Tag: Petersen Collection

A New Whistler MuseumA New Whistler Museum

January 24, 2023 Whistler MuseumWhistler Museum 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.

READ MOREREAD MORE

Driving the Sea to Sky (when it was mostly dirt)Driving the Sea to Sky (when it was mostly dirt)

May 19, 2018 Whistler MuseumWhistler Museum 0 Comments

If you’ve ever taken a look at the Whistler Museum’s YouTube channel you might have seen a short film from the Petersen Film Collection that features the drive to Whistler in 1958.  The footage makes it clear that the drive was an interesting one, full of steep hills, narrow roads and bumpy track.  At one point the car obviously overheated, a problem solved with the help of a nearby river.

The footage from the Petersens is only one account of coming to Whistler by car when the area was still known as Alta Lake.  Another well-known figure in Whistler, Don MacLaurin, also made the journey up the “highway” in 1958.

At the time Don was working in the forest service and was part of a cruising crew staying in Pemberton (cruising crews measure volume and quality of timber before it is harvested).  In a 2007 interview with John Hammons and Karen Overgaard, Don shared photos of his trip that are now part of the Whistler Museum archives.  As Don recalled, it took “two crews, two land rovers, winches, prayers and eight hours to go from Squamish to Pemberton.”

The road through the Cheakamus Canyon. MacLaurin Collection.

One shows a portion of the original road through the Cheakamus Canyon.  When asked to describe the drive, Don chose the word “precarious.”  The one-way road had a cliff on one side and, according to Don, “logs cabled through the road into the cliff… trying to hold the road in.”  Another photo shows a cable running back to a land rover.  It was a good thing the crews had two, as one would frequently be used to pull the other out when stuck.

A land rover is pulled up the road by another land rover – it’s handy to have two. MacLaurin Collection.

The road through what is now the Tapley’s Farm neighbourhood (and at the time would have been around the actual Tapley’s Farm) was “very, very wet and very soft and you were lucky to get through that as well.”  Once past Alta Lake the crews still had to get past what they called “suicide hill” which was located “under the power lines on the railroad side of Green Lake when you made the descent back down to the Green River.”  With a “so-called road” and “baseball-sized boulders” it’s no wonder Don described that section as “very, very tricky.”  Despite these challenges, the crews did eventually make it to Pemberton.

The “roads” in Whistler. MacLaurin Collection.

This was not the first time Don had come through the Whistler valley.  In 1951 he travelled through on the PGE on his way from Quesnel to Vancouver.  By 1961, when he returned with Isobel and a couple of neighbours, there was still no dependable road, and certainly not one that could sensibly be used in the winter, so again they came by rail.

Going through the Cheakamus Canyon on the PGE. It still has quite the drop. MacLaurin Collection.

By 1964 visitors to Whistler could come along a gravel road called Highway 99.  Two years later Highway 99 was paved from Squamish to Mons Station and to Pemberton in 1969.  With changes made over the decades and work done prior to the 2010 Olympics, the road Don, the Petersens and others travelled in 1958 is almost unrecognizable in the road we travel today.

READ MOREREAD MORE