Jeff Smith

From Picaroon’s Traditional Ales in Fredericton, New Brunswick—my new favourite microbrewery.

On the Labour day weekend of 2009, my wife and I did our last trip to Jasper and Banff before we set on out on our move back to the Maritimes. Although we have done a lot of hiking in the Jasper area, we had never gone up on the Jasper Tramway and done the hike to the summit of Whistlers Mountain (~8000ft above sea level). We took the opportunity this time, even though it was ridiculously busy.

This is the first stopping point on the hike. This shot really doesn’t do the location justice. The grade is incredibly steep here, so much so that we walked past a couple of people that were having trouble coaxing themselves to go back down this part of the mountain to the tram station in the center of the shot. If you look closely at the bottom of the photo, you’ll see a woman in a red jacket with yellow trim sitting down on a rock, she was one of those having trouble summoning the courage to get back down.

It was incredibly cloudy that day (as you can see in the first shot) but as we were reaching the summit the sun started to poke holes in the clouds that surrounded us (literally, we were right in the middle of a cloud as we hiked) and we were presented with some breathtaking views. The photo above is a shot of the Yellowhead Mountain Range. The sunlight filtering through the clouds created some amazing colours on the ice caps of the mountains.

Another part of the Yellowhead range. Each mountain peak in this range is named after a recipient of the Victoria Cross medal of honour.

Even though we no longer live in Alberta, Jasper will always be one of my favourite places in Canada. Hopefully we’ll be able to return before too long to visit and explore some more hiking trails.

The last few days I’ve been going through the shots that I took in 2009 and reminiscing a bit about our time living in Alberta and St. Albert in particular. Each Tuesday evening during the summer months the Gold Dust Casino in St. Albert had a classic car night. It was always a great photo opportunity as well as a chance to talk to the owners of some of the cars to get their stories about their ride.

Pictured above is a 2009 Dodge Challenger SRT8 and below is a 1972 Buick Skylark GS.

This cannon overlooks the harbour in Québec City.

I love the colours that the leaves on the surrounding trees cast on the cannon. It really made the logo stand out.

When we were living in St. Albert we quite often looked after our friend’s Jack Russell Terrier as she had to travel quite a bit for her work. For a dog that is nearly 14 years old, he has an incredible amount of energy. This shot is one of the few moments that I was able to catch him sitting still, and the only reason was that he could hear my wife in the kitchen and thought he might be getting a treat!

Our niece stopped by for a visit one evening last week after her pre-school Halloween party.

We got another visit from the little monkey on Halloween.

The sky couldn’t have been better the day we visited Ottawa to get some great shots of the Parliament buildings and the Rideau Canal.

This beauty was on display at Classic Car Night at the Gold Dust Casino this evening. I’d put it at a 50-53, likely leaning closer to the 50 by the shape of the front fenders. It’s a shame it wasn’t a brighter evening to show off the orange/auburn paint job. Also had some great pinstriping work done on it.

A cup of coffee and Saturday’s St. Albert Gazette. Great way to start the weekend.