Category: Museum Musings

These articles have also appeared in the Whistler Question or Pique Newsmagazine in the Whistler Museum’s weekly column.

Moving Up to WhistlerMoving Up to Whistler

May 20, 2025 Whistler MuseumWhistler Museum 0 Comments

When we hear stories of people coming to the Whistler area and staying past a season it is not often that we hear of someone who first lived in the Whistler valley not because of the snow or the natural beauty, but because of the affordable housing.

In the early 1970s, when summers in the area were quiet and many people left town, Bert Melsness was working in heavy construction in the Squamish area. The company that he worked for was obligated to pay for accommodation for employees from outside of the area, either by paying for a hotel or by providing an allowance. Bert and another employee decided to use the allowance to rent a place together. They discovered that it would be cheaper for them to rent a house on Matterhorn Drive (in Alpine Meadows) for the summer than it would be to rent a house in Squamish.

Whistler Mountain’s grooming fleet in the 1980s. Whistler Mountain Ski Corporation Collection

Apart from the Toni Sailer Summer Ski Camp on Whistler Mountain, it was a quiet time in the area recreationally. Bert recalled that there were a few houses being built, but a lot of the activity was forestry related and concentrated around tow logging camps, one in Function Junction and another at Mons.

A few year later, Bert moved to Whistler permanently and took a job with Garibaldi Lifts Ltd. fixing and maintaining the lift company’s grooming equipment. Bert got his start as a “basic grease monkey” working on the delivery fleet for Woodward’s in Vancouver, learning as he worked. According to him, the truck shop’s foreman was an “ex-airforce type” who ensured that all scheduled maintenance was done correctly and as required, with no cutting of corners. He spent six years working on the groomers before switching to lift maintenance for a year. He was also part of the group from Whistler Mountain in 1980 that, along with a group from Blackcomb Mountain, provided some of the labour to install Whistler’s first northside lifts and Blackcomb’s first lifts. As well as working for the lift company, Bert worked for the contractors working on the Whistler Golf Course, the crews building the roads in Bayshores, Sabre and more.

Blasting work is carried out on lots for Bayshores

Like many Whistler residents, Bert moved around a bit before ending up in a cabin right at the south end of Alta Lake. At the time, BC Rail owned much of the land along Alta Lake Road and the railroad tacks and properties were leased from the rail company. According to Bert, the cabin that he lived in had been built by Norman Fairhurst, who held the lease from BC Rail. Living on the lake afforded Bert easy fishing access and a friendly relationship with the “railroad guys,” especially as he was just down the track from the Stationhouse. He became very familiar with the rail schedule, remembering six heavy trains running each day along with passenger service on Budd cars. When Disney was filming a Depression-era movie in the area, they used an old locomotive that they would park not far from his cabin. One day, he heard the sounds of a steam engine and went outside to discover the Royal Hudson switching cars on the nearby siding. In conversation with the engineer, he was told that driving the Royal Hudson from North Vancouver to Squamish at about 35 mph was “like putting a taxi cab sign on a Ferrari.” The locomotive, which had been designed to cruise at a much higher speed, could not get up to its full potential on the winding track.

The Royal Hudson heads south towards Vancouver on one of its first runs of the 1981 summer season. Whistler Question Collection

By the early 2000s, BC Rail was looking to develop some of the land that it owned in the Whistler area and in exchange had transferred ownership of its property on the lakeside of the tracks to the RMOW, including leases such as Bert’s. His lease was ended and he was offered first pick at one of the RMOW’s new developments. Looking back, Bert said that living on the lake did have one major drawback: if he hadn’t had that deal on the cabin he might have gotten into the real estate market much earlier.

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When Wylie Came to WhistlerWhen Wylie Came to Whistler

May 13, 2025 Whistler MuseumWhistler Museum 0 Comments

When Doug Wylie first came to the Whistler area in April 1971, it was for just a short visit. He and his wife stayed at Doug McDonald’s Alpine Lodge in Garibaldi and enjoyed four days of skiing on Whistler Mountain before Doug reported to his new engineering job on Vancouver Island, which he remembers starting with an “absolutely sunburned face.”

