Springfest Film Shots

Back at the beginning of May the girls and I attended the Springfest down in East Coulee and really enjoyed all the musicians.  Earlier on my blog I posted a bunch of digital images of some of the performers, and outlined our experiences that weekend.  2019 was the 20th edition of the Springfest and the only regret I have is that we have only attended the last four or five, and missed out on all the earlier editions.  

In addition to shooting those digital snapshots at the festival, I also brought along a 35mm SLR and shot some film.  A month ago or so I processed the first couple of rolls of film.  This was the old standby Kodak Tri-X Pan 400, which I rated at 800iso due to the low light of the venues.  I tried to get a bunch of my friends from the Monochrome Guild to come down for the weekend and shoot the event with me, but they all bailed out.  More recently I scanned the negatives from that first couple of rolls.  I haven't had time to do much with those files yet, but earlier this evening I touched up these two, which are among my favorites.

The first is the lead singer from Black Cherry Perry's Mississippi Medicine Show, and the second is Glen Brown of Spur Crazy.....

Final Inspection

I booked last Friday off work so that I could head out to Nordegg and meet the Building Inspector.  My building permit expires on June 26th and I did not want to pay the fee required to extend it.  I headed out first thing in the morning and arrived before noon.  The inspector arrived about an hour later.  He went over all the safety requirements and confirmed that everything was acceptable, or at least in progress and acceptable to date.  I just need to continue with completing a couple of the items that were underway, and then all is good.  No further permits and no further inspections required.  It is sure nice to have that part of the project completed.  Now all the deadlines are done and I can just continue to chip away at the few remaining odds and ends at my leisure.  From now on I'm going to make a point of doing a lot more relaxing and a lot less work.

I stayed out for the rest of the weekend and puttered around on these last few items.  By the time I left on Sunday afternoon the two landings and steps at both exterior entrances were finished.  The only thing left to do is to install some sort of framing or panel to enclose the open sections of the railings.  I also need to install one more interior handrail... though I do have the brackets installed and ready.  I have a peeled pine log that I am in the process of drying and finishing which will be used for this purpose.  I also took the small wheels and casters off my gas barbecue and put some big spoked wheels on in their place.  This makes it a lot easier to move around in the gravel. 
I had a fire on Saturday evening, and wandered around a bit, over to the small nearby creek.  Also met some new neighbors that just bought a lot across and around the corner from us.  They are also from Edmonton and have just started clearing and excavation on their property.

I headed home a little earlier than usual on Sunday and actually hit the road by about 2:45 in the afternoon.  I arrived back in the city before 6:00.  June 23rd is our anniversary and this year Margarit and I celebrated 18 years by going out for dinner together.  Seems like it was just a few years ago that we were saying our vows and celebrating with a big BBQ and a whole bunch of friends.  Three kids and a bunch of years later and all is still going really well....!!

I sure hope that the girls can all start getting out to the cottage with me on a more regular basis.  Now that the bulk of the work is behind me, there is more time to relax and explore.

Game Camera Photos

Just before leaving the cottage on Father's Day I followed my usual routine and switched out the memory card from my game camera.  Last weekend I got a shot of the woodchuck, but otherwise the vast majority of the images are of the deer, with a few shots of squirrels, ravens and magpies mixed in.  I saw a herd of at least 13 elk one evening last February, but have not seen them since.  They are still around, though probably in smaller numbers, as from time to time they show up on the camera.  I also got a couple shots of some coyotes earlier this spring.  This time around I got a nice shot of a black bear.  This is the first time I have captured a bear with the camera.  We have not even seen any bear sign in a couple of years.  There were some grizzly tracks in the mud the spring after we cleared the lot, but since then I haven't seen anything.  I understand that two black bears have been sighted around the subdivision in recent weeks.  An adult female and a younger smaller male.  The young one is about a two year old and its speculated that his mother just sent him off on his own.  I suspect that the photo I captured is of the youngster.

