Historic Calgary Week: Pine Creek Cemetery / De Winton

Posted on August 4, 2013 by danocan

Historic Calgary Week is a project of the Chinook Country Historical Society, which is a branch of the Historical Society of Alberta.  Apparently this is the 23rd annual Historic Calgary Week, but I honestly never heard of it before this year.  In fact, I only found out about it because Emily and I picked up a brochure at the Frank Slide Interpretive Centre a couple weeks ago.

Between being out of town last weekend, a breakdown of the DanOCan Adventure Mobile and work prevented me from taking in any of the activities until yesterday when I was able to join in for a walk at the Pine Creek Cemetery near De Winton on the southern fringe of the city.

Actually, “southern fringe” is becoming less true every day.  There are new developments being built to the north and the east of the cemetery and the south and west sides are surrounded by a RV storage facility.  Urban sprawl and cookie-cutter soulless subdivisions are rapidly encroaching on this hidden gem. 

By my count there were more than forty people attending this walk.  They are all here for various reasons.  Some have long-lost relatives buried here, others have close family members who have been laid to rest here just recently.  Some are members of the cemetery’s operating board, members of the historical society, and some — like me — didn’t even know this place existed until they saw the event in the brochure.

I strike up a conversation with a fellow next to me.  He is a member of the Mountain Bluebird Trails society, which was another organization/initiative I had never heard of before.  They maintain the many nesting boxes you see hanging on fences along rural roads all throughout the southern portion of the province.  I love learning about things like that!

That was just the first of many facts I learned as part of the tour: 

  • Where the intersection of Macleod Trail and 210th Avenue is today was a key crossing and stopping point for the bull trains coming to Calgary from Fort Benton, Montana.  At one point there was a small settlement complete with general store and rooming house.
  • While the cemetery was established in 1889, the settlement of De Winton was not started until 1892. 
  • De Winton was established to be a railroad siding so trains could be broken down into smaller units so they could make it over the Pine Creek hills to the west and north. 
  • Despite some of the highway signs to the contrary, the proper spelling is De Winton, not DeWinton or Dewinton. 
  • All of the land surrounding the cemetery now belongs to the City of Calgary but the cemetery land belongs to the M.D. of Foothills because the City didn’t want responsibility for it. 
  • All of the maintenance of the cemetery is done by students from Red Deer Lake School.  They typically will mow the lawn three times per year. 

After the walk I couldn’t resist the urge to drive over to De Winton and visit the elevators and abandoned railcars there.,

 

Posted in History | Tagged , , , , | 10 Comments

Geocaching Souvenirs: British Columbia

Posted on August 2, 2013 by danocan

Continuing my series where I revisit each of the Geocaching Souvenirs I have earned and reminisce about how I came to earn it…

“Souvenirs are virtual pieces of art that you can discover and display on your   profile

page. They are associated with a particular location and may  also be  bound by time.”

My first cache in British Columbia was GCY3VC “Forum Lake” which I found on May 18, 2007.  The story started the previous September, however.

A posting on the local forums first brought this cache to my attention.  For eight months I watched the cache listing, hoping no one else would find it.  You see, it wasn’t enough for me to find this cache — oh no, I wanted to find it before anyone else.  I don’t know why, but the cache became an obsession for me. 

After watching and waiting all winter, I finally decided to make an attempt for it in May of 2007.  The hike started easily enough at the Akimina Pass trailhead on the Alberta side of the border.  There was some snow and a lot of mud but nothing unexpected or too concerning.  However, by the time I crossed over the border into British Columbia the story was rapidly changing.

Bare ground was getting harder to find.  The snow was more plentiful.  As the elevation increased the likelihood of reaching Forum Lake was diminishing with each step. 

There was a small ranger station about 1.5km from the cache.  By the time I reached there the snow was becoming a major factor.  It was often crusty enough I could stand on it but when I broke through the crust I would immediately sink up to my waist.  It was very tough going and anyone with more intelligence would have turned around and come back some other time.  Of course, you remember I mentioned this cache was an obsession for me, right?  I carried onwards and upwards.

 

 

There was no way of telling where the trail actually went, so it was pretty much a straight-line approach to the cache.  There was a small partially-frozen creek that needed to be crossed and some other route corrections along the way, but eventually Forum Lake came into sight. 

