Red Rock Coulee will make you feel like you’ve visited the planet Mars.

From Red Rock Coulee in southeastern Alberta, on a clear day, you can see the Sweetgrass Hills in Montana.

In this part of the Canadian Badlands, about 50-60 kilometres southwest of Medicine Hat , Alberta, when the sun is low in the sky, the entire landscape burns with a golden, orange glow that I have never seen before. The best time to visit is around dawn or at dusk.

It gets windy in these parts. A thoughtful traveller has propped up the sign for our benefit.

Not a lot of people here. No fast food. No interpretive centre. At Red Rock Coulee you are alone under the big sky. Alone with the landscape. An occasional deer, the threat of rattle snakes and the tell-tale signs of ranching (grass, water, fence posts) in the far distance are the only reminders of life.

It’s a great place for a private moment. Leave your cell phones in the car. They don’t work here anyway.

Round, redish sandstone concretions up to 2.5 metres in diameter, among the largest in the world, are scattered about the place in a haphazard fashion. They were formed in prehistoric seas out of materials like shells and plants, and then grew in size by collecting sand, sediments and minerals from the surrounding waters. You can actually see the growth layers on some of the broken boulders.

Tenacious orange, black and gray lichens cover the rocks. Temperatures here range between  -46 C (-51 Fahrenheit) in winter and +42 C  (108 F) in summer. Also, this is the sunniest place in Canada! Medicine Hat averages over 2,500 hours of sunshine every year. That’s about 330 days of bright sun. Bring your hat and a bottle of water. And don’t forget to fill the gas tank before coming out. There is no gas here either.

In Canada, it’s darker at this time of year. There are fewer waking hours and dusk and darkness are often inhabited by unexplained events and ghostly phenomena. We are not a superstitious people, not susceptable to assumptions of supernatural causation. But facts are facts, and we are a curious bunch. So every year at about this time we venture out, often by candlelight, in search of the truth that awaits us in the cold darkness…

The Haunted Stirling Mansion, home of Fright Night

European settlement in Nova Scotia dates back to the seventeenth century. In Canadian time, that’s a lot of history. @AuthenticCoast  and @travelbyterry have been tweeting me about an interesting Nova Scotia haunt. The DesBarres Manor Inn was built in 1837 in the seaside village of Guysborough on Nova Scotia’s eastern shore for Supreme Court Justice, W.F. DesBarres. Justice Debarres was the grandson of J.W.F. Desbarres, a military man and mapmaker who accompanied Major-General James Wolfe at the great battle on the Plains of Abraham. It is rumoured that Wolfe gave DesBarres his pocket watch at the moment of his death, and that it hung in the Manor for many years. Spooky!

Surrounding the Plains of Abraham is Québec City. As night falls, Ghost Tours of Québec guide visitors through the cobble stone streets and ancient buildings of the old city, regaling them with tales of murders, executions, mysterious sightings, tragedies and hauntings.

Mon Dieu! Tours are in English and French.

In Ontario (known before confederation as Upper Canada), Fort George is regarded by many as the most haunted place in Canada. It was headquarters for the British military in Niagara during the War of 1812, and the scene of much blood, death and suffering. Many soldiers and civilians alike are still buried on the grounds of the fort. Some people say that distant cries can still be heard there.

If you dare to set foot in the fort on a weekend in October, check out the Friends of Fort George Halloween ghost tour. This two-hour guided candlelit walking tour is conducted by Ghost Tours of Niagara.

In the Canadian Badlands of southeastern Alberta, ghost tours and other paranormal events are wafting through the mist. The Haunted Atlas Coal Mine has BIG BOO and LITTLE BOO tours into the darkest corners of the abandoned coal mine. The Medalta Ghost Hunt is a nocturnal tour through a 100 year old pottery factory led by the Medicine Hat Paranormal Investigation team. And in the normally peaceful village of Stirling, Alberta, the Haunted Stirling Mansion is one of the best-produced haunted houses I have seen anywhere in Canada.