Fathers Day in Nordegg

The clock is ticking and I have a deadline of late June to get the cottage substantially completed, so that I can have the final inspection done.  This is under the building permit that I purchased two years ago.  We can pay to extend the permit if we want to, but as we are so close, I've decided to put a push on and wrap things up.  I've requested the final inspection and am just waiting for the permit company to schedule the date.  In the mean time I'm trying to get the last couple of things wrapped up.  All that I have left to do, from the point of view of the permit, is to build a landing and steps at each of the two entrances, and install a hand rail on the upper stairs.

I got a good start on the first landing last weekend, and for the Fathers Day weekend I brought out more material and continued.  Hailey had to work and Margarit had to drive her...  this is beginning to sound like a broken record.  This past week I signed up Hailey for driving lessons with the Alberta Motor Association.  Classroom sessions start in early August, followed by 20 hours of on the road training.  Once that wraps up she will be able to take her road test and hopefully get her license.  She has to wait until October... a year after getting her Learners license.  The great procrastinator didn't bother to get her Learners when she turned 14 and only finally got it when she started her job.  The rules require a one year waiting period between the Learners permit and a class 5 license.  Once she can drive for herself, Margarit will finally be able to stop playing chauffeur.

I got up early on Saturday morning, after the football game, and hit the road.  I was out at the cottage by about 11:00AM.  The other two girls didn't want to come so I ended up spending Fathers Day working by myself.  It was very quiet out there and none of the nearby neighbors were around.  It rained off and on through the day, but the landing that I was working on was fairly sheltered and it didn't really slow me down.  Later in the early evening the clouds opened up and we got a bit of a downpour.  My weather station recorded over 8mm of rain for the day, and over 50mm so far in June, so needless to say it is rather muddy and wet out there.  Later in the evening the sky broke open and the sun began to shine so I went out for a walk.  It was beautiful, but very shortlived.  I only got about a quarter mile down the drive when the clouds rolled in and the rain opened up again.  I made a quick retreat back to the cottage and settled in for the night. 
Sunday was warmer and mostly sunny, with no rain.  I managed to get the trim flashing and stone veneer on most of the north side of the cottage.  I also built most of the landing and railing at the second door.  I just need to install the decking and steps to this one, and I will be done.  I'm not sure exactly what is required in the way of closing in the railings, and in terms of a handrail on the steps.  I will wait for final inspection and see what options the inspector offers me.  I would like to keep it as simple and open as possible.  I understand that as long as I have the work in progress and the materials on site, that the final inspection can be signed off.

Edmonton Eskimos

The first regular season game of the 2019 Canadian Football League season for the Edmonton Eskimos was on Friday June 14th.  The team has changed a lot from last year.  Last year the team finished with a .500 record but didn't make the playoffs.   They didn't have the opportunity to win their way in to the Grey Cup, which we hosted here at Commonwealth Stadium.  It was painful to go to that game last fall and watch Calgary win the championship.  Then our franchise quarterback left in free agency, along with a bunch of other players.  We have a new quarterback, Trevor Harris, formerly of the Ottawa Redblacks, a whole bunch of new players, and a new defensive co-ordinator.  I'm optimistic that the team will do better this year.

It was the usual drill... Hailey was working, and Margarit had to drive her.  The other two girls didn't feel like going, so I went by myself.  It's a pretty comfortable environment as we have had our season seats for about four years now, and most the regulars around us are season seat holders as well.  It often is real party environment.

This particular game was kind of laid back and slow paced.  Or maybe it was me just not getting into it at the beginning, after a long week at work and fighting a bad cold.  Our Edmonton Eskimos were playing the Montreal Alouettes.  Montreal has struggled the last several years with the ownership turning the team over to league control for this season.  The head coach was fired just before this game, and the assistant coach took over.  They finished in last place in 2018 and the expectation was that Edmonton should have an easy victory.  We won the game, but it wasn't easy and Montreal put together a drive that saw them tie the game 25-25 with just over two minutes remaining.  The Eskimos rallied and marched the ball down the field to score the winning touchdown for a 32-25 victory, with only seconds left.

