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.All Trips / Alberta / Car Culture / Central Canada / North America
Gasoline Alley, Calgary: The Cars and Trucks
Besides its extensive collection of antique gasoline pumps and signs, Calgary’s Gasoline Alley museum has a fascinating assortment of cars and trucks! Many of these are unique, at least in my experience, as they were mostly collected from vehicles driven in Alberta. As such, you’ll see more trucks than at most car museums because trucks were (and still are) very important to Alberta’s economy.
What follows are several galleries of photos of my favorite vehicles in Gasoline Alley’s collection — far from everything! For the sake of organization and no other reason, I’ve divided them by year of manufacturing, the oldest first with newer vehicles to follow. I could just as easily have divided them by brand, trucks versus …
Tagged Calgary, car culture, cars, Gasoline Alley, trucks
“Pic of the Week”. May 2, 2014: Prairie crocuses, Calgary
Nothing says “spring has arrived” on the prairies more than the appearance of robins or the blooming of the prairie crocus. Crocuses are the first flowers to blossom on the plains each year after the snow’s gone. They’re the provincial flower of Manitoba and the floral emblem of South Dakota.
These photos were taken close to my home in Calgary (in Fish Creek Provincial Park) just a few days ago and are the first prairie crocuses I’d seen bloom for years. Prairie crocuses once were very prevalent across the central plains of North America but with the disruption of natural grassland (and its conversion to housing tracts and farmland), you’ll only see them occasionally. They’re beautiful and short-lived, so enjoy them …
Apr 30, 2014
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.All Trips / Alberta / Car Culture / Central Canada / North America
Cars of the Big and Small Screen. Hollywood comes to Calgary!
The exhibit was called: “Stars of the Big and Small Screen. See the Cars that were the Stars”…. and it was an interesting collection of American Steel. Free popcorn, guided tours, free movies (Herbie the Love Bug was playing the day I visited), costumes for kids to dress up in themed to go with the cars — it was designed to be a fun activity for a family. And it was fun!
Calgary has an automobile museum known as “Gasoline Alley” which is located in Heritage Park. I’d not visited this museum before but when I heard about this special Hollywood-themed exhibit (the first event rolled out for the 50th anniversary celebration of the park), I thought it’s time to be …
Tagged Calgary, car culture, cars, Gasoline Alley, Heritage Park
“Pic to the Week” Bonus. Bow River flooding in Calgary
This past week the Canadian Rocky Mountains were hit by severe rains, up to 8 inches (20 cm) in a day, that on top of a melting snow pack in the high alpine areas. This resulted in severe floods in Southern Alberta the likes of which no one can remember. Some say that in 1932 it might have been as bad, but this seems to be “the flood of a century”.
Canmore, gateway to Banff and the Canadian Rockies, was especially hit hard. The town is still to a large extent isolated because the Trans-Canada Highway coming and leaving the town is closed at both ends because of flooding and damage. Calgary was also hit with the flooding of the Bow …
.All Trips / Alberta / Central Canada / North America
The Calgary Stampede turns 100! “The Greatest Outdoor Show on Earth”
I like a party as much as anyone (well maybe not quite as much as some), and it’s fun to be part of a city-wide festivity. Every July Calgary shows the rest of Canada that it knows how to throw a bash! Of course I’m talking about the Calgary Stampede, “The Greatest Outdoor Show on Earth”. It’s a big event in Calgary, for that matter one of the biggest anywhere in North America, and Albertans really get into the spirit of it. During the 10 day duration of the stampede it attracts over a million visitors. This past summer was my first as a resident in Calgary and, as it turned out, also marked the 100th birthday …
