Tag: Alta Lake Station

Adeline the Alta Lake DonkeyAdeline the Alta Lake Donkey

December 14, 2021 Whistler MuseumWhistler Museum 0 Comments

The cover of the February 1969 edition of Garibaldi’s Whistler News featured a photo of Tex Rodgers guiding cars through the parking lot for Whistler Mountain on horseback. Over the years that Tex worked for the lift company, it was not uncommon for skiers to see him astride his horse directing traffic, but his was not the only four-legged mount that could be found in the area. Also glimsped around Alta Lake and, at times, at Whistler Mountain was Karen Gow’s donkey Adeline.

Tex Rodgers directing traffic for Garibaldi Lifts Ltd. Whistler Mountain Ski Corporation Collection

The Gows first moved to Alta Lake in 1955, when Don Gow began working as the station agent at the Alta Lake Station. He had previously worked for the Pacific Great Eastern Railway (PGE) as a relief agent, traveling with his family from station to station to provide relief for agents going on holidays. Alta Lake was the family’s first permanent station and Don and Joyce moved into the “PGE green” station agent house with their two young daughters, Connie and Karen.

When the Alta Lake Station closed around 1959 and became a flag stop, the Gows moved first to the station at Shalalth and then further along the tracks to the station in Clinton. However, they had fallen in love with the Alta Lake area and built a cabin on a lot leased from the PGE with their friend Bill Russell. They continued to visit Alta Lake on weekends and holidays.

In 1965, Don was given the choice of bidding on a station even further north or leaving the PGE. He contacted Laurence Valleau and was offered a position as the bookkeeper for Valleau Logging, and so the Gows moved back to Alta Lake. Connie took Grade 9 by correspondence while Karen attended the Alta Lake School for Grade 7 and Joyce began working at the post office at Mons.

The Alta Lake Station that first brought the Gows to Alta Lake. Photo courtesy of Gow Family

While living in Clinton, Karen had desperately wanted a horse. In a 2015 oral history interview, she recalled that she had spend many of her weekends with her friends in Clinton, who mostly lived on ranches and all had horses. Karen began saving up for a horse of her own, saving both her allowance and that of her sister, who generously contributed her 25 cents/week to the cause. When they moved back to Alta Lake, however, her parent’s didn’t think it was the best place to have a horse.

Around the same time that Karen was saving up for a horse, Tex Rodgers was opening a stable called Buckhorn Ranch in the area now known as Nicklaus North. He was arranging to bring his horses from California and, unbeknownst to Karen, Don arranged for Tex to bring a donkey along as well. Karen was told there was something for her to collect at Mons and so she and her friend Renate Ples walked down the tracks from the Gow house. There, they found a donkey tied up outside the post office. As Karen recalled, “I was excited, excited and disappointed all at once… I wanted a horse, and it wasn’t really a horse, but, oh, we had so much fun.”

Karen and Adeline at the gondola barn. Photo courtesy of Gow Family

The donkey was given the name Adeline by Myrtle Philip, who thought she was sweet like the song “Sweet Adeline,” and lived in the barn at the back of the cabin that had belonged to Bill Bailiff before his death. According to Karen, Adeline’s braying could be heard all around the lake.

Don and Joyce continued to live at Alta Lake until 1975, when they both retired and bought a sailboat to live on, which Karen said had long been a dream of her dad’s. Karen did eventually get her horse, and even got her coaching certifications and taught horseback riding. As far as we know, however, her donkey Adeline is the only donkey to have been photographed hanging around the base of Whistler Mountain.

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Remembering Trips to Alta LakeRemembering Trips to Alta Lake

November 16, 2021 Whistler MuseumWhistler Museum 0 Comments

When the museum conducts oral history interviews, one of the questions asked is how the interviewee first came to the Whistler area. This question is often interpreted in one of two ways, with answers as varied as the individuals. Some interpret it as why they visited or moved to the area, while others answer more literally (one memorable answer was simply “car”). In a 2012 conversation with Kenneth Farley, he provided answers for both variations, including a description of traveling from Vancouver to Alta Lake in the 1940s, featuring at least three different means of transportation.

Kenneth’s parents, Frank and Hilda Farley, first visited Alta Lake in 1943 and rented a cabin at Jordan’s Lodge on Nita Lake for a week in the summer. Frank was a keen fly-fisherman and so the couple decided to buy property along the railroad tracks by Alta Lake from a Mr. Noble, who they knew from their home in Vancouver’s Kerrisdale neighbourhood. According to Kenneth, he came to Alta Lake “to see what it was all about” after his parents told him they had already bought the property. This was the first of many visits for Kenneth and his family.

The Farleys’ trips began in Kerrisdale on 49th Ave. From there they would walk eight blocks down to 41st, where the family caught the number 7 streetcar, which would take them downtown. The next step was to walk across the overpass above the fright yards to the waterfront, where the Union Steamship would be waiting.

Grace Woollard on a Union Steamship on the way up to Squamish, a bit earlier than the Farley family’s trips. Clarke Collection.

The trip aboard the Union Steamship was hardly an express route. After sailing through the Narrows, the ship stopped at most of the small colonial settlements along the Howe Sound, including Woodfibre and Britannia, before arriving in Squamish. As Kenneth recalled, it was often so windy in Squamish that the journey was made even longer as the captain faced the challenge of docking. Upon arrival in Squamish, Kenneth recalled navigating around “great big puddles full of water” to the Chinese restaurant, where they would eat apple pie while waiting for the train to be loaded with its freight. Eventually, the engineer would whistle and everyone would run to board the train before it went “rambling off in a cloud of dust and smoke.”