On Twitter, the Stanley Park Hallowe’en Ghost Train is known as @Ghost_TrainYVR. This year’s theme is Circus of Disaster. @Ghost_TrainYVR has been tweeting little teasers about this year’s event. Example: “The 1st circus in Ancient Rome was called the ‘Circus Maximus’ & more than 200-thousand people came to watch the show” Here’s a review of this year’s ghost train from the Georgia Straight, a popular Vancouver area media outlet.

If you know of a ghost tour or spooky Canadian factoid, please share it with us in the comments below.

In the Canadian Badlands between Cypress Hills and Etzikom, Alberta

Even though we’re big travelers of Canada, there’s still plenty to see. Canada is so big and the average vacation so short ( 2 weeks) that it’s difficult to cover a lot of ground. One way to do it is a fly-drive.

Hoodoos and beehive hills near Drumheller, Alberta

A 4-hour flight west from Toronto will put you in Calgary. A car rental and an hour later and you’re in southeastern Alberta, a landscape so foreign from central Canada that a travel writer from Toronto described it as reaching out and slapping her. 63 municipalities have coined it the Canadian Badlands and aim to make it Canada’s next iconic travel destination (just like the Canadian Rockies, an hour west of Calgary).  From a road trip perspective, we think it’s already there.

The massive prairie landscape is intersected by river valleys with hills that look like giant beehives. The valleys are part of a prehistoric sea that once occupied a good portion of North America. Wind and water have stripped away the sandstone and they’ve revealed something else. Dinosaur fossils. Millions of them. Two places to learn about the biggest finds are Dinosaur Provincial Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and the Royal Tyrrell Museum, the world’s largest devoted to palaeontology.

If you love driving but hate traffic, this is the place. Armed with an Alberta road map and GPS, we crisscrossed the region by paved and gravel road, sometimes not seeing another car for the better part of two hours.  Gas stations are scarce though. So are corner stores and other things that we take for granted in the city. Topping off the gas tank and having lots of drinking water in the car quickly became necessities.

Streetcar in downtown Toronto, Ontario

On the Trans-Canada Highway west of Brooks, Alberta

Canada’s wildlife often makes news headlines.

In the past year,  a grey whale wandered into Burrard Inlet in downtown Vancouver. A moose was  videotaped trotting down a footpath beside Calgary’s busy Memorial Drive. A cougar chased two girls down a street in an Alberta town. A coyote ate a small dog in Toronto’s Beaches and a deer was spotted outside of Toronto’s Union Station, the busiest transportation hub in Canada. As urban sprawl grows so do the number of unusual wildlife sightings in Canada’s urban areas.

One place that doesn’t make the news for wildlife sightings is the local dump. You won’t see pix of it in local tourism brochures but there’s a saying that if you want to see a bear, head to the local dump. That’s exactly where I was last summer when I spotted this motley crew of black bears which included a rare cinnamon gal. Double click the pic and you’ll see six bears. The guy at the dump told me Cinnamon Girl is an old gal that they had not seen in awhile.

Some of Canada’s wildlife are often seen in cities. Raccoons climb our back porch and skunks dig for grubs in our yard. Hawks and occasionally osprey hunt pigeons and black squirrels in downtown parks and on the local par 3 where I occasionally get out for a round, I’ve had fox run after my ball. Last year, I saw a weird animal I couldn’t identify. It had  a pink snout, spiky-looking fur and a long rat-like tail. My neighbours told me it was a possum. I didn’t grow up in this part of Canada but apparently, these critters are common in southern Ontario. Talk to anyone in my ‘hood though and they’ll tell you the ‘Toronto’ possum is a recent transplant that first arrived here on fruit trucks from the southern US. The trucks are destined for Ontario Food Terminal, a massive distribution point for fruit and vegetables in Toronto’s west end.

Buried loot at the Haunted Stirling Mansion

Halloween is big business in Canada. Just ask Statistics Canada. Every year, it releases Halloween stats that include the latest demographics on trick or treaters, the number of Canadian farms with pumpkin patches, the amount of money Canadians spend on Halloween candy and even a list of places in Canada that may give you the creeps.

Based on recent travels across the country, we came up with our own list of creepy places:

All Hallows Eve at Kings Landing Historical Settlement

Bone-chilling tales including a famous cold case…

“Lizzie Borden took an axe, Gave her mother 40 whacks, When she saw what she had done, She gave her father 41″  Lizzie was later acquitted of the 1892 double-ax murder which over a century later remains unsolved. Expect this kind of bone chilling tale and more as the “dead” gather October 29 and 30 to celebrate the ancient ritual of All Hallows Eve at Kings Landing Historical Settlement near Fredericton, New Brunswick. A mysterious soul and a headless horseman will greet you at the Kings Landing gate and escort you down a lonely gravel road to the King’s Head Inn. There you’ll join others for dnner and a night of murder and mayhem.

Haunted Stirling Mansion, Stirling, Alberta

Canada’s best haunted house:

Last June on a road trip near Lethbridge, Alberta, we stumbled across what we think is THE best haunted house in Canada. It was broad daylight when the owner gave us a tour of the Haunted Stirling Mansion. It didn’t matter. I still  jumped out of my skin when I saw a strange “dude” peeking out from a door slightly ajar. The set design in this place is so well done, my imagination ran wild. Fright Nights run October 28-31.

Haunted Atlas Coal Mine near Drumheller, Alberta

The Atlas Coal Mine:

With all the miner news of late we couldn’t resist including the Haunted Atlas Coal Mine.  It stands next to the ghost town of East Coulee, south of Drumheller, in the Canadian Badlands of Alberta. The mine’s grey-timbered tipple is creepy enough in daylight let alone at night when Hallowe’en guests are invited to explore it armed with only a flashlight. A former bathhouse has big meat hooks attached to ropes on pulleys hanging from the ceiling. Miners once used these to hang their street clothes on, above the coal dust. The Drumheller Paranormal Group thinks this national historic site is haunted. You can judge for yourself. Special Big Boo and Little Boo tours are offered October 30.

Canada’s coolest post-halloween event

Best post-Halloween event:

The Pumpkin Parade in west end Toronto’s Sorauren Park is a feast for the eyes. Every year hundreds of families bring their carved pumpkins to the park at dusk the day after Halloween. The pumpkins are then lit along a path that runs the perimeter of the park.

I’m hooked on cemeteries. They hold so much potential for great stories.

Lloydtown Pioneer Cemetery, Lloydtown, Ontario, Canada’s rebel town

My fascination started years ago on a high school exchange to Boston. I was strolling through Boston Common and the Granary Burying Ground where Benjamin Franklin, Paul Revere and John Adams are buried along with “Mother Goose”. Mother Goose? What a surprise and not without controversy, and that’s what hooks me. Always more questions than answers with a good cemetery story.

There’s a family history of cemetery love. Ancestors of mine made monuments and gravestones in Quebec. One became a sculptor and made World War I memorials too. Two generations later, my mother began traipsing through cemeteries in Canada, the US, England, Scotland and Ireland and poring over town and church records long before the web made genealogy searches easier. I took a trip with her to Scotland in the 1990s. Copies of wills, ancient newspaper obits, and old letters mapped our route. We got our first hit in St. Cuthbert’s Burying Ground in downtown Edinburgh. A grave of a grandfather from way back. His epitaph read “Death is a debt to nature due that I have paid and so must you”. I never forgot the little verse and always thought it was his until I googled it today. Up popped several sites including a fascinating New York Times story on Sleepy Hollow Cemetery from 1894.