Tom Cochrane played the half time show and belted out three of his biggest hits.  Like all of us, he is getting older and I was a little surprised at how he's aged.  I know it has been quite a while since I've seen him.  He started out playing his first song with a Takamine acoustic guitar just like mine, before switching to a hollow body electric after that.  Late in the game one of the team mascots, Nanook, came up into our section.  He was hamming it up with all the fans and for a while sat down right beside me.

More work at Nordegg

I headed back out to Nordegg on the weekend of June 8 and 9.  Once again this was a solo trip.  I wasn't able to get away until Saturday morning.  The day had a great start as I spilled a hot cup of black coffee all over myself when I stopped at the drive through on my way out of the city.  

It was rather cool and rainy on the Saturday afternoon after I arrived at the cottage.  It had rained a bit in the days before I went out, and with cold temperatures at night, it turned to snow at higher elevations.  Tne nearby peaks were all dusted with fresh snow when I arrived on Saturday morning.

I unpacked some materials that I had brought along and set about to working on a few things.  Mostly this was the installation of some stone veneer panels on my foundation, and the construction of a landing at the entrance.  By late afternoon some showers rolled in and as the temperature dropped this turned to snow pellets and slush.  I was forced to abandon my outside work and did some stuff inside for the rest of the day.  It did let up enough for my to grill a couple of burgers for supper that evening.  I spent some time inside practicing guitar and puttering on a few chores.  Weather conditions were nicer on Sunday and I was able to continue working outside.  I completed the installation of the stone veneer to the east side of the cottage, and got the main structure and footings of the entrance landing completed.  I visited for a while with my neighbor Jess, who is building a rather unique cottage down the drive, next door to our friends Shelly and Eric.  By early evening I had to hit the road for home.  It is somewhat depressing that my life is scheduled based on fitting all of the things that I want to do, around the schedule of my job that I have to do.  Really looking forward to the day that I can retire.

On Saturday afternoon while I was working I noticed a rather large rodent hanging around one of my woodpiles.  It was a chocolate brown color and initially I wasn't sure if it was the pine marten, or a woodchuck.  I got some photographs of it and took a closer look later.  I'm virtually certain it was a woodchuck as it is too stocky and thick, and not slender enough to be a pine marten.  

I also changed over the memory card in my game camera.  When I got home to the city I checked all the images that had been recorded over the past several weeks.  It seems the deer come around on almost a daily basis.  There is a group of females, plus a separate group of bucks that are now sporting little velvet covered nubs of new antlers.  And the elk, even though I never see them, do wander by from time to time and get captured by the camera.  I even got a shot of the woodchuck on one of the frames.

Crowsnest Pass - Day Four

We got up early on the morning of Monday June 3rd.  After breakfast we tidyed up and packed all of our gear and checked out of the rental house.  We made another stop at the Greenhill mine site and spent a little more time photographing here.  I had missed the opportunity to get to the compressor building when we stopped here the first time, so I got back to shoot it this time around.  After an hour or so here, we headed down the valley to a spot between Blairmore and Frank.  Here there was a flooded area near the railway line and the Crowsnest River where there were a number of dead trees with stark, bleached trunks and limbs, mostly still standing.  We wandered around down here for a bit and took some photographs.  While we were wandering around two CP freight trains blasted by us... one of grain cars and the second of oil tankers.  We were standing on the edge of the tracks, just beyond the gravel ballast when these two behemoths rattled by.  There was a cold sulphur spring gushing out of the base of Turtle Mountain and draining into the nearby Crowsnest River.  This seemed to have created the marshy area where these flooded dead trees now stood.  We photographed here for awhile and by about 9:30 or so, Arturo and Sharon met up with us.  Arturo is admittedly not a morning person and struggled to get up and out with the cameras throughout this trip.  He has no issues with staying up into the wee hours.  Fortunately I am able to do both....

