"The Dairy Barn"

This past Saturday the Aurora Chorealis held its annual choral retreat day at the Alliance Church just outside of Yellowknife. Perhaps it's not technically outside of the city limits, but you do have to drive out of the built-up areas to get to it: past Fred Henne Territorial Park on the right, the airport on the left, the folk festival site on the right, the sandpits on the left, and finally, just past the horse stables, you have to look sharp to see the small, unprepossessing wooden sign at the end of an equally unprepossessing unpaved drive seemingly surrounded only by trees, that says: "Yellowknife Alliance Church."

What you see, at 8:45 on a cloudy Saturday morning in mid-October, is on first impression equally unprepossessing, and certainly not the standard religious edifice:

Swing around 180 degrees from the building and at the far end of the open (parking) space are ... could it be? ... yep they are! two old farm trucks.

Indeed - at some time prior to 2008, the current Alliance Church building housed a 60-70 head dairy operation. Details about it (on the web) are unfortunately sparse, but I did see, inside the church itself, a "before and after" picture which clearly shows the transformation from the one to the other. Once you know this, you can see that the interior (as well as the exterior) of the building pays homage to its origins, and the renovations are well and imaginatively done.

The main meeting hall was obviously once the main barn:

The kitchen may well have been the milk house, judging by some of the clocks and other wall ornaments:

 Strewn around the building are similarly whimsical reminders of the building's origins:

The retreat, by the way, was excellent: we enjoyed the expertise of choral conductor Debra Cairns from Edmonton, and the potluck food - plenty of it all day - was fabulous. Someone made a chocolate cake with about 10 layers that stood a good foot high, no exaggeration! the sliver I enjoyed was delicious.

When it was over, I had to take one more picture: now that pile of "junk" off to the right of the building made sense. The cattle fences, of course! and some sort of feeder, perhaps?