Tag Archives: Alta Lake Community Club

A Bizarre Fundraiser

Posted on November 22, 2022 | Leave a comment

There are many options when it comes to holiday shopping in Whistler and, for many, craft fairs and markets are looked forward to as an opportunity to fine something unique while supporting local artists. For many years, the best known craft market in Whistler was the Bizarre Bazaar.

Ten years before the first Bizarre Bazaar was organized by the Whistler Community Arts Council (now called Arts Whistler) in 1987, the Alta Lake Community Club (ALCC) began hosting their annual Fall Fair fundraiser for the Club where local artists could sell handmade crafts among other activities. The first Fall Fair in 1977 was held in the gym of Myrtle Philip School and was so successful that it made a profit in its first year. By 1985, the Fall Fair had grown large enough that it moved into the recently opened Conference Centre.

Christmas decorations are sold at the Alta Lake Community Club’s Fall Fair in 1984. Some tables at the Bizarre Bazaar would have looked similar. Whistler Question Collection, 1984

Like the Fall Fair, the Bizarre Bazaar began in the Myrtle Philip School gym as a fundraiser, this one to support the Whistler Children’s Art Festival. At the time, the Arts Council was still young (Arts Whistler celebrated their 40th year of operations this year), had no office space, and was run by a group of dedicated and hands-on board members and volunteers, including Gail Rybar who coordinated the first Bizarre Bazaar in 1987.

Held on December 5, 1987 the first Bizarre Bazaar included sales of local arts, crafts and food, a raffle, live entertainment from flautist Dorothy Halton and Celtic harpist Theodore Gabriel, lunch and dinner, a “beverage garden,” children’s craft workshops with Pene Domries, and photos with Santa. Like the Fall Fair of the ALCC, the first year of the Bizarre Bazaar was reportedly a success and raised enough money to fund the Children’s Art Festival in 1988. According to long time Arts Council board member Joan Richoz, however, the first year was not without its challenges.

Gail Rybar, organizer of the first Bizarre Bazaar in 1987. Whistler Question Collection, Bonny Makarewicz, 1993

Looking back over 25 years of Bizarre Bazaars in 2013, Richoz recalled that the volunteer organizers had to put long hours and a lot of effort into the first market. They had borrowed tables from the Delta Mountain Inn (now the Hilton) and, though the hotel was located not far from the school had to transport the tables over snowbanks. A heavy snow on December 4 meant that some vendors from outside of Whistler were not able to make it, while others left the market early in order to make it home. Volunteers set up stalls and workshops and even made chili so that everyone working the market would have dinner to eat.

In the following years, the Bizarre Bazaar grew and also came to include a bake sale fundraiser for the Whistler Museum & Archives Society. Museum volunteers including Florence Petersen, Joan Deeks, Lil Goldsmid, Isobel MacLaurin, Kathy Macalister, Shirley Langtry, Viv Jennings, Darlyne Christian and more would spend weeks ahead of the market baking in order to raise money for the organization. Other community groups also got involved, with the Girl Guides running activities, the Whistler Community Services Society operating the food concession, the Whistler Public Library selling tickets to their own annual fundraiser, and both the Whistler Singers and the Whistler Children’s Chorus performing seasonal numbers.

When a new Myrtle Philip Community School opened on Lorimer Road in 1992, the Bizarre Bazaar moved with it and continued to run out of the school gym until 1996 when it moved into the Conference Centre. In the 2000s, the market continued to expand and change, moving to a weekend in November, partnering with Bratz Biz (a youth artisan market for local young entrepreneurs) in 2006, occasionally switching location to the Westin Resort, and changing its name to the Arts Whistler Holiday Market.

Mary Jones inspects one of the delicate and exquisitely crafted small wood boxes by Mountenay of Squamish at the 1994 Bizarre Bazaar. Whistler Question Collection, Bonny Makarewicz, 1994

This winter, though there is no Bizarre Bazaar or Arts Whistler Holiday Market, Bratz Biz and the Whistler Artisan Market will be taking place in the Upper Village on November 26 & 27. If you’re in search of archival images of Whistler, we will be at the Whistler Artisan Market and can’t wait to see you there!

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Posted in Arts & Artists, Museum Musings, Whistler: A Town

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The Library in the Basement

Posted on September 21, 2021 | 2 comments

Last month, when asked by the Whistler Public Library (WPL) if we had photos that they could share to celebrate their birthday, we noticed that the museum hasn’t written a whole lot about our neighbour, so we thought we’d take a look back at the early days of the WPL.

After the Keg building was moved to its current location on Blackcomb Way in 1981, most of the building was renovated to become the offices and meeting spaces of Municipal Hall. It was ready to be occupied by fall 1984 but there was still an unfinished lower level that the Resort Municipality of Whistler (RMOW) wasn’t planning to use. A large portion of this level was earmarked for the Whistler Health Care Centre, which had been operating out of portables, and it was proposed that the remaining space could be used for a library.

