Ewart-Duggan House in Medicine Hat

Considered to be the oldest brick home in the province of Alberta, the Ewart-Duggan house built in 1887 is located next to the Esplanade in downtown Medicine Hat.  It received designation as a provincial historic resource in 1993.  Much like the notoriety that Medicine Hat received for producing stoneware and a variety of domestic clay products, the city was also instrumental in producing industrial clay products, including bricks and pipes for the same reasons.

If you can picture that most of the town was made up of tents and wooden structures in 1887, this home would've been quite the landmark at the time.  The Ewart-Duggan residence now stands as an example of the regions history and economic roots, and celebrates its 125th anniversary this year. 

According to Archives Canada "In 1883, John Ewart moved west with the rails. He met Thomas Tweed in Winnipeg, and the two proceeded further west together, first by rail, then by horse and buggy. The two arrived in Medicine Hat before the CPR, and established a general store in a tent on the riverbank. The business was called "Tweed and Ewart".  John Ewart married Jessie Herald, the daughter of the local Presbyterian Minister James Herald [see my photos of St. John's Presbyterian Church here] in 1887. Their home, a red brick house now located at 433 1st Street SE, was also built the same year."  After the death of Mr. and Mrs. Ewart, their daughter Jacqueline and her husband Hector O. Duggan lived in the home.

See more of my Around the Hat photo series here.

Ewart Duggan home ca. 1910

Mr. Little's Noisy Car

As a kid, reading was a fairly common activity in our house.  Mom and Dad would take us to the library every few Sundays and we'd pick out books to read together.  Of course, before I was actually old enough to pick out books for myself, we did have a collection of books that I tended to gravitate towards.  My favorites included Richard Scarry's picture books, The Speedy Little Taxi, and Mr. Little's Noisy Car by Richard Fowler.

If my Jeeves and the Jaguar site or some of the very first video footage of myself hasn't proven it, my affection for cars has pretty much always been there.  It's what makes this clip even more special in a way.  I've held onto this cassette tape of my childhood recordings since I was a teenager, but until now haven't ever really shared any of it.  

I found the original Mr. Little's Noisy Car book at my parent's place and thought it would be cool to sync up the recording I have from 1986 of me reading through that book with my parents (when I was 2 years old), with me flipping through it now.  Seeing as I couldn't read much yet, you can tell how many times we'd looked at the book before as I know all the parts by heart.  The book also has a bunch of flaps to open, which made it that much more fun to go through as a kid.

Without further ado, here's a little bit of my childhood.

University of Regina Campus Snapshots 2

This is an additional series of shots from a photo set I snapped in the summer of 2007. After reviewing the first post I made from this collection, I realized that there were more pictures worth sharing.  In case you were wondering why I'd bother shooting all these pictures to begin with, the University of Regina was where I attended film school and I wanted to capture the campus that summer as I embarked on my final year there.