playing around, bored with a projector, old slides taken from my mother's cottage when she was a girl and two sets of caribou antlers.

top) the image is of my granny canoeing on lake opiniocon, near elgin ontario. it has obviously been double exposed and in the original image you can see how badass her 60s bathing suit is. the thing has a real rope acting as a back strap. try that out without looking like a hobo.

middle) this image is a combination of my granny paddling and my mum and uncle hanging out on an old log raft.

middle) mum and uncle bruce on the raft. raft.

nothing really makes you feel the same as skies this big, and you quickly adjust from open land to wooded hills, or rocky mountains, but the feeling is truly a different sensation. not mind blowing just different.

top) big muddy.

second from top) south of big muddy lake, "cowboy caves".

second from bottom) i think this is a coulee.

bottom) grasslands, just north of the states. the speck on the ground is a deer. the cool thing about wildlife here, is just watching. you can see a deer from a mile away, and just watch it graze. for the most part the animals know your there, and keep a safe distance, but they don't run. i bought a new telescopic lens for my camera, we'll see if i can get some cool results with it.

a series of structures in southern saskatchewan. all but the bottom photo are buildings which have either been abandoned or farms that are no longer used. there is a pretty wide open/rugged feeling when driving this part of the country. literally wiping the dust out of your mouth.

top) this was an old cattle or horse farm that was no longer being used.

second from top) this photo was taken right in the flats of the big muddy. everything was grown over, and really felt like i had jumped back a century when i went up to the old prairie home. nothing was in there, and i was kind of hoping for a little keep-sake, a broken porcelain horse or something.

middle) this was a on old cattle corral built right up into the side of the rock.

second from bottom) canada's best shed, it also might be an outhouse. this was taken in the big muddy, and was actually the site of the last RCMP detachment in the badlands. there is a monument near by saluting the history of the area, and commemorating the lawlessness of the land and the bootleggers that used to run here.

bottom) a home, and working horse ranch in the middle of the big muddy, if it is your thing it would be heaven on earth. if you were a teenager growing up here, you would be clawing at the ceiling to get out of there.

these were taken on my drive to the badlands.

top) in four hours of driving down dirt roads i saw more deer than people (3-0), and more horses than deer.

second from top) rolling hills.

middle) north shore of big muddy lake.

second from bottom) in the distance: long abandoned building, and long abandoned baseball field. again, no people. if you build it they will come... and go.

bottom) grasslands.

snow geese migrating south.

top) oil, oil, oil. southern saskatchewan is black gold land.

middle) forget the farming, we've got oil.

bottom) this was taken in roche percee, not new orleans. it is a town filled with history, petroglyphs, tee-pee circles, buffalo kill sites, and now an abandoned trailer park. the town was hit hard by the flooding in southern saskatchewan this past spring. everybody has been forced out and asked to relocate. abandoned, much like the rest of rural saskatchewan.

top) rocks around roche percee

bottom) rocks around roche percee

Top) roche percee area. near an old buffalo kill site.

second from top) petroglyphs. these were actually pointed out to me by an old chippewa woman (judy) whose ancestors had moved to the area to escape eropean settlers from the east. the problem with these petroglyphs is that they have been carved up by other people named jim, and bob, just scrapping their names over top of the sacred writings (there is some crap running down from the top in this pic).

another way to erase history.

second from bottom) some of the winding long rocks in the area look like snakes. judy, told me that the elders say an eagle once picked up a snake and flew into the sky with it. the snake fought hard as the eagle flew up and up. the eagle could not hold the slithering snake and had to drop it. the snake fell to the ground and when it hit the ground it turned to stone. the story makes sense, i guess.

snake.

bottom) judy.

top) plastic flowers forever. it seems like most people in southern saskatchewan took interior decorating classes from my grandmother. this for sure transfers into memorials, but just in case weather ever tried to mess things up, we put a pickle jar on it. pickle jar or something for salt pork.

middle) the reason i went to this grave yard. coal miners didn't get mad love in saskatchewan. most miners actually were forced into mining camps, and essentially treated as slaves. everything equipment-wise was deducted off of their pay (going as far as the fuel used in their mining helmets). the companies controlled where the miners and their families shopped, to keep money going back into company owned stores. dudes had enough and threw an uprising. RCMP handled it, rough history, but good to know.

