Category Archives: Arts & Artists

Art and artists made in Whistler.

A New Whistler Museum

Posted on January 24, 2023 | 2 comments

People come into the Whistler Museum every day and are inspired to share their own stories. “I remember when I was looking at real estate in Whistler in the 1970s. Lots next to the garbage dump were selling for $10,000 but I was scared of bears so didn’t buy one.” That garbage dump is where Whistler Village now sits.

The site of Whistler Village prior to development. Whistler Question Collection.

A recent favourite was when a longtime local told us about volunteering for a race on Whistler Mountain. One of the chairs fell from the Orange Chair, and instead of stopping it and doing tests they were instructed to hide the chair in the trees so no one would see what had happened.

When Jim McConkey was visiting from Denman Island earlier in the year he casually brought up how Bob Lange brought him a prototype of a plastic lace-up ski boot to try, back when boots were exclusively made from leather. According to Jim, “I tried it and said, ‘You’re on the right track but you’ve got to make a buckle boot.’ That was the first plastic boot there was.”

There are so many unique stories about Whistler and the people who call, or have called this town home. 60 years ago there was no skiing on Whistler or Blackcomb Mountains, instead, the valley was mainly used for logging and summer tourism which revolved around fishing.

When Whistler Mountain first opened in 1966 visitors travelled to the lifts on a gravel road that was only plowed once a week. Whistler became a municipality less than 50 years ago, and when it was incorporated there was no sewer or town water in the valley, and many people relied on the manual collection of water from the lakes or creeks.

Creekside during construction of the ski resort in 1965. Janet Love Morrison Collection.

According to the 2021 census data, the median age of the population in Whistler is 35.6. This means that more than half of the population of Whistler was around before the mountains allowed snowboarding. Even more recent was the opening of the bike park. Most people would remember a time before the bike park, and Crankworx, now a global celebration of mountain biking, started in Whistler in 2004.

A lot has changed! Regularly we are told the only thing in Whistler that hasn’t changed since opening are the lift lines. The Whistler Museum and Archives Society was started in 1986 to document these changes so people could remember a time before skiing. Our mission is to collect, preserve, document, and interpret the natural and human history of mountain life, with an emphasis on Whistler, and to share this with the community to enrich the lives of residents and guests.

Like plenty of other Whistler institutions throughout history, we are currently housed in a temporary trailer. The trailer that we call home started its life as the Canada Post building in Creekside. In 1994 it was moved into the village, and the library moved in in 1995 until it found its permanent home in 2008.

There are a few challenges with our temporary home. Preserving archives and artefacts for future reference and exhibits relies on specific temperature and moisture controls so materials do not degrade. The building that we have currently is hard to keep within these parameters. Storage space is also limited so much of our collection is offsite in uncontrolled environments. This puts the collection at risk and we would love to keep it under stricter conditions for improved protection, which we could do in a new museum.

The Canada Post building in 1978. It would go on to become the library and then the museum. This is the same building the museum calls home today. Whistler Question Collection.

A bigger footprint will also mean we can share more of Whistler’s stories with the community. Whistler’s history is quite unique, we have had a big global impact for such a small town, and we want to be able to protect and celebrate this for generations to come.

On December 6th, the Resort Municipality of Whistler agreed to a lease of municipal land to the museum for a 60 year term. Sixty years ago Whistler was not a ski town, and in another 60 years who knows what will happen? Whatever the future looks like, we hope the Whistler Museum will be around to capture and celebrate our history.

Look out for more exciting information related to the new museum facility in the coming months.

Much in Whistler has changed since the Whistler Museum opened in the trailer on Main Street, next to the library in 1995. Mayor Ted Nebbeling and Sara Jennings unveil the sign during the grand opening. Petersen Collection.

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Posted in Arts & Artists, From the Archives, Mountain Culture, Museum Musings, Ski-Town Stories, Whistler: A Town

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Alta Lake Dances

Posted on January 17, 2023 | Leave a comment

Before the ski resort brought power and paved roads to the valley, and it was renamed Whistler, Alta Lake was a fairly small and remote town. Without developed roads it could be hard getting around and residents from opposite sides of the valley rarely crossed paths. One thing that would bring the community together, however, was the Alta Lake dances. While the music and location of the dances varied over the years, fond memories are recounted by many people that visited or called Alta Lake home.

Fred and Elizabeth Woods lived in Alta Lake with their children from around 1926 until the 1940s, and during this time their family band was the staple entertainment at dances and community events. Dances featuring the Woods family band helped raise money for the first Alta Lake School, which children Helen, Pat, Jack and Kenneth Woods attended. When the one room schoolhouse was built in the 1930s it doubled as a community hall where regular dances continued to be held.