Library supporters had the chance to “sponsor” a book of their choice to be part of the library’s permanent collection at one of the Whistler Public Library Association’s fundraisers, supervised by WPLA Chair Heather Hull. Whistler Question Collection, 1986.

In December 1985, a petition was started to form the Whistler Public Library Association (WPLA) and with ten signatures the library was on its way to becoming reality. The Whistler Rotary Club (WRC) set up a book depository at the Chef and Baker building in Function Junction to collect donations and in January 1986 the province granted the WPLA legal status and $7,000 for start-up costs. The WPLA was able to have their first official board meeting and set up additional collection spots.

The WPLA shared their early progress at their first public meeting in February. This included fundraising plans, the need for volunteers to collect and sort books, and the results of a questionnaire attempting to determine what the residents of Whistler wanted to see in their library. According to the 100 people who completed the survey, Whistler wanted the National Geographic, more non-fiction books than fiction, and a mix of mystery, spy, science fiction and romance novels.

Provincial Secretary Grace McCarthy signs the first library card for the new Whistler Public Library with WPLA Chair Heather Hull. Whistler Question Collection, 1986.

By May 1986, over 2,000 books had been donated (though not all were in suitable lending condition) and $47,000 had been raised for the library, including a $10,000 grant from the RMOW and over $20,000 contributed by local groups such as the WRC and the Alta Lake Community Club. Book donations came from bookstores, Capilano College (texts about the hotel and restaurant trades) and accounting firms (books on bookkeeping, taxes and financial matters). According to librarian Joan Richoz, they hoped to open with 3,000 books on the shelves.

Perhaps the largest fundraiser was Whistler’s Night in April 1986, an auction/dinner/dancing/performance combination that raised over $15,000. Whistler’s Night was a community affair, as restaurant and hotel staff volunteered to cook and serve a seven-course meal, local groups showed off performances prepared for Expo 86, and the Whistler Fire Department ran the bar.

Vancouver: A Year in Motion is presented to librarian Joan Richoz by Star Sutherland, whose father Tom published the book, on the library’s first full day of operations. Whistler Question Collection, 1986.

On July 28, 1986, around 60 people attended an official opening of the library in the basement of Municipal Hall, which had been finished and furnished by the WRC. The library wasn’t actually quite ready to open to the public, as about half of the collection still needed to be catalogued and shelved, but the Social Credit Party was holding their convention in Whistler that weekend and both Provincial Secretary Grace McCarthy (the minister responsible for libraries) and local MLA John Reynolds were on hand to make speeches and unveil plaques. After July 28, the library shut down for another month and over twenty volunteers worked to finish cataloguing and shelving books.

The next opening, and the date celebrated by the WPL as their birthday, was August 27, 1986. The collection included 4,600 books that could be borrowed during the sixteen hours/week that the library was open. Borrowing privileges were free for children, students, and seniors while adults paid $8 for the year.

The Whistler Public Library began as an idea at the end of 1985 and in one year (with a lot of hard work by the WPLA and help from the community) had created a collection, opened a facility, and registered almost 400 card holders.

Continue the story of the Whistler Public Library with Part 2 and Part 3.

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News for the community, by the community

Posted on June 29, 2021 | Leave a comment

Just how many communities can boast that their first reporters were a group of schoolchildren? Like most of Whistler’s history, the history of print news in Whistler is far from conventional, and relied heavily on community input, support, and organization.

The Whistler Question was published for the first time in 1976 from the basement of the Burrow’s home in Alpine Meadows, and, although it was the first newspaper about the valley, it was not the first source of community news.

The Burrows’s home in Alpine Meadows. Whistler Question Collection.

Early reporting in Whistler (circa 1930-1960) often centered around events that many would no longer consider newsworthy. Reports of gatherings for tea and details of newcomers in the valley featured prominently in Whistler’s (then Alta Lake) early newsheets. Whistler is by no means a roaring metropolis now, but the small community of Alta Lake was a fraction of the size, and the reports showcase the quiet life many residents led.

The first news-sheet in the valley was the Alta Lake School Gazette, a single page publication put together by a group of students at the Alta Lake School. It had a total of six issues, and ran from February to June, 1939.

Students at the Alta Lake School, some of which contributed to the publication. Jardine Collection.

The second news-sheet was published by the Alta Lake Community Club from 1958 until 1961. The single page publication changed names a few times before the Club settled on the Alta Lake Echo. As of its second issue, it featured a subtitle that read “published for fun”, which highlights the nature of the sheet. It was never intended to be a serious newspaper, and it never became one. Rather, it was a way for members of a small community to be kept up to date with the goings on of the past week, and informed of upcoming events.

By the time the Question was introduced, the community had changed significantly. Its first edition was published mere months after the Alta Lake community had been incorporated as the Resort Municipality of Whistler. Despite the significantly larger readership warranting a different approach than earlier publications in Whistler (just imagine if an article was written for every new arrival or departure from the valley), the Question nevertheless still encouraged, and relied on, community involvement.

