Doug Firby

Doug Firby is a lifelong journalist, with experience in print and electronic media. He has also been cycling his whole life, and enjoys the outdoor experiences in western Canada.

Out of the blue, an army of killers on the prowl

You’ve seen this movie before: picture perfect day, everyone in a great mood, things going so well you want to pinch yourself. We were having the best ride of our entire tour. With the first real tailwind since we left Kelowna more than six weeks ago, we were on track to complete 140 kilometres in …

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A sudden, frightening crash sidelines one of our riders

Cyclists have good reason to be hyper-aware and cautious on the road. Transport trucks sometimes barrel past too close for comfort (think lumber trucks in B.C.); motorists can be aggressive and road shoulders can be too small to ride on. Riders can mitigate all these risks. What they can’t prepare for are the unforeseeable, fluky …

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Sandra Mathison Rosetown

Antique store owner revives memories for bikepacker

There’s a leak in the roof at Riches Antiques that’s filling the bucket in the rear left corner of this old store in Rosetown, but Sandra Mathison is unperturbed. It’s hard to keep shingles on the northwest corner, she explains, because that’s where the prevailing winds come from. Today, those winds have brought in a …

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Fairmont Hot Springs

Happy Canada Day from your cycling friends

It’s the time of year when we collectively celebrate this great country and the vast diversity of people who enrich our lives. Here’s a short video from one of the lovely trails we have ridden in the past few days. The paved North Star Rails to Trail out of Cranbrook truly IS a great trail. …

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Pool party on the prairie: Neighbourly antidote to a heat wave

Canada’s prairies have plenty of big sky and sprawling fields of wheat and canola as far as the eye can see. What they don’t have much of is water and shade. This week has been a record-setting heat wave, and it has been a potentially dangerous for the ConnecTour bicyclists on a tour across the …

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Banff tattoo business dream derailed by COVID reality

COVID-19 seemed like the least of his worries when Robb Syre moved from Vancouver to Banff in 2020 to work at a tattoo shop founded by his best friend Ronnie Giesbrecht and an associate, Leighton Gall. “Honestly, at first I thought it (COVID) was total bullshit. It was just the flu, rebranded.” But then life …

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Hotel Ymir

Ymir Hotel an unlikely sanctuary for great Canadian art

From the dated, wood-frame exterior, it would be easy to dismiss Hotel Ymir (pronounced ‘why-mer’) as just another ramshackle old remnant of British Columbia’s mining heyday, relying on income from the eerie glow of video gaming terminals to eke out a marginal existence. But stepping inside is a bit like diving down the rabbit hole. …

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Sherry Parsons Moyie ghosts

Moyie’s muse is content to live with the old mining town’s ghosts

MOYIE, B.C. – Sherry Parsons lives in a home full of ghosts in an out-of-the way former mining town in British Columbia’s East Kootenays. And she’s OK with that. Parsons, 74, and her husband, Michael, built a house next to the historic St. Peter’s Catholic Church in Moyie, B.C., after struggling for years to gain …

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Annie and Rick McFerrin at Nancy Greene Provincial Park

A brush with heat stroke and then hypothermia

  Folks who live in the interior of B.C. like to joke that this month is “Junuary.” One day, it can be scorching hot and the next day can be deathly cold. Knowing you are at the mercy of the weather can be a pretty abstract concept until you live it up close and personal …

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Kindness comes in a bucket of ice and jug of water

Hot and starting to feel fatigue after a vigorous three-hour run from Penticton, the five of us were looking for one of B.C.’s famous rec sites to have a picnic as we approached Keremeos on Highway 3. Although there had been plenty of treed rec sites on the Old Hedley Road we had taken as …

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