astrophysical Observatory is located just southwest of Calgary near the tiny community of Priddis. Owned and operated by the University of Calgary, it’s used as both a research and teaching facility and is home to a collection of telescopes of many forms, types and sizes. We’ll spend a...

Calgary Bow River

Urban Trek – Bow River Loop

Another adventure, this one an urban hike, which we did in the depths of winter but you can do anytime. A short “stroll” (for us), follow the Bow River making a loop of sorts where one travels down one side and up the other. Along the way we’re witness to...

Unfinished railway

Unfinished Railway Line Calgary

Unfinished Railway Line Calgary and file this under obscure. We’re looking at the roadbed remains of a Canadian Northern Railway branchline that was to break the Canadian Pacific Railway’s monopoly in southern Alberta. Some sections, including this one inside Calgary city limits and being encroached on by development, were built,...

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