 |
| A snow leopard interred at the Alberta Game Farm, circa 1974. |
Back in 1974, while we were still living in Leaf Rapids, Mom and Dad took me on a trip to Alberta, where we visited Al Oeming's Alberta Game Farm. I don't remember the trip at all, but while scanning the family slide collection today I came across some official photos created by the Farm for visitors. The slides are in very rough shape, the colours faded by the years to a dark pink. I've tried to colour-correct these as best I can, but the results, as you can see, are lukewarm at best. (UPDATE: originally these photos were very pink, but thanks to a tip from my friend Jeff, they now look much better.)
Mom and Dad inform me that we did visit the Farm once again after moving to Alberta, mostly so that my brother Sean could see it. I have hazy memories of this trip - really nothing more than sensory impressions of strong odours, chain-link fences, and perhaps a sea of cars in a field that served as a parking lot, though this could easily be a memory conflated with that of one of our trips to the Namao air shows.
In its later years the Alberta Game Farm was known as Polar Park before shutting down for good in 1998. The Edmonton Journal has a pretty funny gallery
here; my favourite is the one captioned "In 1978, gorilla escapes were a problem."
Here are a few other slides:
 |
| Formosan Sika Deer |
|
 |
| A pair of Nilgai |
 |
Chilean Flamingos
 |
| A chained cheetah |
|
|
|
|
|