According to Kenneth, the cars used by the Pacific Great Eastern Railway were “real antique,” with sliding windows, a potbelly stove for warmth, and oil lamps suspended from the ceiling. The views along the route, however, made up for any discomfort on the train. Passengers could even disembark at Brandywine Falls to walk over and take a look at the Falls before continuing north.

The view from the train through the Cheakamus Canyon. Traveling to Alta Lake by train provided views that the highway could not. Clarke Collection.

The train usually reached the Alta Lake Station around 5:30pm and the Farleys would leave their baggage there while they walked to their cabin. When making the first trip of the spring, they often had to fix the chimney (which the snow had pushed over) and bail out the skiff made of rough planks. Once the skiff was emptied, someone would have to row back to the station to collect the baggage and then row back, finally completing the journey.

Kenneth remembered one memorable occasion traveling with his wife Shirley and sons Patrick and Greg when an additional stage was added to the journey. As he recalled, “It was raining, rain was slashing against the windows, and the train stopped in the middle of nowhere. And people started to get out of the train and go across the ditch on a 2×12 plank and the conductor was helping them across. And I thought, ‘Gee, this must be some new settlement or something or other,’ and then he came and said, ‘It’s your turn.'” There had been a derailment ahead and the passengers were taken to dump trucks with makeshift benches that took them up rough logging roads to a point further along the railway. There they boarded what Kenneth described as “vintage rolling stock,” with him and his family riding the caboose at the end.

During the Farleys’ early trips, the “road” to Alta Lake wasn’t smooth sailing.. MacLaurin Collection.

The Farley family began driving to Alta Lake after a road was constructed from Vancouver in the 1960s, though the journey could still be eventful. Kenneth Farley’s recollections of earlier trips, however, provide useful information about how visitors used to travel.

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Fire at Alta LakeFire at Alta Lake

February 11, 2020 Whistler MuseumWhistler Museum 2 Comments

Prior to the formation of the Alta Lake Volunteer Fire Department (ALVFD), the Alta Lake area had no official response to fires – they were put out by the small community.  But after two large fires in the early 1960s, some residents decided to form their own fire department.

The first fire is still a little mysterious.  One a reportedly beautiful morning in April, a single passenger got off the Budd car at the Alta Lake Station.  His outfit, a trench coat and dress shoes, drew the notice of everyone at the station as he asked Don Cruickshank, the station agent, how to get to the other side of the lake.

Waiting for the train at Alta Lake station, 1937. Left to right: Bill Bailiff, Mr and Mrs Racey, Ed Droll, Betty Woollard, Larry, Flo and Bob Williamson.

Later that same day, Dick Fairhurst received a call from Cruickshank to check on smoke coming from the area of an old empty lodge.  Fairhurst and Louis White grabbed a small fire extinguisher and a bucket each and ran to Fairhurst’s boat.  When they arrived at the lodge, they found that the fire had taken hold in some piles of lumber inside the three-storey building and that their buckets and extinguisher would be of no use.  They also found a piece of candle at the back of the lodge, and footprints from dress shoes in the soggy ground.

By the time the evening train arrived, two RCMP officers from Pemberton were aboard and waiting to arrest the stranger in the trench coat, who had been pacing in the station while waiting for the train.  Though we don’t know what happened to this mysterious man after his arrest, we do know that the date of the trial was set for June 6, 1962, the date of the second fire.

Cypress Lodge as seen from the lake. Fairhurst Collection.

This second fire appears to have been far more accidental than the first.  The provincial government was building a new highway to connect old logging roads, small community roads, and the Pemberton Trail.  The surveyors and their families were staying in cabins and lodges throughout Alta Lake.

One couple, Bruce and Anne Robinson, were staying in a cabin at Cypress Lodge, owned by Dick and Kelly Fairhurst.  Anne chose June 6, a warm day with no wind, to make bread in the old Kootenay Range in the cabin.  Dick was at the trial in Vancouver and Kelly had gone to vote at the Community Hall (it’s not entirely clear what the vote was for, but it is likely it was for the federal election).  She and her children had just arrived home when Bruce arrived at Cypress Lodge to discover the roof of his cabin on fire.  Kelly got on the party line, interrupting Alec Greenwood’s call to his mother-in-low to announce the fire.

Bert Harrop built cedar-bark furniture that was used in Harrop’s Tea Room, later the site of Cypress Lodge.  The museum has some of his creations in our collection, but most were destroyed in a fire.  Philip Collection.

Luckily, Bill and Joan Green and a group of loggers were hanging out at Rainbow Lodge after voting.  Bill radioed to the Van West logging operation to bring their fire pump, and Alex loaded his pump onto his tractor.  Soon everyone in the area know about the fire, and many of them came to help.

The fire, which had started from smouldering sparks in needles on the shake roof, had spread to a storage shed, but the lack of wind prevented it from spreading further.  Someone moved Dick’s truck onto the road, but other vehicles, piles of dry wood, and cans of gasoline, paint, diesel and propane were still around the property.

The two pumps were used to get the fire under control, and then to keep wetting everything down.  The Robinsons lost almost everything in the cabin, and many pieces of Bert Harrop’s cedar-bark furniture that were stored in the shed were lost, along with the two-rope for skiing on Mount Sproatt.

Alex Philip spent the night patrolling the area for sparks, but the fire was truly out by the time Dick arrived home the next day.  The community came together again to help with the clean up.

Dick Fairhurst, Stefan Ples and Doug Mansell rafting the fire shelter and its contents across the lake to Alta Vista, 1967. Petersen Collection

When the ALVFD was formed later in 1962, its members were Dick Fairhurst, Doug Mansell, Stefan Ples, and Glen Creelman.  They held regular practises and, until the formation of the Resort Municipality of Whistler in 1975, relied on fundraisers such as the Ice Break-Up Raffle and the Fireman’s Ball to buy supplies.  The residents of the valley relied on them in case of emergencies.

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