In Hanna right now (Home of Nickelback), at the tail of a good week of field inspection, but that isn’t what I want to tell you about. While here I went wandering around this tiny little place upon the prairie, and I stumbled upon an old abandoned roundhouse.
For those people who don’t know what a roundhouse is let me give you a quick history lesson on the subject. A roundhouse was used to store and repair steam locomotives that traveled up and down the railroad.
They were built in a circular formation with several doors so to accommodate several engines at the same time, thus gaining their name. If you want to find out more may I suggest Wikipedia or Google. As a kid I loved model trains, I loved having a world where I could set up my own world with mountains, farms, and towns. Now I see them differently, to me they represented how Western Canada was built, settled and prospered. Western Canada only exists because of the railroad, and maybe that is why I loved them so much.
Here they are our history, my grandparent’s rode the rails all the way from the St. Lawrence to get out here, to get to the place they would call home, the place I still call home. I never really thought about it before really, the foundations they laid 100 years ago, are my foundations today. The end of their journey is the beginning of mine. Getting back to the roundhouse, I was saddened to see the crumbling roundhouse with it’s turntable immobile as it is one of the last ones that I know of that still exists in Alberta.
Maybe the most depressing part is seeing the stakes that mark the new subdivision that will soon pave over this monument to my western heritage, to the journey my grandparents made, to all those who traveled the railway, to those who built the railway. It seems that that is the way of Alberta bulldoze now, and regret later.
That seems to be the motto of my home province, where everything is a short term gain, and know one looks into the future, just look at the oil sands. Maybe I have too much of a love for model railroads, maybe I love historical buildings, maybe I am still trying to rebuild my grandparents journey, or maybe, just maybe I am one of the few people in this province who understand history and how important it is in order to understand our potential success, and our potential to fail. Maybe I am just using that impossible ability that is foresight.
For those people who don’t know what a roundhouse is let me give you a quick history lesson on the subject. A roundhouse was used to store and repair steam locomotives that traveled up and down the railroad. 
They were built in a circular formation with several doors so to accommodate several engines at the same time, thus gaining their name. If you want to find out more may I suggest Wikipedia or Google. As a kid I loved model trains, I loved having a world where I could set up my own world with mountains, farms, and towns. Now I see them differently, to me they represented how Western Canada was built, settled and prospered. Western Canada only exists because of the railroad, and maybe that is why I loved them so much. 
Here they are our history, my grandparent’s rode the rails all the way from the St. Lawrence to get out here, to get to the place they would call home, the place I still call home. I never really thought about it before really, the foundations they laid 100 years ago, are my foundations today. The end of their journey is the beginning of mine. Getting back to the roundhouse, I was saddened to see the crumbling roundhouse with it’s turntable immobile as it is one of the last ones that I know of that still exists in Alberta. 
Maybe the most depressing part is seeing the stakes that mark the new subdivision that will soon pave over this monument to my western heritage, to the journey my grandparents made, to all those who traveled the railway, to those who built the railway. It seems that that is the way of Alberta bulldoze now, and regret later. 
That seems to be the motto of my home province, where everything is a short term gain, and know one looks into the future, just look at the oil sands. Maybe I have too much of a love for model railroads, maybe I love historical buildings, maybe I am still trying to rebuild my grandparents journey, or maybe, just maybe I am one of the few people in this province who understand history and how important it is in order to understand our potential success, and our potential to fail. Maybe I am just using that impossible ability that is foresight.
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