Banff

It was a short trip to Banff/the Rockies.

We spent two nights in Banff before heading east.

The hotel we stayed at was on the side of a mountain (can be seen on the bottom right of the picture below).

It had spectacular views, but was a bit old and dusty.

We visited the Cave & Basin national historic site - back in 1885, Canada's first national park was created due to these springs.

A place of particular personal interest was...well, its actually two places:

First, right next to the Cave & Basin site is a pavilion commemorating the internment camps of WWI. The exhibit is called Enemy Aliens, Prisoners of War and had a section about how Ukrainians were held in internment camps during WWI because at the time Austria occupied Ukraine. And it mentioned how they were forced to do hard labour, to create the roads in the Rocky Mountain parks for example.

The second place was along the old highway 1 at the base of Castle Mountain. This is where they put a statue and plaque commemorating those "enemy aliens" who were held at the Castle Mountain camp.

The reason these hold personal interest to me is that my great grandfather, who was in his early twenties at the time, was interned at Castle Mountain/Banff for years (of hard labour) during WWI.

Spectacular views, Canadian history, personal history - overall a great destination.

Pictures of Banff are up in the galleries