Category: History

Sicamous to Hinton via the Icefields Parkway

From Sicamous, there are two reasonable routes to Hinton – the one through Kamloops and north on Hwy 5 is 658 km, the other up the Icefields Parkway through the heart of the Rockies is 53 km shorter, though it takes about the same time, or longer if you’re...
Read More

Going deep at the Britannia Mine Museum

One of the biggest challenges that most museums have is visibility. How do you get your museum to stand out among the clutter of life, or even among other museums? That, however, is not a problem for the Britannia Mine Museum. Anyone who drives the spectacular Sea to Sky...
Read More

Exploring Stewart, BC and Hyder, Alaska

I reached Stewart at 3:00 pm on Easter Sunday. Although very quiet, I was surprised by the amount of activity – I didn’t know that several mines are in exploration, development of production phases. This hoist is moving containers on the trailers, I think to increase axle loadings now...
Read More

To coal mining country in the Alberta Rockies

Yesterday was supposed to be an at-home day. No, really, it was – I was just going out for groceries! After putting a few bags of food in the trunk, I decided to go a few miles and get photos of some highway signs for my files, like this...
Read More

History and renovations fill my days

After the very long, very warm spell of weather, we’ve started to drop back down to normal temperatures – it’s currently -15°C (+5°F), a nice mild day in a normal January. We have a lot of sunshine forecast for the next week, and I hope to be able to...
Read More

Early Yukon motoring

With the weather not very conducive to Adventures lately, the vast majority of my time is being spent on house renovations. But History is always part of my life, and I’ve spent a bit of time going through my files of old newspaper articles. A couple that caught my...
Read More

Finding Ruth Lake – the conclusion

In my last post, Monty and I had had an excellent day exploring along a long-abandoned section of the White Pass & Yukon Route railway, but I’d been unable to confirm the exact location of the scene on a century-old playing card showing “Ruth Lake”. On Thursday, my fur-buddy...
Read More

The History Hounds, sniffing around the White Pass railroad

It’s funny how sometimes a subject or a person that hasn’t been in your life for quite a while will all of a sudden appear over and over in a short period. This past week, that subject was the White Pass & Yukon Route railway. It actually began with...
Read More

Exploring WP&YR railway history in Skagway

We continue to have a wonderful Fall (or Early Winter), and on Monday, with a fairly good weather forecast for both Whitehorse and Skagway, I decided to take a drive to Skagway. I was away from the house just before the 09:15 sunrise, expecting some good light on the...
Read More

Exploring Mission Santa Barbara, California

I may be back home in the Yukon now, but my head is still in California 🙂 We spent Friday seeing more of Santa Barbara, with the main destination for the day being the historic Mission. Mission Santa Barbara was founded by Franciscan Padre Fermín Lasuén on December 4,...
Read More