BP36.0 Ferintosh Hotel

On Thursday August 28th I blasted out to the airport, shortly after noon, and picked up Margarit, Hailey and Helena.  They were returning, two days late, from their trip to Austria.  The return flight was supposed to be on the 26th, but it was delayed due to an issue at the airport in Edmonton.  They were forced to return to Montreal that day, and spend two nights there, before eventually making it home.

Right after I dropped the girls off at home I loaded up my camera gear and hit the road.  Chris and I learned that the Ferintosh Hotel, in Ferintosh, Alberta, was going to be closing for good at the end of August.  We had made arrangements to visit it just before they shut down.  Sadly this got very rushed due to the late return of the girls.  But there was no option to re-schedule, so I headed out.  I met Chris at the hotel, and later Arturo and Camillo joined us for the evening.  We had a great evening visiting with everyone in attendance and taking a few portraits with the big camera.  This particular beer parlour was very dark, and I neglected to bring along my studio lights, so the photography was a little limited.  But I managed to shoot a bit.  A lot of photos were also taken with digital and smaller cameras.  Chris did the usual interviews with some of the people there.  Things wound down about 10:00 and I hit the road for home.  The next day I needed to be in Nordegg to meet my friend Mike, who was passing through from Calgary, on his way back home to Prince George.  He was picking up a dry mount press and print washer from the lot of darkroom equipment that I was selling.

Chris ended up staying for two nights at the hotel in Ferintosh.  The next night, Friday the 29th, was the big send off party.  A band was playing, and a lot of people were out.  Sadly I missed that part of the event, and of course, as a result, the big view camera was not there.  But our colleague Byron blasted out from Calgary and joined Chris and they made the best of it.  I guess it was pretty crazy and hectic keeping up to all the people and all the goings ons.  Hopefully the two of them got a bunch of digital photographs to round out the event.