Old and New Fort Saskatchewan - The Fort itself

I visited 'The Fort' recently and went inside the newly built reconstruction of the original 'Fort on the Saskatchewan'. Some very interesting information - and you can feel a little like you were really there just after it was built (around 1875).

Here's a photo from one corner of the (newly built) Fort.

And here's a much earlier photo from almost the same location.

A few differences are obvious - plastic bins and the picnic tables - but it's surprisingly close overall. The old photo was taken after the 11ft walls (stockade) were taken down and the original guard house (low building towards the middle of that picture) had been removed. Plus a more recent building shows up (to the left rear...the ice house as I understand from my newspaper correspondent from The Sturgeon Creek Post - a publication I recommend reading if you want to keep track of what's going on in The Fort. The Sturgeon Creek Post is also the original name of the NWMP post that became Fort Sask). A few other things are 'close' - the chimneys in the men's quarters, the height of the flagpole, and some minor building differences - but these could also be due to the difference in timing. It's not clear when the old photo was taken - I got it from here.

Finally, a picture that I liked from the junior officers quarters - makes sense that there would be buffalo hides on the beds but they still had a big impact when we opened the door and first saw them!

#NoToTorontoOlympicBid number 2

I did a little reading of some of the more moderate articles on the economics of holding the Olympics, and the results seem to be summed up by the following (from the New York Times article "Does Hosting the Olympics Actually Pay Off?")

1. The Olympics won’t make a country rich.

2. They’re not even good for tourism.

3. But they will make its people happy.

I'd quibble with that last one, but it does seem that it makes a lot of sports fans in the country happy and as long as they're not asked to pay for it directly (like Montreal), they're OK with the false economics, etc.

I personally think it is a major waste of money and perpetuates the old boy's club of the IOC (see my last post) rather than focusing on furthering amateur sport and international cooperation. Hard to say whether it's worse to spend 10's of millions of dollars (or roughly $100M in the case of Chicago for the 2016 games) and lose, or to spend that money and 'win'.

So now I'll read some of the really negative reviews and see what they say!

#NoToTorontoOlympicBid

All I can do is point to this post and ask that the one or two readers of my blog also fight any attempts by various promoters of the Olympics to take our money.

(OK, I *can* do more - and both hope I don't need to and hope it will be useful - if needed)

Here's the image from Jim's blog that none of you probably want to see: