Last year I travelled on assignment to the Cypress Hills. Straddling the Saskatchewan-Alberta border, they form the highest point in Canada between Labrador and the Rockies (4,618 ft/1,468 m). They are protected in the unusual form of an interprovincial park.

This is the view east from atop the Conglomerate Cliffs. First Nations people hunted game in these hills for millennia. A short distance to the south is the site of the infamous Cypress Hills Massacre on June 1, 1873, where a band of American and Canadian wolfers attacked an Assiniboine encampment. Some "Indians" had stolen their horses south of the border, and the wolfers arrived in Canada seeking revenge. After a night of drinking, aided by some local Métis, they confronted the Assiniboine. It didn't matter that these were not the horse thieves; someone was going to pay. After some brief, tense dialogue the wolfers opened fire and at least 20 Assiniboine died.

This slaughter was the key event that led to the formation of a national police force - the North West Mounted Police, now the Royal Canadian Mounted Police or RCMP. The force was sent to curtail whiskey and gun running across the US border, and it proved effective. Three years later, when Sitting Bull and his followers fled to Canada following the annihilation of Custer at Little Bighorn, the NWMP were there to negotiate with them and keep the peace.

Today there are campgrounds and other facilities for visitors, hiking and equestrian trails, and the reconstructed NWMP headquarters at Fort Walsh National Historic Site.

Photographed from the Conglomerate Cliffs in Cypress Hills Interprovincial Park, Saskatchewan. Don't use this image on websites, blogs, or other media without explicit permission © 2016 James R. Page - all rights reserved.

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The evening light was dull and wide landscape shots were going to fall flat unless I waited for a patch of sunshine to squeeze through the cloud cover. While waiting, I made some shots of the tangled branches and trunks in small groves of Trembling Aspen. I have to acknowledge the work of my friend Pam Woodland, who has been shooting this sort of thing for years. A book designer by profession, she is able to find patterns in complexity.

I find this interesting, because it has long been my belief that most visual art works by reducing things to simpler forms. However, I'm open to new interpretations. I did eliminate one photo element - colour - and I boosted the contrast to make the silvery bark on those trunks stand out against the deeper, darker areas of shadow.

Photographed at the Conglomerate Cliffs in Cypress Hills Interprovincial Park, Saskatchewan. Don't use this image on websites, blogs, or other media without explicit permission © 2016 James R. Page - all rights reserved.

Tags:   trees Trembling Aspen Quaking Aspen Populus tremuloides grove trunk trunks branch branches black and white monochrome b & w pattern texture line shape wild Cypress Hills Interprovincial Park Saskatchewan Canada copyrighted James R. Page tree nature outdoor beauty plant tangle

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With the sun high at midday, the harsh light wasn't good for landscape work. But the light is always good for something, and our job as photographers is to find out what that may be. In a world of glaring highlights and black, black shadows, I tried to simplify my composition by shooting down at the creek surface and keeping the elements within the frame to a minimum.

The Cypress Hills are an interesting location that I am just discovering. When I first began shooting in Saskatchewan, I was not impressed with the hills - they seemed a poor imitation of BC, where I'd been living for decades, a place of real mountains and soaring grandeur. And there's too much tourist development for my liking. However, contracted to do some professional shooting there for a client, I am starting to discover its nuances.

Battle Creek, incidentally, was the site of the infamous Cypress Hills Massacre of 1873, in which a group of American and Canadian wolfers who had lost some horses in an Indian raid got drunk and attacked a peaceful First Nations (Assiniboine) encampment along the creek, killing more than twenty innocent people. This incident was a catalyst for quick deployment of the newly-created North West Mounted Police to this remote region of the Canadian west, which at the time was a haven for whisky traders, gun runners, and all sorts of ne'er-do-wells.

Photographed at Fort Walsh National Historic Site, Saskatchewan. Don't use this image on websites, blogs, or other media without explicit permission © 2016 James R. Page - all rights reserved.

Tags:   water creek flow flowing placid quiet serene sun sparkle sparkling reflections old wood stump decay beauty shallow warm wild nature Battle Creek Fort Walsh National Historic Site Cypress Hills Saskatchewan Canada copyrighted James R. Page

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Meet Scotty. Discovered near Eastend, Saskatchewan, by a high school teacher in 1991, Scotty is now considered the largest Tyrannosaurus rex ever found - maybe. Some assumptions are being made here; "biggest" is always a spicy headline. Nevertheless, this is one impressive beast. At a monstrous 42 ft in length and weighing an estimated 19,555 lbs, Scotty lived into his or her (no one knows its gender) late twenties or early thirties and died 66 million years ago, leaving evidence of a turbulent life: broken ribs, bite marks to both head and tail, presumably inflicted by another T. rex. The life of a dinosaur was anything but serene. Most did not survive to adulthood.

My favourite quote about Scotty is from Timothy Tokaryk, a palaeontologist who worked on the excavation, which took more than a decade: “The skeleton wasn’t laying on its side like a 40-foot chicken. It was all jumbled like a regurgitated omelet, so that made excavation much more of a challenge.” Having never regurgitated an omelet, I had to use my imagination.

Casts of Scotty can be seen at the T. rex Discovery Centre in Eastend (seen here), and at the Royal Saskatchewan Museum, in Regina. Lest this series of photo glimpses of my adopted (or adoptive) province become too touristy, and for the sake of balance, I promise to include some bleak winter shots over the next few days to deter you from ever wanting to visit.

Photographed at the T. rex Discovery Centre in Eastend, Saskatchewan (Canada). Don't use this image on websites, blogs, or other media without explicit permission © 2018 James R. Page - all rights reserved.

Tags:   Scotty Tyrannosaurus rex T. rex largest display museum mounted cast carnivore Cretaceous discovered in 1991 huge biggest dinosaur skeleton predator terrifying teeth T. rex Discovery Centre Eastend Saskatchewan Canada copyrighted James R. Page

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