DanOCan

It’s Just a Fence, Right?

Posted on May 1, 2017 by danocan

With work taking up a lot of my time lately, I haven’t been able to get out and do a lot of new exploration. I’m going to try and revisit some old trips or ideas and use those as a source of new material until I get a chance to do some road trips again.

Today’s post was inspired by a fence I walked by in the Calgary community of Bowness in March of 2017.

I walk by the fence. I hardly notice it at first. After all, it’s just a fence, right?

Something draws me back to it. I take out my cell phone and snap a photo. I’m sure if any of the neighbors witnessed me taking the picture they must have asked themselves what I was up to. Why would anyone be interested in an old fence? After all, it’s just a fence, right?

Maybe it wasn’t the fence that drew me in. Maybe it was the lot sitting behind the fence. A lot covered in brown grass and weeds and piles of dirt. Maybe it wasn’t all the things present on the lot but what wasn’t on the lot. There was no house. Just an empty expanse where, undoubtedly, a house once stood.

Yes, it must be the emptiness of the lot that brought my attention to the little fence. As I stand in the morning sunlight and gaze at the fence, I begin to wonder about the story behind the fence.

Obviously at some point this was someone’s yard. Someone’s house once stood on this spot. This fence, now with missing pickets and peeling paint was once a source of pride for someone. Someone took the time to build it and to maintain it. What stories could it tell us? I can imagine an old man carefully applying coats of white paint to it while his wife sits in a porch swing sipping lemonade, contently watching him work away. That vision fades and is replaced by that of a sullen teenager, begrudgingly slapping paint on the fence, all the while wishing he was somewhere else. Or, perhaps, a father and son, working away in the July heat carefully hammering in nails to keep the pickets attached.

Does the fence represent a happy memory for someone? How could it? After all, it’s only a fence right?

Perhaps the home was occupied by a young boy and, upon seeing the girl from his class that he has been anxious to talk to walking down the street, he rushed out of his front door and jumped over the fence to catch her before she got too far down the street.

I think to myself that this fence must have many stories it could tell.

I search Google Street View to see what was here before. The first image was captured in September of 2007. The fence looks much like it does now, except there is a row of overgrown bushes growing along its length. Some time between April 2009 and May of 2012 those bushes were removed, leaving the fence more exposed and exposing the empty the lot behind it. There will be no clues as to what was here.

I walk away from the fence and casually glance down at the photo on my phone. How is it possible that such a simple fence captivated my attention? I think to myself “Maybe I can make a blog post about it one day.” I chuckle and think “Nah, there’s no way — after all, it’s just a fence, right?”

Posted in History | 4 Comments

Arrowwood – The Video

Posted on April 18, 2017 by danocan

Given how little drone footage we took in Arrowwood last week, the resulting video is pretty short and is mainly composed of still images, some of which I used in my original post. Regardless, you can check it out on YouTube.

Posted in drone, Photography, Travel | Tagged Alberta, Arrowwood, Canada | Leave a comment

A Quick Trip to Arrowwood

Posted on April 16, 2017 by danocan

“Couple visits small town in Alberta and what they found missing will shock you…”

Oh, if only I could bring myself to use clickbait-style headlines like that! Anyway, on to the article…

On Good Friday, Emily and I found ourselves with a mutual day off — something that seeming hadn’t happened in forever. Naturally we decided to take advantage of the opportunity and load up the dog, drone, and camera gear in the car and head off to Arrowwood.

While the main purpose of our trip was to replace our Geocache which had gone missing a few months ago. With the sudden increase in the price of gas, combining trips is going to be important this summer.

Some background on the town from one of the signs in the park:

The name Arrowwood is derived from the bushes that grow along the east and west Arrowwood Creeks. Construction of the first grain elevators and CPR station started in 1924 and the railroad arrived in town on June 22, 1925 when the line was completed from the east. Arrowwood was incorporated as a village in 1926 and reached a population of 500 in the late 1920s. The rail line closed in 2002 although some of the elevators had started disappearing before then. At one point, there were seven elevators in Arrowwood.

We think Arrowwood is a great little town — it has a water tower, a grain elevator, a couple of old churches which have been converted into private residences, and a cute little Co-Op store.

Well, it HAD a cute little Co-Op store. One of the first things we noticed upon turning onto Main Street was that the store was gone! Yes, it had been closed when the new Co-Op opened along Railway, but we certainly did not expect to see the old store destroyed, especially because it appeared to be in decent shape.

I had to try my hand at a BigDoer.com-style “Then and Now” shot. Using a photo of the Co-Op I had taken in November of 2015 on my phone, I did my best to line up the shot. Not only is the building gone, but the retro-style lamp which was standing guard over the solo pump is also now missing. I hope someone salvaged it rather than it ending up in a landfill somewhere.