this tombstone is actually pretty controversial, and actually the wording is to this day frequently changed from "murdered" to "killed". i am happy i caught it reading "murdered".

bottom) this coal miner seems happy though.

top) cows in the outfield.

top) cattle at large.

bottom) my future home.

top) maybe this sign is old, maybe it doesn't even tell you anything with english letters anymore, but you still understand you are in butt-fuck nowhere.

bottom) this is where the mayor of butt-fuck nowhere lives.

top) this is the first sign you see when you are driving north into weyburn from the states. i pulled off the road to take this picture, and actually have a few more of it that turned out really nice. the machine gun is actually a sign for a tractor lot which makes it even better, just machines and guns hanging out with tractors a regular day on the prairies. no big deal.

second from top) most retro water tower ever. Lang is north of weyburn towards regina, and right on a busy two lane hwy. taking pictures of this is awkward with massive tanker trucks and farm equipment buzzing past you. i'll try again though.

second from bottom) yeah, it is that flat. i am not sure if i can get over it. the rolling hills in the badlands are really nice, and the layers of grass give a simple and uniform effect when pushed by wind and weather.

bottom) remind me not to buy my beef from the guy who owns these cows. they inject different chemicals back into the ground when they take all of the oil out... something like that i am not a geologist. these cows are eating toxic grass, and their utters glow bright pink in the moonlight.

weyburn, i think i love you. yeah the public art here is this good. the town is great, and more pictures will come, but just finding these walls, and the old prairie town buildings here is awesome, kind of dusty, kind of cowboy, a whole bunch of redneck and a huge source of economic backbone. the oil and farming industry here has helped the locals keep the word "recession" out of their vocabulary.

i spent the night in brandon manitoba. bad, i stayed in a motel called the redwood, something like that, and at first thought that a motel selling beer at the front counter must be my kind of place. the smell of mould that i got soon as i entered my room told me otherwise. the place was dank, but the six pack i picked up was cold and helped me get over the smell.

these pictures were taken on the detour route i took driving from wapella SK. to weyburn SK.

top) the simple repetative geometry of grain silos and other agricultural equipment is something i have noticed. not like there is much else to look at, but it does kind of have a nice simple composition to it. lonely structures in the middle of a flat field probably have a ton to say since they haven't had anything to talk to for a while.

second from top) so it is pretty flat in the prairies. this is a field that fortunately was not flooded this year, and was able to be seeded. a ton of other fields, south of where this picture was taken, were not as fortunate and were not seeded. it is a harsh thing when your lively hood depends on it.

second from bottom) no hunting. darn. i ain't in northern manitoba no more.

bottom) my new best friends. they come over every friday. they make a mess, but they're good company.

the farmers out here must shit themselves where they see an ontario license platted goofball taking pictures of cows.

driving towards manitoba on the trans canada hwy. my rear tire hit a nice chunk of unidentified metal and took a turn for the worse. i had to try fix this on my own, but failed. my jack wasn't cut out for the job and i couldn't lift the vehicle up enough to get the doughnut on. i had to call a tow truck to help me lift the mazda up, and slide the spare on. i drove back to kenora and was back on the road an empty pocket later.

top) this sucks.

bottom) this still sucks.

wawa. it turns out i love wawa. the home of the big bird inn, and about twenty other giant monuments all dedicated to the canadian goose, how could living in wawa not be amazing. i have every intent to move there.

when i was filling up on gas a MNR guy was talking with a local about shooting bear, and how, if when it might be "o.k." to shoot one out of season and without a license. it turns out i love wawa.

early spring photos taken on digital camera:

top) spring brookie fishin'. these fellas were starting to move down river when the ice began breaking up, and hitting heavy orange spoons and yellow or white jigs.

second from top) it was a pretty good day and i stopped to take a picture of the catch against the snow. the beauty of these fish and their colour still amazes me. you can also really see the difference between male and female in this picture based on colour and head shape.

middle) wayne rideout. never let a newfoundlander see your catch. they will force you to take a picture of them with it, and then claim the fish as their own. fish tales/lies is in their blood. andriy yermakov, the gym teacher, and mervin yellowback are in the background.

second from bottom) young riders band practice.

bottom) coldest night ever. drove out on the ice road to take a pic of the northern lights. could not give a shit how it looks, my fingers froze in 30 seconds and i had brutal blisters on my thumbs from the burn. i ran right back into the truck and drove home.