Tag Archives: Dean Nelson

The First Pride Parade in Whistler

Posted on February 8, 2022 | Leave a comment

Last month, the Whistler Museum opened our latest temporary exhibit, Pride & Progress: From the Grassroots Altitude to the Fearless Whistler Pride and Ski Festival, which looks back at the thirty year history of the Whistler Pride and Ski Festival. One of the most public and visible events of the festival is the Pride Ski + March, where skiers and snowboarders and rainbow flags make their way down Whistler Mountain towards Olympic Plaza. The first march through Whistler Village, however, took a shorter route and happened not during the festival but during the 2010 Olympic Winter Games. It was led by the first Pride House.

Pride House in Whistler. Photo courtesy of Clare Johnson

The idea of an LGBTQ2S+ space modeled on the hospitality houses set up by national Olympic committees took a few years to come together. While attending the 2007 InterPride conference in Zurich, Switzerland, WinterPRIDE (now the Whistler Pride and Ski Festival) organizer Dean Nelson was inspired while learning more about what pride meant in other countries, especially nations more hostile towards LGBTQ2S+ communities.

Three years later, with a lot of hard work, organization, and dedication, the first Pride Houses opened in February 2010, one in a portion of the Pan Pacific Whistler Village Centre and another in Vancouver (Pride House hosted a daily in QMUNITY, BC’s Queer, Trans, and Two-Spirit Resource Centre, while the sports bar SCORE on Davie St. served as a celebration space). In both locations, Pride House was designed to have multiple functions. They served as educational centres, with resources on many topics including homophobia in sport and Canadian immigration and refugee protection. They were also a welcoming space for LGBTQ2S+ athletes, coaches, officials, family, friends, and fans. Additionally, Whistler’s Pride House hosted a media room for unaccredited media, to which Nelson credits the high exposure of Pride House, as it offered a new Olympic story and a chance at more airtime. Over the 2010 Games, 5,000 people visited Whistler’s Pride House, including skeleton gold medallist Jon Montgomery and Olympic swimmer Mark Tweksbury.

The parade down Village Stroll to Whistler Media House. Whistler Pride Collection.

Whistler Pride House’s march through the Village came about in response to disparaging remarks made by two commentators about American figure skater Johnny Weir, in which they questioned his gender and the example he set for young skaters. Pride House contacted Whistler Media House (located in the Maury Young Arts Centre) to arrange a press conference with accredited media (Weir held his own press conference in Vancouver to respond to the remarks) and, quite literally, marched over with rainbow flags and banners.

Their march took them from the Pan Pacific Whistler Village Centre, down the stairs, along the Village Stroll, down to Celebration Plaza (today Olympic Plaza), around the Olympic Rings, and back to the theatre in what Nelson described as “probably the most dramatic press conference that the Whistler press team held during the Olympics and Paralympics.”

The parade takes a pause on the steps outside Pride House. Whistler Pride Collection.

With a few changes to the route the following year, the march became part of WinterPRIDE. According to Nelson, “We’ve held onto that tradition ever since and I think it’s really important to have that visibility.” The festival has grown increasingly visible within Whistler over the past thirty years, from the Resort Municipality of Whistler raising rainbow banners in the Village to businesses putting flags in their windows.

You can learn more about the growth of the Whistler Pride and Ski Festival and the legacy of Pride House at Pride & Progress, which will be on display at the Whistler Museum through April 19, 2022.

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Posted in Museum Musings, Olympics, Ski-Town Stories, Whistler: A Town

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New Exhibit Opening Tonight!

Posted on January 25, 2022 | Leave a comment

The 29th annual Whistler Pride and Ski Festival is right around the corner! This week of January 23 – 30, 2022 will be chock-full of events dedicated to diversity, inclusion, and fun. Coinciding with this year’s festivities, the museum is pleased to announce the launch of a new temporary exhibit titled Pride & Progress: From the Grassroots Altitude to the Fearless Whistler Pride and Ski Festival.

Opening to the public this evening, Tuesday, January 25, 2022, the exhibit will take visitors through a visual and descriptive history of Whistler Pride.

Whistler’s rainbow crosswalks are just one example of increased visibility mentioned by Dean Nelson during our online talk in February 2021. Photo courtesy of Dean Nelson.

