A really great attraction to explore in Calgary, Alberta is Canada's Sports Hall of Fame. On a drive back from the mountains, my sister and I had some time to kill before meeting up with the rest of the family that afternoon. I suggested we stop by Canada Olympic Park to explore. Sure enough we stumbled onto Canada's Sports Hall of Fame.
For not knowing what to expect, the Hall of Fame was a really beautiful and impressive museum. It just opened last summer after beating out eight other cities for the opportunity to be the new home of the national facility. Not only that, Canada's Sports Hall of Fame is a great addition to the surroundings and history in Olympic Park.
The Sports Hall of Fame not only features Canada's Olympic successes, but highlights great athletes from every major sport. There's a wing specifically dedicated to hockey, as you might expect, but there's also Villeneuve's F1 race car, numerous Olympic medals and related memorabilia, historic jerseys, uniforms, and equipment, and plenty of interactive displays that allow you to engage with the exhibits.
We had a lot of fun testing our pitching speeds and having soccer shootouts in the digital projection booth. We also practiced our Olympic rowing in the Splash Gallery, and Alison shadow boxed with Lennox Lewis. Not only was the history fascinating, but there was lots to do which really highlighted the skill behind the achievements.
There's also something special about exploring the Hall of Fame in Olympic Park that heightens the nostalgia surrounding popular athletes and moments of national pride. We had a lot of fun that afternoon. I highly recommend checking out Canada's Sports Hall of Fame the next time you find yourself in Calgary, Alberta.
Just off of the Trans-Canada Highway in Redcliff, Alberta sits the final remnant of the Gemini Drive-In. I have a lot of memories going here with friends in high school between '98-'02 and catching the double and triple features. The theatre closed in 2005 though, and it's honestly a bit surprising to me that the screen is still there.
The original entrance, sign, concession building, and speaker posts have all been torn down now. A commercial fueling station for trucks sits where the original entrance used to be, and now a chain link fence surrounds the last remaining piece of the Gemini. The fact that the screen is still there is bitter sweet as it's a reminder of all the good times we had there, but it's just being left to rot away. I imagine it's expensive to tear down and no one really has any other use for the land at the moment.
My friend Tyler and I witnessed a similar scene after revisiting the Cinema 6 Drive-In near Regina, Saskatchewan. We had shot a short film there in 2007 outside of the closed area, but after returning to shoot some pictures last month, now only the sign remains. The rest of the site has been demolished. If the drive-in was already on its way out when I was a teenager, it seems that now it really is a thing of the past around these parts.
*Update - the screen was demolished in 2013.
That would be me on the front left side of the raft in the picture below. In fact, the first five people in the front of the raft are my family as we made our way down the Kananaskis River last weekend. This picture especially seems to capture just how lively our little weekend getaway ended up being.
After a trail ride on horseback that morning, we rounded out the Saddle & Paddle package by white water rafting with Inside Out Experience. For the most part the water was pretty manageable, but there were still some really fun rapids and we definitely got soaked. The freezing cold water seemed to produce just as much adrenaline as the rapids actually did. The scenery around Kananaskis was as beautiful as ever and the weather was great.
The parallels to our family getaway last year seemed apparent to all of us. In 2011 we took a jet boat up the South Saskatchewan River on a cold and rainy day that left us freezing, despite planning for a hot day. This year we took a raft down the Kananaskis on what did end up being a hot summer day, but by the very nature of the activity ended up freezing anyway. This time I didn't mind.
