Horses were a vital part of life at Alta Lake in the early half of the 20th century, facilitating transportation, construction, agriculture, leisure, and exploration. David Esworthy, who passed away in 2015, was a highly respected figure in the Canadian equestrian scene whose beginnings can be traced back to Rainbow Lodge. He went on to amass an impressive score of accolades, including president of the Canadian Equestrian Federation and Horse Council BC, and member of the BC Sports Hall of Fame.
David was born on January 29, 1929, in Victoria, B.C. His mother, Margaret Esworthy (née Tapley), had travelled to Alta Lake from Maine to help her sister, Myrtle Philip, set up Rainbow Lodge in 1914. Photographs from the Philip collection reveal that David very quickly became acquainted with the lodge’s horses.
Growing up in the Lower Mainland, David spent summers at Rainbow Lodge. As a teenager, he worked as the lodge’s wrangler. During that era, guests could sign up for early morning trail rides, which meant employees like David rose at 4 o’clock to prepare the horses. Lodge guests could pre-book their breakfast rides to Lost Lake or Green Lake, or opt for midnight trail rides complete with campfires, singing, and toasted marshmallows.
Moira McCarthy, who tended to the horses with David, remembered how Myrtle once caught them jumping the horses over logs, and the pair received a healthy scolding. Still, a 1974 article in The Province announcing a Rainbow Lodge reunion fondly remembered David as “the summer wrangler [who] had all the young things scrambling to ride along with him when he rounded up the horses at 4 a.m.”
After leaving the lodge, David worked on a ranch in the Interior for two years and studied agriculture at the University of British Columbia. In 1949, he married Patricia Howat, and the couple naturally chose Alta Lake as their honeymoon destination.
David, Patricia, their son Philip, and dog Sandy continued to visit Myrtle and would often travel to Alta Lake in the summers. The Alta Lake Echo’s December 18th, 1960 edition described how the Esworthys got stuck on the PGE when a bridge over Cheakamus Canyon caught flame, arriving so late for dinner at the Philips’ that there was no time to help wash dishes before they had to turn around and return home!
Seeking to spend more time with his young family, David joined North Vancouver’s Northridge Riding Club, and soon became its instructor and buyer. For the next fifty years, he dedicated himself to the sport, teaching clinics internationally and serving as judge, a horse show chair and an organizer. He was one of the few Fédération Equestre Internationale stewards to hold tickets in all three disciplines, a director on the Canadian Horse Council, and he assisted in the preparations for the equestrian events in the 1976 and 1984 Olympics in Montreal and Los Angeles. David’s vast resumé of volunteer work was merely in addition to his 40 year career with the Hastings Brass Foundry, the last four serving as president and CEO.
David was undeniably influential in Canada’s equestrian scene, and, if stories of his indomitable aunt are to be believed, he certainly came by his penchant and inclination towards horses honestly!
Logan Roberts is the Summer Program Coordinator at the Whistler Museum through the Young Canada Works Program.
I’m Myrtle’s grandnephew and knew David and Aunt Margaret
A very interesting article! I’m curious about a small detail regarding the horses at Rainbow Lodge. As a summer resident in the 1950s and 60s, I often hiked to Lost Lake, either walking around the north end of Alta Lake past Tapley’s Farm or rowing across the lake to Higgins Point, from which there was a rough road/trail to LL. In those days, one accessed LL from the south end, where there was an old log dump (to service the by-then collapsed sawmill at the north end). A logging road skirted the lake along the east shore, but there was no trail around the lake. By itself on the west shore there was an old wood-frame structure on a little point. To visit it, you had to paddle across the lake on a gerry-rigged raft (of which there were usually one or two left floating in the lake from year to year). I was told by the Greenwoods sometime in the 1960s that this building had been built by Alex and Myrtle Philip as an overnight camp for riders from Rainbow Lodge. Do you by any chance have any further information about this building, or better yet, a photograph?