The challenges and triumphs leading up to the world-renown festival we know today weave a fascinating narrative. The story begins in 1992, when Altitude – as it was known then – covertly hosted around seventy participants for a gay ski week at Whistler Mountain. From these humble beginnings, the festival continued to grow, welcoming more guests and hosting increasingly renowned performers with each year, all the while working to create a safe space for the LGBTQ2s+ community in our mountain town.

The story of Whistler Pride wouldn’t be complete without an exploration of the relationship between the LGBTQ2S+ community and mountain sports. Centering on Pride House, the LGBTQ2S+ pavilion established during the 2010 Olympic Winter Games was a beacon of courage, visibility, and support for queer athletes to be their authentic selves. As the struggle for acceptance continues, this section of the exhibit invites visitors to reflect on the presence of homophobia in sport, and the importance of safe spaces to create awareness and encourage important conversations.

Whistler’s Pride House was located at the Pan Pacific Village Centre and was very visible from outside. Photo courtesy of Clare Johnson.

The exhibit will also feature artifacts, photographs, and films from the past 29 years of the festival in its various forms that will give insight to these historic Pride events. Thanks to Dean Nelson, former festival director (2008 – 2018), for donating many of the artifacts and archival materials being used for the exhibit.

We’re also happy to announce that our extensive collection of Whistler Pride records and materials have now been officially catalogued, rehoused, and published on our online database. Here you can find descriptions on various events, promotions, photographs, and audiovisuals to name a few. Please browse through at your leisure for more information on the history of the festival.

Some of the materials donated as part of the Whistler Pride collection.

We will be celebrating opening night of Pride & Progress: From the Grassroots Altitude to the Fearless Whistler Pride and Ski Festival on this evening, January 25, 2022 with evening hours from 6 to 9 pm. We will also be open from 11 am – 5 pm on Wednesday, January 26. As ever, entry is by donation and masks are required for all visitors to the museum – we hope to see you all here! Otherwise, the exhibit will be on display during our normal operating hours until April 19, 2022.

Not quite ready for an in-person visit? Our 2021 Speaker Series conversation with Dean Nelson is also available to watch on our YouTube channel here.

Chris Monaghan is the assistant archivist at the Whistler Museum and Archives. He has been here on a Young Canada Works contract through the fall and winter.

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Posted in From the Archives, Museum Musings, Museum News & Events, Olympics, Ski-Town Stories

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Whistler Speaker Series Launched for 2021

Posted on March 9, 2021 | Leave a comment

Last month the Whistler Museum hosted its first Virtual Speaker Series of 2021.  We are still getting used to hosting events online and miss the informal camaraderie of our audiences, but we are very excited to continue hosting some amazing speakers and sharing their stories.

For our first event of the season, we were joined by Dean Nelson.  Nelson is an LGBTQ+ activist and a travel expert specializing in LGBTQ+ travel who first came to Whistler in 1993 to help open the Holiday Inn Sunspree Resort as part of the front desk team.  He became involved in Whistler’s gay ski week, then known as Altitude, when its founder Brent Benaschak approached him about the Holiday Inn becoming a hotel sponsor for the event.  From there Nelson volunteered to help with the fashion show and became increasingly more involved with the week.  As part of the event on February 17, Nelson told us more about how the Whistler gay ski week came about and how it has grown over almost thirty years.

Whistler’s rainbow crosswalks are just one example of increased visibility mentioned by Dean Nelson during our online talk. Photo courtesy of Dean Nelson.

Even if you weren’t able to attend our first Speaker Series, you may have read about what Nelson had to say in the Pique of February 25th, and you can still learn more about the Whistler Pride and Ski Festival and its history by watching our talk with Nelson on the Whistler Museum’s YouTube Channel.

Prior to 2020, the Whistler Museum had relatively few records or materials documenting LGBTQ+ history in the Whistler area.  Late last year, however, Nelson donated a large amount of archival material and artefacts to our collection, including photographs, promotional materials, jackets and much, much more.  Along with oral history interviews (such as the one we conducted with Nelson for February’s event) and other materials, this donation helps to fill one of the gaps in our collection.

Some of the materials donated as part of the Whistler Pride collection.