Titanic grave site at Fairview Cemetery in Halifax

Monument erected to the memory of an unknown child from the Titanic disaster

Fairview Cemetery in Halifax, Nova Scotia is in every Halifax guidebook. The cemetery is one of three in the city that hold the graves of Titanic victims. Its Titanic gravesite has 121 graves lined in a curve on a knoll, like the bow of a boat. When we visited, stuffed animals and cards were scattered around the base of the Unknown Child and J. Dawson’s grave was covered with handwritten love letters. I wonder if Leonardo Di Caprio knows of the effect he’s had here or what the real J. Dawson buried here would think. He was Joseph Dawson from Dublin Ireland,  a 23 year old coal trimmer. The Old Burying Ground in downtown Halifax dates to 1749. This is where British Major General Robert Ross was laid to rest. He and his troops burned Washington DC in the War of 1812. And you wondered how the White House became the White House?  2012 marks the 100th anniversary of Titanic tragedy and 200th anniversary of the War of 1812. I’m betting both cemeteries will have a steady stream of visitors then.

The Old Burying Ground in Halifax

Lloydtown Pioneer Cemetery was our introduction to Lloydtown, Ontario and its prominent place in history. In the 1830s, rebels led by town founder, Jesse Lloyd and outspoken journalist/politician William Lyon MacKenzie met here and planned the 1837 Upper Canada Rebellion. Every Canadian school kid has heard of the rebellion but it’s hard to believe that today’s Lloydtown was once the #2 town behind Toronto in Upper Canada. The Rebellion failed but not before the rebels had planted the seed for democratic and responsible government in Canada. LLoyd fled to the US where he died in 1838 leaving a young wife and fourteen children behind. They’re buried in the little 1834 cemetery along with other early Lloydtown settlers.

Graves at the Crowfoot Cemetery

Crowfoot Cemetery sits high above the Bow River in the Badlands of southeastern Alberta.  Below, a ridge of land stretches across the Bow underwater. For centuries, migrating herds of buffalo, horses and people crossed the river at this point. Blackfoot Crossing became historically significant over time and in 1877, Chief Crowfoot signed famous Treaty 7 here. The cemetery is the final resting place of Chief Crowfoot. Little crosses with the names Running Rabbit, Bad Boy Lepetre, Owl Child and Benedict Prairie Chick gave us a brief glimpse of Blackfoot life. Siksika Nation is part of the Blackfoot Confederacy which also includes the Piikani and Kainaiwa of southern Alberta and the Blackfeet of Montana. Down the road from the cemetery, Blackfoot Crossing opened in 2007. It is Canada’s largest aboriginal historic site dedicated to telling the story of the Blackfoot Confederacy.

Walking among the graves at Crowfoot Cemetery

After a visit to the Sedalia Coop in the hamlet of Sedalia, Alberta (pop. 18), we were on a gravel road headed for Cereal when we came across this prairie pioneer home. A plaque on one side caught our eye and we stopped to read it:

The Gray Homestead in the Canadian Badlands of southeastern Alberta

Drumheller, Alberta's T-Rex has a viewing platform between its teeth!

Chambers’ Dictionary of Etymology defines the term “mascot” as an animal, person or thing that is supposed to bring good luck. According to the dictionary, the word is borrowed from the french word, “mascotte” meaning sorcerer’s charm or good luck piece.

Canada is a land of mascots. I’m not sure why but they’re plentiful here. The largest is Drumheller, Alberta’s T-Rex. Four times the size of a real Tyrannosaurus Rex, it weighs 145,000 pounds, stands 86 feet tall and is 151 feet long. The cost to build T’Rex caused a bit of mascot controversy in Drumheller. But today most who live here would tell you their mascot has brought them good luck in the form of tourism dollars. This dinosaur-themed town is now the heartbeat of the Canadian Badlands, an Alberta region known for its dinosaur fossils, many of which are displayed in Drumheller’s famous Royal Tyrrell Museum.

The Big Apple, Colborne, Ontario

Drive enough of Alberta and you’ll find mascots for just about everything. The world’s largest lamp for a lamp museum. A giant cornstalk in Taber, Alberta famous for its corn. Coronation Alberta’s giant crown was chosen to honour the coronation of King George V. A model of the  Starship Enterprise stands in Vulcan, Alberta.  Manitoba’s mascots include the Melita banana, a giant mosquito, the world’s largest curling rock, and ‘Tommy the Turtle’.  A massive snowman, a giant set of hockey cards, several big buffalo and and a huge pitchfork are some of Saskatchewan’s mascots.