The Question featured many different columns, some more conventional than others. A perennial favourite, called “Bricks and Roses,” was published from 1981 until 1998, and was in some ways reminiscent of an earlier and quieter time in Whistler when community happenings made up all of the news. The idea for the article was suggested to Glenda Bartosh (editor of the Question) by Gary Raymond, who at the time was the treasurer at the RMOW and had seen a similar column in a Quebec newspaper. A few months before it was introduced, the editor’s column had encouraged readers to send in their input in order to “make this community paper a dialogue – rather than a monologue.” The Bricks and Roses column set out to do just that. It created a forum for readers to express their gratitude for the good deeds of individuals and organizations by bestowing roses, or to call out and (rather publicly) condemn what they considered bad behaviour. More importantly, it gave people a direct path to the publication that did not require a comprehensive letter to the editor.

As you can imagine, people seized the opportunity to submit either a Brick or a Rose, and a wide variety of colourful submissions began to pour in. Some submissions were phoned in, while others were given verbally to one of the Questionables (name given to the staff at the Question) while they were out and about.

Keely Collins is one of two summer students working at the Whistler Museum this year through the Young Canada Works Program.  She will be returning to the University of Victoria in the fall.

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Reporting on Alta Lake

Posted on March 30, 2021 | Leave a comment

Last Thursday (March 25, 2021) the Whistler Museum’s second virtual Speaker Series took a look at journalism in Whistler since the 1970s.  Our guests Paul Burrows, Charlie Doyle, Bob Barnett, and Clare Ogilvie, have worked on and founded some of the best known publications in the valley: The Whistler Question, The Whistler Answer, and Pique Newsmagazine.  Before we explored recent journalism, we took a look back at earlier sources of news in the area.

The entire Alta Lake School student body, 1933.  Some these students were the ones to start the Alta Lake School Gazette. Back row (l to r): Wilfred Law, Tom Neiland, Helen Woods, Kay Thompson, Bob Jardine, Howard Gebhart; front row: Doreen Tapley, George Woods, Jack Woods.

The first source of news published in Alta Lake came from the Alta Lake School in 1939.  Older students at the school created the Alta Lake School Club, which sponsored The Alta Lake School Gazette.  The Gazette published six issues from February 11 to June 5, 1939, and was staffed by names that may sound familiar: Bob Jardine, Tom Neiland, and Helen, George and Jack Woods.  The stated purpose of the Gazette was “to give a current account of happening each month as seen by its editor and his staff.”  Its column “Local News of Interest” included a mix of opinions, observations, and gossip about the residents of the Alta Lake area and their comings and goings.  The Gazette also included a few pieces about news outside of Alta Lake, such as a boxing match and an editorial on the Canadian Navy, which were most likely put together with information from the radio or The Vancouver Sun, which was available at the store at Rainbow Lodge.

First Alta Lake Community Club picnic on the point at Rainbow.  Philip Collection.

In 1958, the Alta Lake Community Club (ALCC) began publishing a newsletter to which members and friends could subscribe.  The newsletter went by various names between 1958 and 1961: The Alta Lake Reminder, Community Weekly Sunset, the Alta Lake Echo, and the Alta Lake Owl.  As a community newsletter, it wasn’t necessarily known for its serious reporting but did keep people up-to-date on the travels of residents and frequent visitors to the area, community events such as dances and clean-ups, and the weather.  The newsletter also included a series about the local environment by then-club president Bill Bailiff and an abridged version of Hamlet (sadly, the museum does not have a complete retelling of Hamlet from the ALCC, which appears to be far more humorous than Shakespeare’s version).  In 1961, the newsletter was taken over by the Alta Lake Ratepayers Association and then ceased publication.

Garibaldi’s Whistler News advertises spring skiing in their Spring 1969 issue.  The entire publication was meant to promote Whistler Mountain.

A lot changed in the area between 1961 and 1967, when Garibaldi Lifts Ltd. began publishing Garibaldi’s Whistler News (GWN) in November.  Early editions of GWN were put together by Jack Bright and Lynn Mathews, who described the publication as a “good news” newspaper meant to promote Whistler Mountain.  GWN reported on developments in the valley, such as new lodges and businesses, and some years included a column by Ray Gallagher of Brandywine Falls Resort similar to the community news reported in earlier newsletters.  However, as the purpose of GWN was, as Lynn stated, “to get people up that road,” few stories said anything negative about the area and the development happening around Whistler Mountain.

Outside of the Alta Lake area, local news could be found in the newspapers of Squamish.  The Squamish Times, owned by Cloudesley Hoodspith from 1957 to 1992, and the Squamish Citizen (also published by Hoodspith) included Alta Lake/Whistler news, but their primary focus was not on this area.  It was not until the 1970s that the newly formed Resort Municipality of Whistler would be represented by an official local newspaper.

To learn more about journalism in Whistler from the 1970s to the present, you can find the video from last week’s event here.

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Posted in From the Archives, Museum Musings, Museum News & Events, Ski-Town Stories, Tales from Alta Lake, Whistler: A Town

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