While the Whistler Pride collection is not currently available to search in our online database, we hope to begin cataloguing the collection this summer.  Most summers, the Whistler Museum is able to hire summer students through the Young Canada Works program, a joint initiative of the National Trust for Canada and the Department of Canadian Heritage.  This summer, we are intending to hire a collections student whose main focus would be the describing, cataloguing, and rehousing of this new collection.  In the past, collections students have helped catalogue the Don MacLaurin Collection, the George Benjamin Collection, the Greg Griffith Collection, and many others that are now available to search online.  The ability to find documents and information online is especially important at a time when researchers may not be able to come to the archives easily.

We really enjoyed learning more about the Whistler Pride and Ski Festival with Dean Nelson last month, and are looking forward to continuing to learn more.  Our next Speaker Series event examining the history of journalism and publishing in Whistler will take place at 7pm March 25 and include an audience Q&A with the speakers (while the talk by our speakers will be posted online after the event, the Q&A will not).  Find more information about our upcoming Speaker Series at whistlermuseum.org/events.

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Posted in Museum Musings, Museum News & Events, Ski-Town Stories, Whistler: A Town

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News from the Whistler Museum

Posted on February 16, 2021 | Leave a comment

Back in September 2020 we posted photos on our social media of exploratory trips taken by the UBC Varsity Outdoor Club (VOC) in 1964 and the construction of the VOC Cabin from 1965.  The photos were donated by Karl Ricker, a VOC member who had substantial involvement in the VOC Cabin.  Recently, Ricker brought in copies of the VOC Journal from 1964 to 1968 to add to our research collection and, though we’ve only taken a quick look so far (and are looking forward to examining the journals more closely), they appear to be a very valuable addition.

One of the photos posted on our social media, showing the construction of the Cabin by VOC members. Karl Ricker Collection.

The journals cover a period during which the VOC was exploring the possibility of a cabin in Whistler, constructing the cabin in Whistler, and beginning to put the cabin in Whistler to use.  According to the VOC Journal of 1964, the VOC Cabin on Mount Seymour was rarely being used as a ski cabin, as members could drive right up to the lifts, and skiing on Seymour was becoming increasingly crowded.  They also found that Seymour was “inadequate as an area for ski touring, for hiking, or for mountaineering,” the “most important activities of an outdoor club.”  Building a cabin in the Whistler area was thought to be an improvement as the long drive from Vancouver ensured most skiers would stay overnight, there was a proposal to develop lifts on Whistler Mountain, and the surrounding mountains would “present spectacular opportunities for touring and hiking.”  Members of the VOC made their first reconnaissance trips to the area throughout 1964 and began construction of the cabin in 1965.

Skimming the journals, mention of progress on the VOC Cabin are frequent and, as far as we’ve seen, optimistic.  In 1967 then VOC President Paul Sims wrote in his report of the upcoming completion of the cabin, saying: “When the last shake is nailed to the wall, and the last stone mortared into the fireplace, the construction at Whistler will be of a different nature.  The shaking will continue but from dances, pots and pans, sing-songs, laughter and conversation.  The building will bulge with eager and exhausted outdoor groups instead of construction crews.”

Karl Ricker in the midst of a socially distanced recording session (anyone not in front of the camera is also masked at all times).

The journals were brought in by Ricker when he came to the museum to record an interview for an upcoming exhibition by the Museum of North Vancouver.  We were excited to help facilitate the recording as it gave us a chance to try out equipment we’ve now been using in our virtual events.  This past weekend marked our first BC Family Day Kids Après: At Home Edition.  Rather than invite families to the museum, we created Kids Après Packs that brought parts of the museum to you.  Packs were picked up for free at the museum and included materials for two crafts and a Kids Après Activity Book, which combines stories from our exhibits with colouring pages, mazes, trivia and more.  We released craft videos online so that participants could craft along from home, creating their own skiing snowpeople and a (non-edible) mug of hot chocolate, a staple of Kids Après.

The same equipment was also used to create the craft videos as part of BC Family Day Kids Après: Home Edition.

Tomorrow evening we’ll be hosting our first Virtual Speaker Series of 2021, kicking off the series with Whistler Pride: A Look Back with Dean Nelson.  Though the Whistler Pride and Ski Festival was not able to go ahead this year, you could still see the spirit of the festival in the flags along Village Gate Boulevard – we’ll be learning more about how the festival started and how it has grown and become more visible with one of its long-time organizers.  You can register for the free event here.  Find out more about the rest of our Speaker Series line up for 2021 at our website here.

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Posted in Museum Musings, Museum News & Events, Ski-Town Stories, Whistler: A Town

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