Museum Musings – Whistler Museum and Archives Society

Whistler Weasels into Business: Mink, Marten and Mountain Movers Whistler Weasels into Business: Mink, Marten and Mountain Movers

March 23, 2026 Whistler Museum 0 Comments

Feature Image: Nita Lake Fur Farm owner Russell Jordan moved to the area in 1915. Photo: Whistler Museum Collection.

One hundred-and-one years ago, the first fur farm was established in Whistler. One hundred years ago, the local industry doubled, with a second business setting up shop.

The currency of furs was always one of the mainstays of early residents. The hills were set with traplines extending into the surrounding ranges, however the establishment of farms where animals were raised in captivity – not caught in the wild – began in 1925.

The Lineham Mink Farm was developed on Green Lake – a half mile from where the Pacific Great Eastern Railway ran past the 40-mile post (signifying 40 miles from the Squamish station). P.D. Lineham was a retired businessman from Vancouver who sought out a simpler life in the vast outdoors. His answer to his wilderness quest-for-quiet was to start farming wily weasels.

Lineham’s breeding animals were registered stock – imported from Québec – that had been bred in captivity for generations. By the following spring, the farm had 40 mink and this number was expected to steadily increase.

“The climate of this district is particularly suited to mink and the best pelts are taken from here. They are very little trouble to raise and the losses among the pups are practically nil,” Alex Philip (of Rainbow Lodge renown, the first visitor destination in the valley, established in 1915) reported to Country Life in B.C. magazine. The year this statement was published was 1926. That same year, The Nita Lake Fur Farm began: the first and only marten farm in the province.

Marten are relentless chewers and diggers. Owner-operator Russell Jordan had his work cut out for him. He rose to the challenge posed by the notorious beasts by constructing pens with 16-gauge wire mesh. The cages were built on the rise of land between Alpha and Nita Lakes and filled with miniature trees. He started with eight pairs of marten, described as being ‘the finest stock that have ever been obtained through careful selection during two trapping seasons.’

Russell first moved to the community of Alta Lake in 1915 with his wife and two children. He worked as a logger and the family purchased the Alta Lake Hotel. In an unusual move for the time, Russell was soon divorced by his wife – and she left for Vancouver with the children. The divorcé continued to operate the hotel (which later burnt down in 1933) while venturing into the pelt-rearing business.

Meanwhile, the Lineham Mink Farm began doing business throughout Canada and Europe. Furs were worth $39 each, while his breeding stock could fetch between $150-$200 a pair. This was a lucrative business at the time.

Both Whistler weasel ventures were proving to be worthy investments…but, their prosperity was short lived. The Wall Street Crash of 1929 marked the end to both local businesses and times turned suddenly much leaner in the valley.

Fast forward to the 1970s and, locally, the name ‘Weasel Workers’ suddenly takes on a much different meaning. No mink, no marten, no furs, no pelts … but, behind every major ski race held on Whistler, it has been said, ‘there was a pack of Weasels’.

The Whistler Weasels were a volunteer organization that began as a group of six, led by Bob Parsons, who prepped the courses for the first World Cup Ski Races on the mountain. The crew earned their moniker – not for being ‘deceitful or treacherous’ as the name implies when referring to a person – but, rather due to their work on the ‘Weasel’ section of the Dave Murray Downhill which was too steep for the snowcats of the time to make it up. These weasels would flatten the course by foot. The organization was formally registered as the Coast Alpine Event Club in 1984, but the name didn’t stick.

What did stick around was the continued volunteer efforts of the group. The Whistler Weasel numbers soared into thousands during the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Games, proving the polecats to be a vital and invaluable component for the execution of the Games.

Weasels, simply put, form an integral part of the historical, community-sustaining efforts of this place.

The Whistler Museum’s current Special Exhibition is titled Building the Spirit: Whistler’s Volunteers of the 2010 Games. The Weasel Workers feature as part of the exhibit. We look forward to welcoming you! The exhibit runs until March 29. More info: www.whistlermuseum.org

Boarder Bob: Whistler-based 1990’s Comic StripBoarder Bob: Whistler-based 1990’s Comic Strip

February 24, 2026 Whistler Museum 0 Comments

Featured image: Boarder Bob comic illustrated by Olivier Roy, published in Snowboard Canada Magazine (starting somewhere in the mid-nineties!)