By mid morning the light was quite favorable and by this point, the smoke from the forest fires was gone.  We headed back over to Frank Slide and tried to re-photograph this area under more favorable lighting conditions.  Still later we headed over to the town of Bellevue, thinking that some of the old historic buildings there might be in favorable light as well.  There really was only one old cafe that was photographically interesting to me and I shot it with the big camera before we eventually moved down the road once again.  We returned to the Monarch Tipple, and with much better light than a few days earlier, we spent some time shooting here.  This would be our last stop of the day and we spent some time here before eventually hitting the road for home.  It was nearly a six hour drive back to Edmonton and it was with somewhat heavy hearts that we had to pack up and leave.  We did make a stop for a late lunch in Okotoks and had one last opportunity for us all to visit a bit before we made the final push back home.  It was mid evening before we got back to my house and everyone unloaded their gear and set off in their own directions.  An end to the beginnings of our historic documentary project and a great weekend of friendship, photography and camaraderie.  I look forward to getting out with this group again to continue on our project.

Crowsnest Pass - Day Three

Day Three in Crowsnest Pass started out with a lot of promise.  We connected with Chris and Connie on the morning of Sunday June 2.  We were heading up to Crowsnest Lake, at the Alberta, British Columbia border.  Chris had been in contact with the owner of the old Power Generating Plant.  This was a huge brick building on the shores of the lake that once generated power for the area.  We had permission to go in and check it out.  I understood that the equipment in the building was long gone, and only the shell remained standing.  We parked on the road by the lake and walked in to the site.  The old roadway was disturbed by fresh tracks and activity.  We quickly relaized that the plant was gone... totally demolished, with nothing left but a small pile of rubble pushed into the bush.  We could not understand why the owner had given us permission to go in to a building that was no longer there....  Perhaps he was annoyed at being bothered about it...?  Or perhaps he misunderstood and thought we just wanted access to the property...?  Chris has never met the owner in person but we believe him to be quite elderly, so perhaps he is just a little confused...?  In any event our visit to the power plant was not to be, which put a real damper on the day.
We did stop at the old Dance Hall on the shore of Crowsnest Lake.  It is badly deteriorated and vandalized and is not particularly photogenic.  Some efforts have been made to brace it against its eventual collapse, but that was done several years ago, and no further attempts have been made at repair or restoration.

We headed back into the town of Coleman and attempted to access the remaining buildings at the coal handling site along the railway tracks.  The big tipple was torn down several years ago and I've never seen it except in pictures.  The remaining buildings included some maintenance shops, office building, wash house, coke ovens, etc.  Last time we were in the area in 2016 the site was unsecured and we were able to wander around.  This time the site was all fenced off and locked.  It seems a private enterprise purchased the facility.  It appears this was mostly for access to the Crowsnest River, which passes through the site as there are now campsites there, and these are all rented out to RV's.  The area around the old buildings seems to be mostly a storage compound for RV's and machinery.  Even if we could have gained access to the site, it was not very photogenic with all that clutter around.  We did attempt a few shots of the coke ovens before moving on.  

On a hill above town there is a shell of a building that Chris says was the power distribution building for the mine operations.  It looked more like a maintenance shop to me as there was a large overhead chain hoist and some floor pits in the building.  But I'll take Chris' word for it as he is very familiar with the area and has done a lot of research on the mining industry.  We photographed here for a while before moving on once again.

Chris knew of a secondary road that wound its way through the rubble at the base of the Frank Slide and that was our next stop.  We wandered around here for a bit and marvelled at the sheer mass of rock that had cascaded down off of the face of nearby Turtle Mountain, over a hundred years ago.  This was the largest rockslide in Canadian history and it remains largely unchanged from the time when it happened.  We photographed here for a bit and then moved on down the road to a place called Lime City.  Here there were the remains of some large kilns that processed the limestone from the Frank Slide rubble, into cement, mostly for making concrete.  A certain amount of the lime was also used as dust suppression in the coal mines.  By this point I was getting a little worn out from the heat and from dragging around my big camera all weekend.  I was also getting a bit red and sunburnt on my arms.  I retreated to the shade, and took a shot of the kilns, while the others wandered around a little more extensively.  This was our last stop of the day and once we finished up here we retreated back to the tavern at the Greenhill Hotel in Blairmore for another couple of fifteen dollar jugs of draft beer.