I was most relieved that the cache was hidden under some tree cover and the snow had melted away from the area making it an easy find.  Believe me, if I had to stay up there until the Spring thaw came before I could find this one I would have waited.  I’m sure glad it never came to that! 

The hike down was much more rapid as I was able to slide on the crusty snow and essentially toboggan down much of the way.  Back at the trailhead I was wet, exhausted, and deliriously happy.  It was my 20th “first to find”, my first cache in B.C. and one of my most memorable geocaching experiences to date.

Posted in Geocaching | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Geocaching Souvenirs: Nevada

Posted on May 6, 2013 by danocan

Continuing my series where I revisit each of the Geocaching Souvenirs I have earned and reminisce about how I came to earn it…

“Souvenirs are virtual pieces of art that you can discover and display on your profile

page. They are associated with a particular location and may also be bound by time.”

Sitting in the basement of the Regal Beagle pub during one of the original “Beer n Ribs” events back in 2006, I remember overhearing someone make a simple comment:  “Geocaching on the Vegas strip is incredible — the whole place is like one big Virtual cache!”  Hey, sounds good to me so let’s go to Vegas!

That Christmas I bought two plane tickets to Las Vegas, booked a room at the historic Boulder City Hotel and made plans for a mid-January four day weekend in the Nevada desert .  We flew out after work on a Wednesday and the next day started caching.

Nevada was just the second US state I Geocached in.  I’m not sure if this trip provided the spark for caching in as many different states as possible or not, but it certainly would become a bit of an obsession over the next few years. 

The first Nevada cache was DAM RAILROAD cache (GC1496).  I saw it show up on my old Garmin GPSMap 60C, which we were using for both Geocaching and on-road navigation at the time.  I pulled the rental Chrysler Sebring over to the side of the highway and walked about 200m to the cache which was easy to spot under a pile of rocks.  After a careful poke around to check for scorpions and other desert creepy-crawly creatures I soon had Find #572 in the bank.

We spent very little time in Vegas itself on that trip, instead focused on caching the surrounding area.  We would find an additional 38 caches that weekend and really enjoy the Nevada desert, especially considering we have left the Canadian January weather behind us.

As for the cache which officially earned me the Nevada souvenir?  Well, as of today it is still going strong and has been found 1380 times and has earned 45 Favorite points.  The cache owner (Pharmacache) appears to have gone dormant though — the account hasn’t logged onto the Geocaching site in more than a year and hasn’t logged a Find since the summer of 2007. 

Posted in Geocaching | Leave a comment

Geocaching Souvenirs: Netherlands

Posted on April 25, 2013 by danocan

Continuing my series where I revisit each of the Geocaching Souvenirs I have earned and reminisce about how I came to earn it…

“Souvenirs are virtual pieces of art that you can discover and display on your profile

page. They are associated with a particular location and may also be bound by time.”

I don’t like to admit it, but I haven’t had much of a chance to travel the world.  In fact, prior to 2006 I had only been on a plane three times.  Once in kindergarten when our class rode a Time Air plane over Coaldale, once when my Grade Three teacher awarded a short flight in her Cessna to some students who won a math competition (yes, kids, when we were little we actually didn’t consider competition a bad things and some people won and some people lost!) and finally when I flew from Calgary to Minneapolis for business in the mid-90s.  That was it.

So, in 2006 when we finally decided it was time to visit my father’s native country, a trans-Atlantic flight to the Netherlands was a huge deal.

The flight was a charter with Air Transat.  I won’t make that mistake again!  There was nothing wrong with the flight or the flight crew, but the seats were SO small.  I couldn’t even put the table tray down because it hit my stomach.  It was a very claustrophobic experience!

Once we arrived in Amsterdam we were fortunate that we had my cousin Arie hosting us.  Having someone who knew his way around and could speak the language certainly eased the transition for someone who had never left his continent before.

The trip was three weeks of non-stop sightseeing and entertainment.  We went to Keukenhof, toured a replica of the Batavia, camped near Arnhem, toured the Dom Tower of Utrecht, had a personal tour of a windmill, visited some work farms, ate cheese, toured the Amstel brewery, and also checked out the Open Air Museum.  In between we visited sites related to my family history, including the school and church attended by the Overes family as well as the site of their original family home.

