Tag Archives: Whistler Fire Department

Rudi’s Famous Strudel

Posted on October 4, 2022 | 1 comment

In Whistler today you have your pick of restaurants catering to all tastes, including many fine dining options. Unsurprisingly, the options were more limited in 1970 when Rudi and Merrilyn Hofmann’s Mountain Holm Steakhouse opened at Nesters. Later known simply as Rudi’s Steakhouse, it was an instant favourite often requiring reservations weeks in advance.

Rudi had trained as a chef in his home country of Germany and got his start in Whistler in 1969, working as the head chef at the Christiana Inn. In an interview with the Whistler Question, Rudi said, “When I was at the Christiana, I quadrupled the turnover. I was just serving different food than they were used to. In those days the general fare in ski areas was hotdogs, hamburgers, chilli.” At the time the Christiana Inn and L’Après were the main restaurants in Whistler. Seeing that there was a market in Whistler for finer dining, Rudi set out to start his own restaurant. He purchased Tony’s Hamburger Heaven, a late night eatery running out of a former Pacific Great Eastern railway tool shed, and the rest is history.

While it may not look like much from the outside, Rudi’s Steakhouse was the venue of choice for a fancy meal. Whistler Question Collection.

With appetisers including escargot, goose liver pate, prawns and scallops (’Coquilles Saint Jacques a la Parisienne’) all for under $6 a dish, flipping through a menu is likely to make anyone long for restaurant prices from the 1986 as their mouth begins to water (and when Rudi first opened in 1970 the prices were even lower). The main dishes include additional information to help diners choose. The 8 oz. Filet Mignon Par Excellence includes the claim, ‘You can cut it with a fork!’.

Nello and Jenny Busdon pose for promotional photos in Rudi’s Steakhouse with owner and chef Rudi Hofmann. Greg Griffith Collection.

With loyal customers returning again and again, Rudi’s became the venue of choice for wining and dining. Franz Wilhelmsen, President and Founder of Garibaldi Lift Co., could often be spotted in the Steakhouse. He did not hold back his praise for Rudi’s, saying, “I don’t think I ever had better food anywhere in the whole world.” It was a regular venue for events including the weekly Rotary Club meetings and birthdays, and they would hold an annual traditional European Christmas Dinner on Christmas Eve, featuring goose, dumplings and homemade Christmas pudding.

The glowing reviews were global. According to the August 1972 issue of Ski Magazine, ‘While Whistler’s nightlife would rate three on a one-to-one hundred scale, its feeding potential would rate about 92. The main reason is the Mountain Holm Steakhouse, known as Rudi’s because of its bearded proprietor, a master chef from Germany. Rustic, warm, personal; magnificent beef for $6.’ To cater to the demand, Rudi’s was renovated in 1974 to expand the lower seating area and increase the kitchen space, yet the 60 seat restaurant still filled up.

Rudi’s Steakhouse closing party in 1986, featuring left to right – Don and Isobel MacLaurin, Rudi Hofmann, Franz and Annette Wilhelmsen. Petersen Collection.

It has been argued that Rudi’s was more about dessert than dinner. Former local Bob Penner said in an oral history interview, “Rudi wasn’t famous for steak, he was famous for strudel. That was his undoing. The strudel came off of Rudi’s strudel press on Thursdays, and anyone who knew anything in the Valley was lining up on Thursdays to buy Rudi’s strudel. Rudi believed to have a good strudel you had to be able to read a newspaper through it and if it had any breaks he went into an absolute tirade.”

Despite the rave reviews, Rudi was unsuccessful selling the restaurant in 1977, and instead leased the building. This led to a rotating door of restaurants in the space – Vallee Blanche, Madame’s, Le Chalet. Eventually Rudi’s opened back up in 1984 to the excitement of Whistler locals, however, the changing times were hard on Rudi’s Steakhouse. The new town centre kept tourists in Whistler Village and increased competition, and the downturn in the economy meant fewer people were eating out. Rudi’s closed for good in 1986 but is still remembered fondly throughout the community.

Rudi’s was burnt for fire practice after closing in 1986. The next year Nesters Market opened on the same site. Whistler Question Collection.

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Posted in From the Archives, Mountain Culture, Museum Musings, Whistler: A Town

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The End of Brio House

Posted on April 27, 2021 | Leave a comment

When looking through reports on the 1991 fire in Function Junction that damaged many of the Whistler Question photographs (and more) last week, we came across another fire that took place at the very end of 1990, destroying a property known as Brio House.