November 2015 (top) and April 2017 (below)

Another interesting thing in Arrowwood is the section of old siphon which is housed in a small wetland park near the southeast corner of town.

A Section of the original siphon

According to the sign in the park, water from the Bow River near Carseland is moved through a canal to McGregor Lake for irrigation purposes. To get the water across the West Arrowwood Creek valley, a siphon was used. Apparently the first siphon was built in 1936 and a second one was added parallel to the first one in 1951 to increase the capacity. The original siphons were both replaced by a concrete siphon in 1991. A piece of the original wooden version was donated to the Arrowwood Restoration Society and placed in this park.

Emily and Tucker in the siphon

The sign mentions the siphons were located 7km northwest of Arrowwood. On a previous trip we drove around trying to see if we could spot the new concrete version but were unsuccessful. The sign also mentions another which carries (present tense!) water across the East Arrowwood Creek valley to the northeast of town. Two more things which require further investigation!

On a side note, there used to be a wooden siphon northeast of the town of Vauxhall which was replaced by a canal in the mid-90s. Somewhere I have some pictures of it as it was being demolished but I can’t seem to find them. That was also a Bow River Irrigation District project and was likely done as part of the same program that replaced these ones near Arrowwood. The timeframe certainly fits.

That’s all I have time for right now as I need to leave for work soon. The wind was very strong so I didn’t get much drone footage, but I did capture a few seconds of the grain elevator. Once I get done with the edits I’ll put it up on the YouTube page.

Main Street is quiet on Good Friday

I can’t resist photographing phone booths when I see them, especially when they still have a phone inside!

The last remaining elevator in town

Posted in Geocaching, History | Tagged Alberta, Arrowwood, Canada, Co-Op, grain elevator, siphon | 4 Comments

Badlands — the Video

Posted on April 3, 2017 by danocan

Finally! It took multiple attempts to get this together after Windows Movie Maker kept crapping out on the clip of Wayne for some reason. I had to split the video in two, compile each half separately and then put the two compiled versions together and compile yet again. After spending about four hours on Sunday putting together the final version, I was not going to let some technical glitch stop me.

Last night I uploaded it YouTube (not published publicly) and showed it to Emily. That’s when I discovered that when I split the original Movie Maker project in two, I only cut the video track, not the audio. That resulted in the second half of the video having the same soundtrack as the first half. Simply unacceptable! So, I had to do the whole process again and then upload it one more time.

Despite the technical glitches, I am quite happy with it. As I have mentioned many times before, I am doing this blog with zero budget so I rely heavily on free tools like Windows Movie Maker.

I love the Dorothy footage. It is such a shame that the roof blew off because now it is only a matter of time before the elements claim the old girl. You can see as I fly overhead how rotted things are up top. I have to admit, being able to see inside the elevator from above does make for some haunting footage, hence the tone I decided to assign to that portion of the video.

Posted in drone, History, Travel | Tagged abandoned, Alberta, Atlas Coal Mine, Badlands, Big Valley, Canada, church, Dorothy, Drumheller, Last Chance Saloon, Rosedeer Hotel, Rowley, Wayne | 5 Comments

Another Badlands Trip

Posted on April 2, 2017 by danocan

Last weekend we made one of our semi-regular trips out to Rowley, Alberta for pizza night at Sam’s Saloon. I won’t go into great detail about pizza night. Let’s just say it is a “must do” Alberta experience. If you want to read a great account from one of our pizza nights last year, check out the link to Johnnie Bachusky’s article which you can find on my In The Press page.

We took our trailer out to Rowley on Friday evening and camped out in a field in town. There was a lot of water around so our choice of space was quite limited, but not many people are camping in late March so it wasn’t an issue.

On Saturday, we set our targets as Dorothy, Wayne, and Big Valley — with a stop at the Atlas Coal Mine for good measure. The goal was to capture some drone footage of the various sites. I had my first minor incident with the drone as I backed it into a small tree at the Atlas Coal Mine but fortunately it didn’t fall to the ground and the only damage was a gouge out of one of the propellers. I had spare ones with me so it was a quick fix and then I was back in the air.

The crash hasn’t been my only issue in terms of this posting. I spent about four hours today putting together a video from my footage but when I attempt to render it out into a final movie, Windows Movie Maker crashes and tells me one or more of my videos are corrupt. I’m not convinced that they are because I can play the raw clips on my computer just fine. Ah, the joys of using crappy software on a low-end PC. So, you may or may not get to see the results of my efforts. If I can get it to work I will post it on YouTube and provide a link.

And, one other bit of housekeeping. I started a new job last week so my time for exploring and blogging is going to be severely limited. While it’s unfortunate that this had to happen just as I was starting to feel danocan.com was gaining a little traction and the weather was turning nice, one cannot turn down the opportunity to earn some money, especially when the new job has the potential to be something I really enjoy.

Posted in drone, Travel | 5 Comments