Shediac, New Brunswick, lobster capital of the world

Joe Muffraw, the lumberjack from Mattawa, Ontario

Sparwood, British Columbia has the world’s largest truck and Sudbury, Ontario has the largest nickel. A giant lumberjack is Mattawa, Ontario’s mascot. It was carved by a local artist using a chainsaw. In Canada’s Maritmes, you can’t miss the enormous red lobster as you drive into Shediac, New Brunswick, the lobster capital of the world. On a road trip through Quebec’s Saint-Joseph-du-Lac, we found Verger Lacroix’s basket of fruit and wine representing the apple orchards here. The Colborne area of Ontario is another apple region. The Big Apple at the side of a Highway 401 exit here has sold millions of apple pies to travelers.

Giant fruit basket in Saint-Joseph-du-Lac, Québec

In Pictou, Nova Scotia, the town mascot is Ship Hector, a reproduction of a sailing ship that brought the first Scottish settlers to the birthplace of “New Scotland” in 1773.

Hector Heritage Quay Interpretive Centre and the Ship Hector – photo: courtesy Town of Pictou, NS

Got a mascot in your neck of the woods? If so, we would love to hear from you.

On-board Ship Hector – photo: courtesy Town of Pictou, NS

In the light of day the Atlas Coal Mine doesn't look so creepy, but at night...

Two of the creepiest places to spend Hallowe’en in Canada are Fort George in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario, and the Atlas Coal Mine near Drumheller in the Canadian Badlands of Alberta.

Bath house at the Atlas Coal Mine – creepy!

Niagara-on-the-Lake is said to be the most haunted town in Canada and the creepiest place in town is Fort George. Its Hallowe’en ghost tours are so popular tickets go on sale every July so, if you miss this year’s Hallowe’en ghost tours, consider a summer tour. They’re held then too. Fort George was originally built in 1796 as the headquarters for the British Army in Ontario. During the War of 1812, General Isaac Brock and his Aide-de-camp, John Macdonell were buried here following their deaths at the Battle of Queenston Heights. Later, their bodies were removed and buried at Brock’s Monument on Queenston Heights, a famous Niagara landmark that can be seen for miles.

The blacksmith shop at Fort George – photo by Joel Benard

Fort George was the scene of death and suffering. The US Army occupied it for seven months during the War of 1812 and hundreds of young American soldiers died during the occupation due to poor sanitation. Many are still buried on the fort grounds in unmarked graves. Fort George staff talk of unexplained ghostly phenomena on candlelight “ghost” tours. Is Fort George haunted or is it the power of suggestion? That’s for visitors to decide but many who take a Fort George ghost tour report seeing, feeling or hearing strange things. Fort George Hallowe’en tours run in 2009 on October 16-18, October 23-25, October 30-31 and November 1st.

Tunnel tour at the Atlas Coal Mine

From the early 1900s to 1960, Drumheller was the Fort McMurray of coal mining. One hundred and thirty-nine mines once operated in this part of Alberta known as the Canadian Badlands. The Atlas Coal Mine, now a national historic site, is the only one left. Its creepy wooden tipple is the last one still standing in Canada. It’s a favourite Hallowe’en haunt and so is the mine’s former bath house which is just as creepy. Massive meat hooks attached to ropes on pulleys are strung from its ceiling. Miners once used these to hang their street clothes on, high above the coal dust. Every year, the Atlas Coal Mine hosts special Hallowe’en tours where a visitor can explore the tipple and the bathhouse armed with only a flashlight. Tours run October 24th, 30th and 31st. Evening tours are for adults only. Participants beware. We’re told you may encounter the tortured souls of the Headless.