Pat Woods was quite young when he started playing at the Alta Lake dances with his family. “We used to load the toboggan with the guitars, accordion, and a violin. We’d ride the toboggan down to the dance hall, play crib, then make some music. We weren’t very old then, but everybody was up dancing. We were 9 or 10.”

The Woods family band played at community events, such as dances and fundraisers.

Almost everyone was up dancing. School desks were pushed to the side for the dances and really young children would sleep through the event under the desks. The schoolhouse, like most buildings, was lit by coal oil lamps. When the home waltz started and the lamps turned off it was time to bundle up and head home.

Kenneth Farley’s family came to Alta Lake in 1943, after the Woods family band had moved on. “The music was the wrangler,” recounted Kenneth. “Philip’s wrangler looked after the horses. He played a fiddle and he would keep the time with the heel of his cowboy boots to set the pace, while the whisky in his back pocket would be sloshing away. You didn’t need to be able to dance because it was so crowded you could hardly move.”

Alta Lake School doubled as the community hall where dances were regularly held. Philip Collection.

For those living along the lake, the festivities started before arriving at the dance. A boat with an outboard motor would start at the north end of the lake, picking up everyone in rowboats on the way past. By the time they arrived to the dance there would be a long string of boats pulled along behind the motorboat.

John Burge first came to Alta Lake in 1956 and spent the summers here while growing up. Not quite the same as the dances you’ll find at Garfs or The Longhorn today, he remembers learning the foxtrot, waltz, schottische and polka from Florence Petersen. “We just learned all these dances and people did them. It was a fun time.”

John started working at Rainbow Lodge when he was around 13 and after working for five summers he had saved enough money to pay for university. One of his jobs was to wax the floors after the Saturday night dances held in the Rainbow Lodge dining room, which could be attended by up to 100 people. By then Rainbow Lodge was owned by Alec and Audrey Greenwood, who had bought the lodge from Myrtle and Alex Philip when they retired in 1948. The lodge was made of wood and the whole building would dance, with the deteriorating wood floor bouncing up and down as much as six inches as people boogied.

The dining room at Rainbow Lodge. Philip Collection.

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Poop or Chaos? A Whistler Sewer Story

Posted on January 10, 2023 | Leave a comment

As we have recently learnt at the Whistler Museum, maintenance problems can pop up at the most inconvenient times and create quite the disruption. The same was true when a truck came down on power lines in Whistler one New Year’s Eve.

Disposing of human waste was an ongoing challenge for residents of Alta Lake and Whistler until the wastewater treatment plant opened in 1977. Prior to the sewer system, residents had private septic systems or outhouses, which posed environmental and practical problems for the growing community. On the weekends Brian Leighton, who lived in Creekside, regularly had to knock on the door of the upstairs units asking if they would hold off from flushing the toilets, as the septic system would back up through his toilet when all the units were full.

According to Garibaldi’s Whistler News, in 1977 Whistler had a permanent population of 800, but this swelled to nearly 7000 during the peak season and a reliable sewer system was required before the town could grow further. The importance of the sewer was not understated by Mayor Pat Carleton during the grand opening of the wastewater treatment plant, which included lunch, tours and much fanfare, when he said, “The foundation of Whistler’s future is this plant and sewer system.”

The sewer system was an important step before construction of Whistler Village could begin. Garibaldi’s Whistler News.

Despite initially being built to accommodate a growing community, the wastewater treatment plant could not keep up with the rapid and relentless increase in the population. Cliff Jennings was originally in charge of water distribution and sewer collection for the Resort Municipality of Whistler (RMOW) before becoming the superintendent of the wastewater plant. According to Cliff, every two years the wastewater treatment plant was having an expansion. However, with the economy slowing in 1981 there was no money to improve the plant coming from the Provincial or Federal Governments despite the population increasing. “We were pretty much always three years behind until just very, very recently. It was always just [cross your fingers].”

Continual construction of the plant during this time had its own challenges. Timing had to be perfect because it could only be powered down for short periods, around 90 minutes, before the waste had to be diverted, which meant raw sewage would be pumped directly into the river. “We never had to purposely divert but we got awfully close,” said Cliff.

Mayor Pat Carleton hands Cliff Jennings the keys to the municipal truck, August 13, 1978. Whistler Question Collection.

On the fateful New Year’s Eve, the power company had been working on the lines at the intersection of Highway 99 and Nesters when the hydraulic lift broke, landing the lift on the power lines. To get the lift off and the lines restored the power would have to be turned off to the entire Valley while it was fixed. This included the Village, which relied on floodlights as the main security measure on New Year’s Eve. Bringing down the lights would have meant total chaos in the busy Village, and would be questionable for safety. However, without turning the entire power grid off the line could not be fixed, and power to Whistler Cay and Nesters would be off all night until BC Hydro could fix the truck on the line. That would mean that the wastewater plant for these areas would also have no power for far longer than the 90 minutes, and without power, diversion of wastewater into the environment.