By this time it was late afternoon so we headed over to a nearby pizza place for dinner.  We all enjoyed one last visit together, and a big feed of pizza.  Once dinner was finished, Chris and Connie had to hit the road back to Calgary.  The rest of us were staying in the area for one more night.

Crowsnest Pass - Day Two

We all slept in a bit on the morning of Saturday June 1st.  We were up by around 7:30 or 8:00 and out the door and ready to start exploring by 9:00.  The rental house was very comfortable and a great place to spend a weekend.  Considering that the cost was being split between three of us, it was less expensive than separate hotel rooms, and provided much more space and comfort.  It also gave us the option of using a fully set up kitchen, so that we didn't have to eat all of our meals in restaurants.  

After a quick breakfast at the house we set out to meet the others.  We got together with Arturo and Sharon and Chris and Connie and headed over to the Greenhill mine site near Blairmore.  Sharon worked on some sketching and painting while the rest of us explored and made photographs.  The site has not changed a lot from the last time I was there, with the exception of the lamphouse, which is now gone.  Evidence suggests it burnt and whatever remained was likely demolished and hauled away.  The tipple remains as does the compressor building and the wash house.  The wash house was reinforced and secured a few years ago.  The clay block walls are open on top and these were covered with tarps several years ago, and remain that way.  The roof is long gone, so these walls are exposed and slowly deteriorating.  We spent a good part of the day here photographing and exploring.  The wind had switched around to the west and this was beginning to clear out the smoke.  It continued to improve through the weekend and even by the end of the day Saturday was almost gone.

Later in the afternoon we drove up the road to the Greenhill winch house.  This building had some large winches that were used to run a tramway up and down the mountain to bring down coal.  The tram line is long gone but the winches and motors remain, in a somewhat vandalized state, in this old building.

Still later Chris took us for a drive up behind the Frank Slide area.  We had to hike in to a site that Chris was aware of, but had not seen in person before.  It was a fan house.... a very interesting stone building with a very large fan assembly.  This was originally used to blow ventilation air down into the mine shaft.  It was quite hot by this point in the afternoon and the skies had cleared.  I think it got up to over 25C, and I even got a touch of sunburn on my arms.  We were all getting a bit fatigued by the heat and the climb up the hill to this site with heavy camera gear.

We headed down into Blairmore after that and made a stop at the Greenhill Hotel.  As a child growing up Chris had stopped here many times with his parents.  He and his siblings had always waited in the car while his parents went into the tavern for a couple of beers.  But Chris had never been into the tavern himself... so this would be the day.  It was a very old school kind of place.  You could order any kind of draft beer you wanted, as long as it was Budweiser.  At $15 a jug, and on such a hot day, there were no complaints.  We polished off a couple of jugs before heading on our way.  A quick stop at the grocery store allowed us to pick up some supplies for a barbecue.  Then we all headed up to the rental house and put together a big meal of steaks, chicken, baked potatoes, corn on the cob and salad.  It was a pretty good feed and was all washed down with more beer, some wine and a little fine scotch.  We stayed up and visited well into the evening before eventually retiring in preparation of the next days adventure.

Crowsnest Pass - Day One

Early on the morning of Friday May 31st, I set out with a couple of my friends from the Monochrome Guild.  I had two days booked off from work [Friday and Monday} and we had a vacation home rented for the weekend, down in Coleman.  Nigel and Court were traveling with me that morning, and later in the evening we would meet up with Arturo.  We are involved in a historical documentary project and will be photographing the remains of the coal mining industry in the province of Alberta.  This is a small project being undertaken by some of the members of the Monochrome Guild.  Other Guild members are involved in other projects.  Our friend Mark is also involved in this project, but he was unable to join us for the weekend.

