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Bad Dogs · The dogs are Prairie Dogs, which are interesting little rodents, and “bad” is about the Badlands. Two photos of Prairie Dogs in the Badlands near Drumheller, Alberta ...
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[4 comments]
Alberta Skies — School at Dorothy · Dorothy is a little place just out of Drumheller that is heading toward ghost-town status. This is a picture of its school under a stormy sky ...
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Alberta Skies — Showing Off · We were driving along the edge of the Red Deer River just outside Drumheller when we realised we had to pull off because the clouds were putting on a show for us and not holding any back, either ...
Alberta Skies — Distant Rain · There’s nowhere in the world with skies like the Canadian West; well, maybe the steppes of Russia, but I haven’t been there. I kept having to take pictures of the sky; on this occasion, the alternation of blue skies, distant squalls, and intense local storms brought the canvas continuously alive ...
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Alberta Skies — Incoming! · The best part of our recent Western Canada vacation swing — aside from those dinos, of course — was the storm-watching. Our ride through the mountains in Alberta was pretty sunny, but as we headed north toward Drumheller, the clouds got more and more and more threatening, and then the storm caught us ...
DotD: Elegantly Scary · The management of The Tyrrell are obviously quite taken with this dinosaur since it appears extensively in the crowd-pleasing lifesize models outside before which tourists pose in a hearteningly cheery way. I can’t remember what it’s called, but this fossil skeleton is featured in the main display hall with a combination of lighting and positioning effects so obviously designed to be scary that I had to try to go with the flow. I’m thinking Sigourney Weaver ...
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[8 comments]
DotD: Triceratops Mounted · Did I mention that Triceratops is my fave dino? Judging from the comments to yesterday’s Triceratops, Stegosaurus may be more popular among the readership here. But this is my blog, so here’s a nicely-presented Triceratops skull ...
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DotD: Triceratops Reflected · Today’s dinosaur is in the nicest room at The Tyrrell, a big softly-lit space filled elegantly with fossils ranging from big to huge. I didn’t manage a good general shot of the room, but this gives something of the feel ...
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[6 comments]
Dino of the Day — Eyes! · Our friend Sally from Australia is visiting, so in early July we took a seven-day drive around nice bits of Western Canada, notably including the badlands-and-dinosaur country of Southern Alberta. I’ll run some dinosaur shots over the next few days ...
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[2 comments]
Christmas Pictures · Another Christmas in the bosom of the family; we got all of Jean Bray’s children, their spouses, and her grandchildren together, which we don’t manage often enough, in Calgary. Like many others, I find with every year that passes that the people seem more important, the eating and drinking and so on less; but I got an outstanding present ...
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[5 comments]
Edmonton vs. Carolina · I was born in Edmonton and have roots there, thus I’m firmly partisan in the current Stanley Cup championship series; anyhow the notion of a championship hockey team from Carolina seems all wrong somehow. For connaisseurs of hockey and of fine writing you can’t beat Colby Cosh, who bleeds, uh, whatever colour corresponds to Edmonton. His hand-rolled duct-taped blogging system doesn’t extend to twenty-first century fripperies such as permalinks, but here are temporary links to his coverage of the five Edmonton-Anaheim games: 1 2 3 4 5. Cosh’s RSS feed doesn’t actually work to the extent of being able to click on the entries (in my aggregator at least) but I suspect his write-up on the current series will be definitive. He also serves as an existence proof that not all right-wing Albertans are parochial hicks. The first game just ended; the last-minute lapse was appalling, but if Hurricanes goalie Cam Ward stays that hot, the Oilers are toast anyhow.
FSS: Baldini Sunset · Friday Slide Scan #12 is a picture of a sunset near Fort Vermilion, Alberta, which is way up north. It’s by my Dad, and while it’s pretty nice, it’s not his best, not even his best sunset; but it’s the oldest I’ve scanned so far, dating from 1953 ...
Memory · Tuesday evening and Wednesday were in Edmonton, Alberta which, oddly, is kind of my hometown. I did a couple of lectures and took pictures and dealt with unexpected sorrow. In this fragment we spend some quality time with Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, consider whether electronic documents will outlive books or vice versa, and conclude with a conundrum ...