One of my favorite moments was my cousin getting us access to the bell tower at his church.  While it involved climbing several sets of narrow stairs, a narrow catwalk, and a ladder, it was simply an incredible experience. 

So, as for the cache that allowed me to earn the Netherlands souvenir?  Well, it was a Multicache called Buitenplaats (GCH2RC).  It wasn’t the first cache we attempted, but it had the advantage of having an English translation so we could follow the instructions. 

We had to get the year a train bridge was built and then find count the number of “iron bends” at a second location.  The final was located in a nice wooden area.  We took my cousin’s youngest son with us and tried to explain caching to him.  Language was a bit of a barrier as he was still learning English and we knew very little Dutch.  As we were walking towards the final, I had the idea to switch my GPSr’s language into Dutch and then handed it to him.  Suddenly his eyes lit up and he got very into the hunt.  It was a great moment. 

Now, almost seven years later, this remains my only trans-Atlantic flight and my only Geocache find outside of North America.  I can’t wait to one day change that.

Posted in Geocaching | Leave a comment

Another Chicagoland Weekend

Posted on April 19, 2013 by danocan

The following was written at 10am on Monday, April 15 but technology and scheduling issues kept me from posting it until now:

If you were at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport right now, you would find me sitting between Gates G8 and G10.  I’m the guy next to the bank of payphones, not because I want to eavesdrop on conversations but because it happened to have an available power outlet. 

I’m the guy typing on my phone with the large pink bag at my feet.  Yes, there is a story there but you’ll have to read further on to learn what it is.

I was supposed to be at work right now.  A cancelled flight last Thursday put this entire weekend in jeopardy for a bit.  Since I didn’t get in until Friday morning, I had my flight changed to today instead of yesterday afternoon.  I like it better this way.

Friday morning I was standing outside vestibule 3D-LL, staring down the road waiting to catch my first glimpse of that familiar pale blue car coming to pick me up. 

Soon I see it and it stops at the curb.  The driver’s door opens and Emily steps out to pop the trunk.  My bags are tossed in, we share a quick hug and a kiss, and we jump back into the car.  Adventure starts now!

Our Friday evening consists of attending a wedding.  We laugh, we dance, we simply enjoy being with each other again.  Seeing two people share their love together makes us even more anxious for the day when it will be our turn.  Even while we celebrate one wedding, we talk about the plans for ours.

Saturday morning begins with breakfast at home and then a drive down to Wheaton, IL to visit Cantigny (http://www.cantigny.org), a park and mansion.  We manage to locate a Geocache on the grounds and also find a couple more on the way back. 

Saturday evening we ran a gimmick rallye.  It was my first experience doing such a thing and we had a great time.  We didn’t do all that well (ninth place out of twelve teams), but we did finish second in the beginner class.  It was a great relationship building exercise as you try and deal with large amounts of information in a limited time.

Sunday was another road trip day.  This time to Plano, IL to visit the Farnsworth House (http://farnsworthhouse.org).  Before getting to the house we stopped to do some more Geocaching, stopped to visit Emily’s horse, and just see what sights we could stumble across.

The Farnsworth House is a far cry from the Cantigy Mansion, but touring it actually took twice as long.  It was very interesting from a historical and architectural perspective.

We ate dinner at the Kendall Pub in Yorkville, IL before returning home to watch a movie.  After that it was just a matter of the inevitable packing and starting to deal with the emotions that the goodbye always brings.

Our time together always passes much too quickly, even though we marvel at how many memories and activities we can fit into such a short time.

The one good thing about only being together in a limited fashion is that we never take it for granted.  We know to cherish every moment, to revel in each other’s company, to fully immerse ourselves in our life together.

Oh, as for the pink bag?  In contains the most amazing metal fire engine, loving purchased in Michigan by Emily for me.  The pink bag is the only thing we had that was big enough to hold it.  Even that will become a precious memory as every time we look at that fire truck together we will remember all the great things we did this weekend and the time I carried a pink back from Chicago to Calgary.

Posted in Travel | Leave a comment