Olivier (Oli) Roy is “an artist snowboarder” who first came to Whistler “right after high school in 1990” to attend a Craig Kelly Camp. He moved here, three years later, after art college.

Now, with a career of more than thirty years of ongoing coaching and creating under his belt, he holds a Lifetime Whistler Blackcomb Pass in one hand, a paintbrush in the other and continues to ride the endless canvas offered up by the mountain: artistically and athletically.

The early/mid-nineties has been referred to as the ‘golden age of snowboarding.’ It was fresh, edgy and still relegated to counter-culture status. In Whistler, it was synonymous with a lifestyle and a community.

During this era, the Ontario-based Snowboard Canada Magazine was born. Broadening their output, they enlisted Roy, as he describes, a “cool artist.”

Thus, Boarder Bob – the character and comic strip – were born. Border Bob “moves to Whistler to pursue [his] dream of being a pro snowboarder, but he’s very delusional … he thinks he’s a big shot…” But, he’s not. After a season or two, “he gets a sidekick, Jed Shred.”

Jed is a devoted fan: “he’s all like, ‘Oh, Boarder Bob, you’re so epic’. But, as is proven – through Bob’s trials, tribulations and failed attempts at ease and epicness – he is anything and everything, but.

Roy collaborated with local Glenn Rogers – known for his comic panels in The Whistler Question (a former, local publication started in 1976) – to produce the strip. The two worked together for eight years (“if I remember correctly”, states Roy), producing the 8 panel, 2 row, half-page ‘Boarder Bob’ strip. Published four times a year, “we had a lot of fun” poking fun at the “life of snowboarding in Whistler and on the West Coast.”

The stresses of balancing the desire to shred while staying fed, being able to board while needing to find literal board-ing to trying to be the bawler at the bar were all fodder for the two creative duos: Roy and Rogers, Bob and Jed. Moral quandaries were occasionally tackled through the ink of these stories: “should we risk everything to be in the shot?!” Arguably, Boarder Bob was 90% total fun, 10% tackling that ‘the stakes are real’.

Boarder Bob Comic. Illustrated by Olivier Roy, written by Glenn Rogers: featured in Snowboard Canada Magazine. The comic strip ran between 1995-2002 approximately.

The comic ran from about 1995 to 2002, or thereabouts. The pinpointing of specifics is about as precise as Bob’s technique, working more with the “ish” verb. However, when it comes to the technical hows of developing the strip, the collaborative process between Roy and Rogers was fine tuned.

Rogers would usually come up with the story. Admittedly, Roy states “I was never good at writing the stories, I was more the artist and inker.” He would receive the script and then sketch it, all by hand, on an 11 x 17 piece of cardboard:

“I would pencil it and then use China ink [for] the black and white and use markers, like alcohol markers and a bit of watercolor.” It was all hand-lettered. “And then I would send it by FedEx back to Snowboard Canada magazine. And I, I remember a few times where the FedEx guy would ring the bell and I would still be finishing … after an all nighter.” Each strip took between 10-20 hours. “It was a labour of love,” Roy reminisces. “I loved it.”

Boarder Bob eventually got abducted by aliens (I mean, why not?) – or this is insinuated, but never confirmed for the reader. “There’s a UFO and he disappears.”

Boarder Bob carved out a seminal space in the culture and history of snowboarding art, taking its place in the local legacy of slope-inspired comic strips. The Peak Bros ran from 1979-2002 (in The Whistler Answer and Whistler Review), poking fun at 80s ski culture, whereas Boarder Bob tackled the snowboarding shenanigans of the nineties.

Roy continued, and continues, to flourish on and off the slopes: the line between his art and sport overlapping.

He has illustrated for Snowboarder Magazine (the prominent US publication), been Whistler Blackcomb’s online illustrator, designed top sheets for such companies as Prior, Luxury and Option Snowboards; been sent to Ottawa as a Whistler Art Ambassador in 2010 for Canada Day and continues to regularly produce art that showcases the mountains and its vibrant culture.