Bloodless bullfighting at the Oyen Bull-A-Rama

A highlight of our Canadian Badlands Alberta trip in 2007 was the annual Oyen Bullarama. We arrived in the late afternoon in Oyen, a town of 1200 near the Saskatchewan border. The parking lot was already a sea of pickup trucks. A bullarama is professional bullriding and “bloodless bullfighting”- the latter is basically a guy in brightly coloured clothing taunting a huge bull. The event is an adrenalin rush like no other. The day had been full sun and the evening light was phenomenal. Glenn was up in the announcer’s booth busy snapping pictures. I took to the stands. Everyone from miles around was there, about 4000 people. Service clubs served hot beef on a bun and the best homemade corndogs I’ve ever tasted and there was a beer tent serving cold beer.

Bull riders and handlers getting ready around the chutes.

The dirt in the ring flew, the excitement was electric and I was transfixed by the guy on the back of a huge black bull. A local told me “it’s not if the bullrider gets hurt but when!” I couldn’t be a mother and watch my son do this but plenty do. The cowboys who ride the bulls are as tough as nails and few wear any type of head gear other than a cowboy hat, so the likelihood of a bull whipping his big head around and nailing a guy badly is very real. They’re good looking these cowboys in their faded blue jeans and chaps. A big silver belt buckle is the sure sign of a champ and the gals who chase the champs are known as buckle bunnies. The night we’re there the Cereal kid, a local bullriding champ, wins. His family breeds “stock” (bulls for bullriding) and the kid is from a long line of bullriders. This is Canada’s true wild west. The Oyen Bullarama takes place every year in late July.

This is the safest place to be when there's an angry bull in the ring.

One of the highlights of our visit to the Canadian Badlands (http://canadianbadlands.com) in southeastern Alberta was touring the Atlas Coal Mine National Historic Site.(http://www.atlascoalmine.ab.ca)  It’s managed by an amazing storyteller. In the space of an hour or so, she brought to life a wild and woolley era of Canadian history. One hundred and thirty nine coal mines once operated in the Drumheller area of the Canadian Badlands. Coal was what oil is today and Drumheller was the Fort McMurray of the 1920s.

Tipple at the Atlas Coal Mine, in the Canadian Badlands, East Coulee, Alberta

The place was BOOMING. Every language of Europe could be heard on the streets back then – Polish, Ukranian, Italian, German and more. Each mine had its own language too, with Polish spoken in one, Ukrainian in another and so on. Labour strife and the communist movement was strong and according to Linda a lot of in-fighting went on. Conservative mining companies faced off against labour groups and miners fought other miners. Fist fights broke out constantly. The wild west mentality was alive and well. One bar owner got so fed up with all the barroom brawls that he eventually drew a line down the middle of his establishment and told his competing customers to stay on their respective sides.

During Prohibition, secret tunnels and escape routes were built all over Drumheller. Bars occupied every street corner. Weekly paycheques were cashed at the bars and hotels or at brothels like Fanny’s, Mary’s and Pretty Alice’s. The brothels are long gone but some of the bars and hotels still operate. Places like the LongBranch Saloon in Drumheller and the Rosedeer Hotel in Wayne, a ghost town. (http://www.coalking.ca/people/ghost_wayne.html) Built in 1913, the Rosedeer Hotel was nicknamed “Bucket of Blood” in the coal mining era. Apparently some real brass knuckle stuff went on in its rooms upstairs. It’s all very genteel now and a great spot to stop for a beer and some Alberta beef. Drumheller’s tunnels are still around too but you won’t find them in the tourism guides.

If you’re in the Canadian Badlands around Hallowe’en, check out Haunted Atlas Coal Mine. It’s got to rank as one of the best Halloween events in Canada. The mine’s grey-timbered tipple, the only left in North America is creepy enough in daylight let alone at night. Hallowe’en is when you get to explore it on your own, armed with only a flashlight.

Bath House at the Atlas Coal Mine

The mine’s former bathhouse is just as creepy. Big meat hooks attached to ropes on pulleys hang from the bathhouse ceiling. Coal miners once used these to hang their street clothes on, high above the coal dust.

Check out the Google Map here.