This fire was not the first to mark the Hawthorne Place property. The house had already experienced a major fire in April 1987. It was believed that the fire had started with a smouldering couch cushion that spread to a cedar wall and up to the wood ceiling and cedar roof, leaving half of the duplex a “blackened shell.” The other half was saved by the building’s fire wall. Firefighters were on the scene only four minutes after they received the call and within an hour had the fire under control. The flames, which at one point rose up to twenty metres into the air, could reportedly be seen by those leaving the late show at the Rainbow Theatre, including some residents of the house.

Unfortunately, the prints or negatives of the photos from both the 1990 and 1987 fires that were originally published in the Whistler Question were destroyed by the fire in Function Junction just a few weeks later. Whistler Question, 1991.

Almost four years later, the Question reported on another fire at the same property that began on December 30, 1990. Unlike the fire of 1987, however, this fire left the Brio House gutted.

On that Sunday afternoon the Whistler Fire Department responded to a call after residents noticed black smoke pouring through the air vent above the fireplace. The residents tried to put out the fire but then noticed flames in the wall. By the time they realized they would not be able to contain the fire, it was too late for the residents to attempt to save their belongings. Though firefighters were able to control the fire, it was decided that it was too dangerous to send firefighters inside and the main concern was to protect the neighbouring houses.

This and the photo before were submitted by Jan Holmberg, a neighbour in Hawthorne Place and the owner of the building in Function Junction that burned down later in January. Whistler Question, 1991.

One reason both fires were considered so newsworthy was because of the number of people they affected. In 1987 the property was described in the Question as “Whistler’s most controversial and popular multi-resident home,” due to the number of people living in the large duplex and its use as temporary housing for visitors and recent arrivals to Whistler. The owner, Dave Whiffen (who in 1987 lived in a suite in the basement), was trying to have his property rezoned as an eight bedroom pension; the municipality had previously fined Whiffen for using the building’s basement and loft when the main floor already used up the permitted 360 sq. metres. The municipality stated that Whiffen had overbuilt and was running a “hotel” on his property, while Whiffen maintained that the duplex was “a necessary source of low-cost accommodation for Whistler service-industry personnel.”

By the evening of December 30, 1990, twenty residents were left homeless. Some were temporarily put up by neighbours while others were lodged in Blackcomb Mountain staff housing. According to then-Question editor Bob Barnett, “Offers by Whistlerites and businesses to house and feed the Brio residents and to hold a benefit for them were made before the fire was completely extinguished.” Whiffen, who by that time had moved out of Whistler, told the paper that he planned to rebuild “a regular duplex” and sell the property, putting an end to Brio House.

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Fire in Function Junction

Posted on April 20, 2021 | 1 comment

A few weeks ago during our Speaker Series on journalism in Whistler, technical difficulties unfortunately prevented a question being asked about a fire that destroyed the production office of The Whistler Question in Function Junction in 1991. As we weren’t able to learn more about the fire from the knowledgeable people at the speaker event, both presenting and in the audience, we thought we’d start by taking a quick look at what the Question had to say about it.

The fire was actually only one of two large fires in Whistler on Friday, January 18, 1991. At Rainbow the building housing Rainbow Rentals, Rainbow Paint and Supply, Whistler Woodheat, Whistler Welding, Allan May Project Management and the truck division of Budget Rent-A-Car also had a fire. As there were no hydrants in the area and the building contained tanks of propane, oxygen and acetylene as well as cans of oil-based paints and industrial solvents, the decision was made that it was too dangerous for firefighters to go into the building. Instead, the highway was closed and the building was allowed to burn.

The rubble left after the Rainbow fire burned out, including a woodstove. Whistler Question Collection, 1991.

In Function Junction, around 2:30 am, Kevin Swanlund was the only employee in the building that housed Yurrop Trading, Mountain Crests, the kitchen of The Gourmet, Little Mountain Bakery, and the Question production office when he noticed a fire. Swanlund attempted to put out the fire with an extinguisher but it kept coming back stronger. His actions alerted Carrie Waller and her daughter Amanda, who lived in the apartment upstairs, to the fire. The pair found the stairwell blocked but were able to use a ladder to climb down from the balcony.

Fire Chief Tony Evans described the fire as “a tough one to fight,” though the fire department responded promptly and were able to control the fire. A fire hydrant on the property was not connected to the municipal water system and had reportedly frozen, though luckily there were municipal hydrants nearby. The fire department did not confirm a cause of the fire, but were able to say that it appeared to have started near the building’s electrical panel.

The Whistler Question production office after the fire. Whistler Question Collection, 1991.

By the time the Question came out the next Thursday, most of the businesses affected already had plans to reopen. Jan Holmberg, who owned the building and co-owned Yurrop Trading and Mountain Crests, told the Question that Mountain Crests had already located an embroidery machine in Seattle and rented space in another building and would soon be at half their usual production. Rick and Doris Matthews, the co-owners of The Gourmet, had begun cooking at home and in another kitchen while setting up in another Function Junction building, though they expected that for the next month they would be able to produce only about half of their “signature products.” Luckily for The Gourmet, most of their kitchen equipment was saved.

