Calgary Heritage Village

Tuesday July 19th

Another sunny hot day in Calgary. We're going to the Heritage Park Historical Village in Calgary. It's an open air museum. With houses, businesses, machinery, Fair ground amusements and transportation vehicles  found all over the Province and  brought together in the site. Everything was then recreated in to a replica of an old time village. The volunteers are all in recreated period costumes.

Nancylee and John drop us at the park entrance and arrange to pick us up later. They're off back to the Mall for more retail therapy!

Gasoline Ally

 There's an entrance fee to get into the village and a $10 fee for a bracelet to ride on all the attractions and vehicles in the village. The walk up to the village has sculptures of animals found in the area.

Moose

This is a spacious brick built three story plus a cellar home built by a business owner for his family Their family name was Prince. It's quite an impressive home.

This lady's making lace outside a sandstone block built house. Apparently after a devastating fire in the early 1900's the Calgary residents went against the wooden framed houses and built in stone. It's quite a modest single story home.

This is a working newspaper office complete with a working printing press. They print small editions of papers to sell for funds for the park.

This is a old pharmacy shop complete with a dispensary. Theres also a hotel, a  saddle and tack shop, ice cream parlour, bakery, school, bank and many other buildings found in a small town or village around the late 1800's and the early 1900's.

The transport around the site is a full size Canadian pacific steam railway, a tram bus, and several carts pulled by horses. There's also authentic business vans motoring around the site.

A old time working amusement park kept busy by the children. We decided to give this a miss.

 This house was run as a Cottage hospital, and was run by volunteers from the village or town. A doctor would call probably once a week by would have to be fetched in an emergency.

 These items and the cars were in the Gasoline Alley museum.

All around the village refreshments and meals were available. The hotel had a dinning room and a snack bar. The ice cream parlour also sold food and beverages.  The bakery sold bread and cakes baked onsite.

We decided to take a trip on the paddle boat steamer on the lake and we should get back with time to catch the steam train back to the station near the entrance where we would be picked up . Our plans went a bit awry when the train we needed to catch stopped boarding passengers as it was too full. A nasty black storm cloud was gathering over the lake and the rain soon began to spit spot about. When the next train arrived we boarded just in time. The storm hit with vengeance. The train didn't stop at the station we wanted so we had to stay on and made a complete round of the site and back to the station we wanted this time. The rain was coming down in torrents and the thunder and lightening going great guns. We dashed into the station waiting room to sit out the storm with the other passengers. I managed to phone John to let him know what had happened. 'Himself' had made it back on time and beat the storm. About 15 minutes later it had passed, the rain slowed and the sun reappeared. As we walked back to the per arranged meeting place the storm clouds looked so black in the distance but the hot sun was drying the paths as we walked.