The born-in-Montréal skateboarding kid who first came out to join Craig Kelly’s summer camps on the glacier, to then gain accolades as a competitive snowboarder in “half pipe contests, some slope styles, some boarder cross” to now working for Whistler Blackcomb’s Alpine Program and holding the title of being Whistler Valley Snowboard Club’s longest-running coach, working with the program since its inception almost 30 years ago – has literally drawn together the lines of on and off-mountain creativity.

Boarder Bob Comic. Illustrated by Olivier Roy, written by Glenn Rogers: featured in Snowboard Canada Magazine. The comic strip highlighted and poked fun at the Whistler snowboarding scene of the nienties.

Outtakes from the ‘Olden’ DaysOuttakes from the ‘Olden’ Days

February 3, 2026 Whistler Museum 0 Comments

Featured Photo: John Millar outside of his cabin 1911. Philip Collection.

The trials of this town’s early trailblazers were not without their moments of hilarity, precarious predicaments and comic quandaries. Here, I highlight four such stories: standouts in the history of how a place comes to be…

John Millar ran a roadhouse at Mile 34 ½ (Function Junction) in the early 1900s. A former cow wrangler, rumour had it he was on the run from the Texas Rangers with a couple ‘notches in his gun.’ He housed and fed weary travellers who were making the arduous journey along the original Pemberton Trail. He was known to serve stewed raccoon, muskrat stew and haunch of bear; recognizable by his broken nose, his buckskin coat, beat-up stetson and neck-wrapped red polka dot handkerchief.

John was a character. He was also a trapper and tended a line up the Cheakamus Lake valley: catching marten, rabbit, mink, muskrat…and wolverine. On one mission, John put the limp body of what he thought was a dead animal – a large, muscular and aggressive member of the weasel family – into his pack and set off… only to have the angry beast ‘come to’ and bite him in the buttocks. The tangle on the trail made it so that John could not sit comfortably for some long time after!

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The Burnt Stew Hike. *Petersen Collection*

Fast forward to the summer of 1958 and a backpacking trip around London (now, Whistler) Mountain. Local notables Florence Peterson, Kelly Fairhurst and Don Gow were out with overnighting packs and picnic gear and a billy can they rigged over a fire to make dinner. The pot was neglected, as campfire comradery took over, only to be remembered when the pungent smell of scorched food filled the air. The stench permeated the area to such an extent that the basin and the ski run earned its name ‘Burnt Stew’.

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Back now to butt-bitten John. Periodically he would venture with his packhorses down to Squamish and then take the steamer to Vancouver. One fall, he was returning with his entire winter’s supply of liquor, when one of his horses fell hard into Rubble Creek. Every bottle of John’s seasonal spirits were broken, shattered in the stream. The only glass that didn’t break was a bottle of vinegar. “I was so cussin’ gol’ danged mad that I pulled the cork out of the vinegar and a good swig of it.” Rueing the woes of the rubble, John made his way home with a much lighter, more sobering load.

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Then there was explosive Charlie Chandler. Charlie came to the valley in the early 1900s. He, too, was a trapper. A floatplane pilot gifted Charlie with a small amount of high-grade aircraft fuel, which he then used to clean his filthy overalls. After laundering the garment in gas, he felt it best to dispose of the dirty fuel down the pit of his outhouse. He didn’t think twice about it. The next time he visited the bivvy, he sat himself down, lit his pipe as was his custom, and survived (albeit, stunned and singed!) to tell the tale of an explosion that was heard from miles around!

Charlie would later leave the world with a bang, again sitting down. In 1946, friends found him dead, in his chair, outside his cabin. He appeared to have had a heart attack. He was also frozen stiff. Charlie was transported – still in his chair – by ‘speeder’ along the rail line to Rainbow Lodge to catch the train south. The train, however, was not to arrive until the next day. Now this is where the story gets a little blurry, but somehow, as local lore would have it, in the meantime, Charlie was offered a final drink – (surely to warm up!) – and hoisted, still seated, bolt upright, into a boxcar for his final, if not somewhat flamboyant, voyage!

The ‘Skin’ny on Whistler’s Ski Touring HistoryThe ‘Skin’ny on Whistler’s Ski Touring History

December 30, 2025 Whistler Museum 0 Comments

Top Image: Pip Brock and Don Munday walking down Whistler’s tracks, packing skis.
Photo taken by Phyllis Munday and from the BC Archives.