Due to safety concerns in the Village, the decision was made to keep the power off to Whistler Cay and Nesters for the night, rather than turn all the power off to the entire Valley to fix the line. Thankfully Cliff Jennings and the wastewater team were instead able to keep the treatment plant going with a diesel generator. The lucky team got to ring in the New Year’s with the sewage in the dark, but kept it going long enough that the lines could be fixed without any diversion, while revellers could continue as normal in the Village.

Revellers setting off fireworks on New Year’s Eve in Whistler Village, 1985. The Village was still busy but there were fewer security measures in place. Whistler Question Collection.

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Posted in Arts & Artists, From the Archives, Mountain Culture, Museum Musings, Ski-Town Stories, Whistler: A Town

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Before Personal Locator Beacons and Cell Phones: SPOT the Difference

Posted on January 3, 2023 | Leave a comment

Personal locator beacons and cell phones have completely changed the face of adventure in only 20 years. If you are prepared and have the right equipment it is possible to be rescued in a matter hours, sometimes less, in an emergency situation. Before satellite technology and cell phones it was a different story.

Whistler Search and Rescue (WSAR) formed in 1972 after the tragic avalanche that killed four people on Whistler’s Back Bowl. The subsequent search highlighted the need for search coordination and WSAR was born.

Whistler Search and Rescue on Blackcomb Glacier in 1983. Photo courtesy of Cliff Jennings.

Brad Sills joined shortly after WSAR formed and is now in his 47th year volunteering. He recalled the process of responding to search and rescue calls in the 1970s, which would come via the RCMP in Squamish or Pemberton before Whistler had local dispatch. “The call would come to Dave [Cathers] and he would tear his hair out because almost all of his capacity for mountain rescue were hippies living in the woods without telephones. I remember him getting really mad one night going, ‘What the hell do you think I’m supposed to do? Send you losers smoke signals or something?’ We were all laughing. We taunted him a lot about being uptight and responsible.”

Despite much of the team squatting off-grid, the community was small and the ‘jungle telephone’ quite effective. It helped that everyone could usually be found in the Boot Pub each afternoon.

It also took far longer to get messages out from those in need. When someone was injured others in the party would have to get to the nearest town or house before help could be called. Typically this meant that those missing or injured spent more time in the elements, unfortunately leading to more body recovery than rescue.

In July 1979, one person of a two person climbing group fell down a crevasse on Wedge Mountain. The safe party had to mark the spot and hike to Creekside to alert the RCMP. The Local Search and Rescue who relied on personal equipment at the time, alerted Comox Search and Rescue who sent a helicopter to assist with the rescue. Whistler Question Collection.

Arriving in Whistler as the first lifts were being built, Cliff Jennings went on to become one of the first heli-ski guides in Whistler with Pacific Ski Air when it started the winter of 1967/68. Helicopters did not have the same power that they do today. After picking guests up, Pacific Ski Air would have to slowly make their way up the mountain using the available thermals.

Knowing that they had no way to send for help and that rescue could take a very long time, Cliff Jennings and Glenn Creelman tried walking out from Decker Glacier like they would have to if the helicopter broke down. (This is long before Blackcomb was developed.) Cliff is a lifetime member of WSAR, and, using the same unreliable headlamps that search and rescue used, they traversed for 13 hours, skiing the whole time until they crossed the frozen Green Lake and reached houses to make a phone call.

Pacific Ski Air at the base of Decker Glacier. Photo courtesy of Cliff Jennings.

“We said, ‘Well, if we break down we are in trouble!’ Because we’d never get regular clients out that way. They would have to say, ‘Oh I wonder where they are?’ and go looking for us, for which they would have to get another helicopter because there wasn’t another helicopter in the Valley.”

Cliff Jennings during the traverse out from Decker Glacier. Photo courtesy of Cliff Jennings.

Even the first radios that WSAR had were huge, heavy and basically line of sight. Discussing change, Vincent Massey, also a lifetime member of WSAR said, “Everyone has a cell phone now and if they have reception it is pretty easy to either call or we can ping their phone to find out. And then the people who are going way out there, who are really qualified, have a SAT phone or a SPOT beacon and they can call for help. So things have changed, and now we know what to bring and we know what the scenario is because we can either text them or call them.”

Of course, it is still imperative that everyone travels prepared and knows how to use their equipment.

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Posted in Arts & Artists, From the Archives, Mountain Culture, Museum Musings, Ski-Town Stories, Whistler: A Town

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