Featured Image: The Interior of Dusty’s Bar & BBQ, 1987. Whistler Mountain Collection.
Dusty’s Bar & BBQ is about as synonymous with Whistler’s Après party scene as is snow to skiing, fish to water… or, in the memories of many locals and longer-timers: a stuffed bronco is to beers (and braless bawdiness!).
Dusty was a horse. A taxidermied bronco forever frozen in mid-buck. A stuffed relic, with an origin story that begins, however, with three different ‘Once upon a times…’
The first: He was from 1920s Texas – an award winner in his time: one who had surely earned many of his rodeo riders big-buckle-bragging rights. Naturally, this would translate to him finding his ‘rightful’ place at the base of a snow-bawllin’ slope, in a bar named after him some 100 years later. Dusty’s opened in 1983.
The second, according to Dusty’s website (the bar’s not the bronco’s): “Some say Dusty [was] bred on a farm owned by the local druggist in the town of Hope. It was said this pharmacist was the best in the Fraser Valley, and upon Dusty’s untimely passing, the kindly druggist had him stuffed and placed in front of his store.”
The third: “Dusty was a Hollywood stunt horse. His trainers were forced to shoot poor Dusty when he threw a certain trailer-turned-actress into the middle of her 30’s. It is said that Dusty, a rock-and-roll horse at heart, couldn’t take it when the star stopped singing that Broadway tune. The actress had Dusty shot.” (https://www.dustyswhistler.com)
The tales of Dusty’s tail only start there… but what remains undisputed is when he arrived here. In 1979, Dusty rolled up in the back of a truck (sadly, in a missed moment of potential corollary – or corralary – synchronicity: there is no mention that he rodeoed in in a Bronco). He was destined to be the centerpiece of the newly re-branded, mountain-base, post-slope watering hole: converting from the original L’Après to Dusty’s. However, the bar was locally, Creekside-colloquially, known as The Deadhorse.
Much for being dead, Dusty had a lively Après-life, a Whistler ‘After’-life.
Rules, necessarily, soon needed to be put in place. Management became wranglers: if riders rode the bronco with their clothes on, they had to buy the house a round. If clothes were shed, well legends were born and tall-tales were spread from the fogginess of fact vs. fiction…
Perhaps one of the most famous stories, from which many re-tellings have been told involves a young woman in mountain management, some ‘bareback’ bouncing, a sudden supposed full moon and claims that she was subsequently fired. Some twenty years later, the woman who raised the bar – and the bar’s profile – overnight, wrote a letter to The Pique to set the riding-record straight. She was not fired, but remains known as ‘Lady Godiva’ ever since.
The bar and BBQ joint re-branded in the late 1980s, setting Dusty off from the raunchy ranch into the ‘realm of mythology.’ The now-battered-up bronco hit the fundraising circuit. He was auctioned off on Timmy’s Telethon. The buyer never picked up his rodeo cocktail champ, and that’s when Ski Patrol stepped in and ‘rescued’ him.
Dusty’s adventures will be continued in next week’s column …
I was VP Marketing for Whistler Mountain at the time, reporting to Lorne Borgal, fairly new as President. We were assuming in-house management of food services (previously leased out) and looking to re-brand L’Apres. There was much discussions on a new name and many were assessed. I, tongue-in-cheek proposed calling it “Borgals, after Lorne who would have none of it (I did think “Borgals at the Base” had a nice ring to it) After much debate Dusty’s was the consensus choice, The stuffed horse was a later opportunity too good to pass up.
As I recall, at the launch party, an invitation affair for Whistler Mountain ownership, Directors, staff and invited Whistler VP guests, the lady in question, a key and valued member of the sales and marketing team, did offer up a rather exuberant and revealing “ride” on “Dusty” much to the delight of many and not so much some others. I watched it unfold alongside Lorne, both surprised that this particular employee was on the horse but not overly bothered, until someone of more authority in the company suggested that this was not acceptable and the employee should be fired.
That was never going to happen but a suggestion of knowing her audience was suggested
Dusty’s would become a continuing iconic feature of Whistler Mountain’s history and the lady in question continues to be a Whistler legend today.
Mike Hurst