There are several large forest fires burning in northern Alberta.  The largest is the Chuckegg fire burning up near High Level.  Smoke from that fire has drifted as far south and east as Montana, the Dakotas, and Wyoming.  Heavy smoke rolled into Edmonton on the afternoon of May 29th and by the time we hit the road on the 31st, it had covered the entire province.  It was very heavy all the way down to southern Alberta and Crowsnest Pass.  When we arrived at our destination, just after lunch, the smoke was so thick that we couldn't even see the mountains.
We stopped briefly at the Leitch Collieries Historic site, at the east end of Crowsnest Pass.  The remains of some old mining building are preserved here.  Mostly we stopped to review some of the interpretive information and get a feel for the history of the Pass.

Our next stop was in Hillcrest.  In 1914 there was an underground explosion in the Hillcrest Mine that killed nearly 200 miners.  It is the largest mine disaster ever to have occurred in Canada.  I found it somewhat ironic that it is within site of the largest rock-slide ever to have occurred in Canada.  The Frank Slide occurred about a decade earlier and but for the smoke would have been visible above Hillcrest.  We spent some time in the cemetery photographing the graves from the disaster.  There were a couple of mass graves in which most of the miners were laid to rest.  I'm not sure if these were all marked initially, but if not, they have been in recent years.  Most of the graves are now fitted with headstones or nameplates.

Later in the afternoon we stopped at the Monarch Tipple in Bellevue and photographed the ruin of this structure.  It has deteriorated somewhat and been tagged with a lot of new graffiti since my last visit in 2016.

Once we finished up shooting in Bellevue we headed west up the valley to Coleman.  To our disappointment the main street in Coleman was barricaded and dug up for some utility work.  This prevented us from being able to photograph any of the old buildings in town.  By early evening we headed up to our rental house in Coleman and checked in.  We unpacked our gear and settled in, but not without a little adventure.  The breeze swung the locking interior door shut on us, and we had left the only set of keys and our cell phones inside.  But, this interior door had the butt hinges exposed and we were able to pull the hinge pins and get in.  We were a lot more careful about the keys after that little incident.

My friends Chris and Connie from Calgary were also out for the weekend.  We were calling upon their expertise and knowledge of the area to assist with our project.  Chris and Connie write the bigdoer.com website and I have been out with them many times in the past.  We all went out for dinner together in town before settling down for a nice visit after that.  Arturo arrived later in the evening and we connected with him, and his wife Sharon, for a little while before calling it a day.

Smoke from a Distant Fire

This was the scene in Edmonton back on May 30th.  In the afternoon a pall of smoke rolled into town and choked out the sun.  It was very orange in the afternoon and had sort of a post apocalyptic feel to it.  This was all from forest fires burning up in northern Alberta.  The biggest one was the Chuckegg Creek fire burning up near the town of High Level.   The 5000 residents in the area were evacuated at one point, but have since been allowed back home.  The fire is not under control yet, but has now burned away from the town.  I'm not sure what the size of the burned area is, but at one point it was something like 23,000 square kilometers.  It is extremely dry up in northern Alberta and despite the fact that southern parts of the province have seen some rain, the north has not.  This is just the largest of several fires burning and there are around 8 to 10 more that are considered out of control, plus a number of other small ones.  I took two of these snapshots behind my shop in the afternoon, when the sky was extremely orange.  Normally the skyline of the city would be available in the distance but on this day the visibility was less than a quarter mile.  Later in the evening, the orange cast disappeared and it just turned grey and became very acidic.  The parking lot shot was taking in the evening at Southgate Mall.  There are some highrise apartments just beyond the parking lot that are virtually invisible due to the smoke.  The smoke lingered for a few days and then with shifting winds it ended up clearing in the city.