Ski touring and split-boarding continue to grow in popularity as people strive to extend their range into the backcountry of the local Coast Mountains. However, it is nothing new.

In 1933, the first documented ski ascent and descent from the top of London Mountain – now known as Whistler Mountain – was made by Pip Brock. With “terrible” skis purchased from a Vancouver department store, the feat of the intrepid 19-year-old was at first disbelieved by locals. His claim was, however, confirmed by binoculars which showed his tracks: the first top-to-bottom run of Whistler, sited and sighted, 92 years ago.

Pip recalls “Most mountaineers thought that skiing was impure and indecent. But a few of us being frivolous, realized the fin and value of ski for winter touring.” Pip was later joined by celebrated, nationally-treasured mountain adventurers Don and Phyllis Munday, skiing up Wedge Creek as means to summit Wedge Mountain.

Initially, local ski touring converts were few and far between. Pioneering prospector Harry Horstman (whom the glacier on Blackcomb and hut are named after) indignantly heckled the young Pip Brock, chastising him with: “What the hell you got them planks fur? I can get around twice as fast on my snowshoes as you can on them slitherin’ boards!”

But it was “slitherin’ boards” that George Bury, along with three others, chose to use for their 1939 expedition: the first to assess the potential for ski development in the area. The four men began their explorations from Cheakamus Lake and over the period of 10 days, skinned and skied their way around. The tour ended by way of skiing down ‘The Barrier’ to the railroad tracks and flagging down the southbound train headed for Squamish. The development idea was sidetracked with the start of World War II. The group never revisited the idea post-war.

Members of the Bury expedition in 1939.
Bury collection.

In the 1960s, Stefan Ples became actively involved with Garibaldi Lifts Ltd. in their development of Whistler as a ski area. Stefan was incredibly familiar with the mountain, having been touring up and down it for years.

There is a story of when Stefan first met Franz Wilhelmsen (‘The Father of Whistler’), President of Garibaldi Lifts, fittingly on top of the mountain. Franz had arrived by helicopter, Stefan by skis. Franz is reputed to have said “What are you doing on my mountain?” to which Stefan replied “What are you doing on mine?” It is ironic that Stefan became so involved with the ski resort’s development given that it is said he truly could not conceive why people would choose to take a lift up the mountain, just to ski just a short distance down. Though eventually awarded a lifetime pass, Stefan’s preferred method of access was by skinning. It took Stefan approximately 3 hours to reach the peak.

Members of the Bury Expedition in 1939 at Black Tusk.
Bury collection.

The Spearhead Traverse is now the area’s most popular ski touring mission, linking Blackcomb and Whistler by way of an approximately 34 km horseshoe-shaped route across the peaks of the Fitzsimmons and Spearhead ranges. The traverse crosses 13 glaciers, and depending on routing 9-11 mountain passes. In 1964, the first successful tour of the circuit was completed by four UBC Varsity Outdoor Club members. It took the group nine days, starting from the base of Blackcomb.

Today, the Spearhead Traverse is regarded as beginning at the backcountry gates atop of Blackcomb and ending in Whistler Village. The Spearhead Huts Society built a state-of-the-art 38-bunk backcountry accommodation in 2019, with two more huts planned along the route. A strenuous endeavour, most take 2-4 days to complete the trek, however the fastest known times currently hover around the 2 hour mark for both men and women.

The Spearhead Traverse is undertaken by approximately 4000 people per year, skinning their way into the storied tracks of this place.Ski touring and split-boarding continue to grow in popularity as people strive to extend their range into the backcountry of the local Coast Mountains. However, it is nothing new.

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(*Please note that the version of this article that was published in The Pique Newsmagazine on December 26, 2025 had the wrong photo credit with the Brock/Munday photo. Credit is correct here.)

Category: Museum Musings

Whistler Weasels into Business: Mink, Marten and Mountain Movers Whistler Weasels into Business: Mink, Marten and Mountain Movers

Boarder Bob: Whistler-based 1990’s Comic StripBoarder Bob: Whistler-based 1990’s Comic Strip

Outtakes from the ‘Olden’ DaysOuttakes from the ‘Olden’ Days

The ‘Skin’ny on Whistler’s Ski Touring HistoryThe ‘Skin’ny on Whistler’s Ski Touring History