The co-owners of Little Mountain Bakery, Pierre LePage and Andy Schoni, both decided to use the fire as an opportunity for short vacations before beginning operations at 1212 Alpha Lake Road in February. Like The Gourmet, most of Little Mountain Bakery’s equipment was saved but the bakery lost all of their supplies.

Patrick Sarrazin helps baker Andy Schoni clean up trays after the fire at Little Mountain Bakery. Whistler Question Collection, 1991.

The Question production office was not burned but was heavily damaged by smoke and water. The Question lost computers, a laser printer, a photocopier, darkroom equipment, and five years worth of irreplaceable photographs. The paper was able to set up a temporary office in the Blackcomb Ski Club cabin and, thanks to the help of Rick Clare, Whistler Printing and Blackcomb Lodge, were able to stick to their normal publishing schedule.

The fires of January 18, 1991, affected eleven businesses in Whistler in Rainbow and Function Junction, though most were able to reopen. Firefighters were able to save a collection of negatives from 1978 to 1985 from the fire. Thanks to Question photographer Brian Smith, these negatives were restored and are now housed in the archives where the Whistler Question Collection is an invaluable resource that is used almost daily at the Whistler Museum. The Whistler Question Collection now includes photographs of different facets of life in the Whistler area from 1978 to 1986 and from 1991 to 1996. Unfortunately, due to the photographs lost in the fire the years between 1986 and 1991 are not as well represented.

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Burning Down the House

Posted on October 6, 2020 | Leave a comment

To many, the photograph of a group posed around and on a rustic house is a familiar image of a different era in Whistler, when the nearest grocery store was often found in Squamish and only one mountain had any lifts operating.  In 2011, Sarah Drewery, then the Collections Manager at the Whistler Museum, conducted an oral history with Andy and Bonnie Munster, and asked about the history of the house in the picture, which Andy called home for about five years in the 1970s.

The house before its demolition and eventual burning. Greg Griffith Collection.

Andy first came to Whistler in 1971 to ski.  He had been expecting something bigger and drove straight through to Green Lake before realizing he had passed it.  According to him, in his first four years in the area he ran into problems finding a place to rent and so in 1975 he and two friends, Randy and Dave, decided to squat and build their own cabin.  Randy, who came from California, chose the site near Fitzsimmons Creek and decided that they didn’t want anything plastic in the house, preferring wood and natural materials.  With little money to spare amongst them, the cabin was built almost entirely out of recycled materials.

Construction began in the spring or summer of 1975, often relying on what they could find in the dump.  They found lumber that had been thrown away after another construction project finished their foundations, old fashioned windows that somebody no longer needed, and couches in pristine condition.  Other items were donated by people they knew or sold to them cheaply, such as a cast iron cook stove and wood heater that Seppo Makinen sold to them for $20.  Andy estimated that by the time they finished the house it cost a total of $50 and included an upstairs, a sunroom, a large woodshed, and an outhouse.

The house just before it was set alight. Whistler Question Collection.

The house was comfortable but keeping it running was a lot of work.  All of the heating came from wood and each fall they would have to cut at least eight cords of firewood.  Water had to be hauled from Fitzsimmons Creek in buckets, though in summer they could use a water wheel, and heated on the stove for showers and washing.  Andy recalled that there were a few times when they decided not to have the wood stove on and then woke up with frost in their mustaches and beards.  Luckily, the house was quick to warm up and stayed warm for quite a while.

In late 1978, most of the squatters on Crown land in Whistler were served with eviction notices.  According to Andy they were shocked and seeing the notice “your heart kind of sinks down,” but they were able to meet with the provincial and municipal governments and negotiate a year’s extension.  When it came time to leave the house, they gave away furniture, took out the windows and any reusable materials, and talked to the fire department about what to do with the shell.

In a speaker event last fall, Jim Moodie mentioned that, as part of the team managing the village construction, he was partly responsible for burning down Andy Munster’s home.  The eviction notices were served around the time that the first ground was broken on the village site and, as Andy put it, “We were actually just moving out when the pile drivers and everything were starting in the village.”  The shell of their house was used by the fire department for fire practice and, after trying a few different things, they let it burn to the ground.

The fire department controls the burning of the house while its inhabitants and friends look on. Whistler Question Collection.

The fire was documented in another series of photographs, depicting what many felt to be the end of an era.  The next few years saw the construction of Whistler Village and the opening of Blackcomb Mountain not far from the site of that house, where Andy said if you were to walk past today “you’d never know it was there.”

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