On Monday June 17th, the weather remained somewhat unsettled. The wind had died down, but the skies were heavily overcast and it showered off and on. I couple of times the showers were rather heavy, and although the farmers were thrilled, we photographers were less than excited. On more than one occasion during the day, when we got out and walked through the tall grass, our feet quickly became soaked and our shoes filled with water.
On this day we headed from our rental apartment to the north and the east. It was another day of a lot of driving, with just numerous brief stops. I ended up with a lot of phone snapshots, but not nearly as much film exposed.
At one point we stopped in a small town with a large Roman Catholic Church. There was an old pulpit lying in the grass in front of the church and despite the showers, I just had to photograph it. A local resident, a fairly young man named Trevor, came over to see what we were doing. He explained that the church had once been across the road, but it was moved to make way for a new house, that he had recently purchased. The church was de-sanctified and no longer a religious building. Trevor asked us if we wanted to see the inside and both Chris and I eagerly said yes. I was sort of expecting that some of the original furnishings might remain but it turned out that it had been converted into a party church. Once a year or so, the locals hosted a jam night with live music and partied in the church. They had obviously spent a lot of time and effort in setting it up and we quite appreciated the opportunity to explore.
We made it all the way to the City of Moose Jaw and drove past the Canadian Airforce Base where the Snowbirds acrobatic aircraft team is based, before circling back in the general direction of our rented home base.
A couple of hours later we came upon a small town and stopped to check out the local hotel. Chris had previously reached out to them, but they had not responded. We had a beer and checked out the place and it had all the attributes that we were looking for. We quite enjoyed listening in on the conversation at a table beside us, where a young man and his father were arguing over the Moose Jaw Warriers WHL hockey team. We thought it might erupt into a fist fight, but they left before it escalated to that. Eventually we got up the nerve to talk to the owner and introduce ourselves. We inquired as to whether we could return the next day for a Beer Parlour Project outing. The owner was quite receptive, and we made tentative plans to return. But sadly the next morning, his wife texted us and cancelled the outing. It seems rather obvious who wears the pants in that family...!
I for one was more than a little discouraged as our trip had been a great success photographically, but the Beer Parlour outings were just not materializing. We drove past a number of old hotels on this day and took some snapshots from the exterior. Being Monday, some of them were not open. Others looked as though they were out of business, and had not been open for some time. Older owners are retiring and passing away, and the Covid pandemic was really hard on businesses like these.
In no particular order, here is a selection of phone snapshots that I took during our day of touring around. In addition to these, and despite the rain, I think I did at least eight or nine setups with the big view camera. I look forward to processing some of that film in the near future and will be posting scans of anything that turns out.
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