Doug had grown up skiing in Ontario but after skiing at Sunshine in Alberta knew that he wanted to move west for the big mountains. After he finished grad school he took a job in Victoria (which he hadn’t fully realised was on an island) and soon after bought a lot at Forbidden Plateau where they built an A-frame and their daughters learned to ski.

Most winters, Doug would come over to ski on Whistler two or three times with the Victoria branch of the Alpine Club of Canada. The group would pile into a van and arrive on Friday night, hiking up to the club cabin from the parking lot. They would ski for the weekend and then return to the Island.

The Whistler Question’s official portrait of the newest RMOW employee. Whistler Question Collection, 1981

The Club Cabin area was located just next to Whistler Mountain in what is now Nordic Estates. When lifts were first planned for Whistler in 1964, planners for the area and the Garibaldi Olympic Development Association (GODA) also planned to create a specific area where outdoor clubs could build cabins for their members to use. This would help ensure that the lift company had customers. By the time the provincial government officially granted permission for this use and sent out surveyors in late summer 1965, the first club cabin in that area, that of UBC’s Varsity Outdoor Club, was already under construction on a lot that they had surveyed themselves.

With no road access, Club Cabin users walked in with all of their things, just as UBC VOC members carried in their building supplies. Karl Ricker Collection

Other clubs (including SFU, BC Hydro and the Alpine Club) also began building cabins, though they were not accessible by road and shared a parking area next to the highway, near the current pedestrian bridge. The area was redeveloped beginning in 1982 and, in the mid 1980s, the area was renamed Nordic Estates.

Doug returned to Whistler in time to witness this redevelopment. After Vancouver Island, the Wylie family moved to Prince George for two years where Doug worked as a municipal engineer. As Doug recalls, he attended a staff meeting one day and somebody left an ad on the table for a municipal engineer in Whistler. When everybody left, the ad was still on the table and so Doug put it in his pocket and applied for the position.

Doug was interviewed for the job by Al Raine, then an alderman on the Whistler council. They walked along the railway tracks and Al pointed out the sewers and described municipal projects, and then Doug was invited to a party that Al and Nancy were throwing that evening. Doug had previously met Nancy at his university’s sports banquet when he was a member of the ski racing team and, when reminded of her attendance, Nancy was able to pull out the gift she had been given as guest of honour: a “sterling silver engraved box for putting cigarettes or cigars in.” After the party, Doug managed to lock the keys for his rental car inside the car and had to get Al to come help him get into the car at 2 o’clock in the morning. He was still offered the job.

Doug Wylie takes part in the Great Snow Earth Water Race (he did the water part). Photo courtesy of Doug Wylie

Doug started working for the Resort Municipality of Whistler in May 1981, just a few weeks before Muni Hall was moved to Function Junction and the Keg building was moved from Alta Lake. The RMOW had a very small staff and so over the next few years the engineering department was responsible for the sewage treatment plant, water systems, park construction and the early stages of the Valley Trail.

During his time with the RMOW, Doug was also part of founding the Blackcomb Ski Club, worked on the fire department, and became a Weasel Worker, even serving as “Chief of Transportation” for the 1984 World Cup Downhill. Though he left the RMOW in the late 1980s to work for West Vancouver, he continued to spend his weekends in the mountains and moved back full-time after retiring.

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Full Moon over WhistlerFull Moon over Whistler

May 6, 2025 Whistler MuseumWhistler Museum 0 Comments

In January 1988, Whistler Mountain announced a new event for the lift company to coincide with the full moon on February 2. Over a hundred skiers could buy tickets to a Moonlighting evening that included a full-course dinner at the Roundhouse and a moonlit ski down to the valley guided by patrollers and instructors, followed by a “moondance party” at Dusty’s with live entertainment. The idea for the event reportedly came from Bernie Protsch, a ski patroller, and Werner Defilla, vice president of food and beverage, who had both seen similar events while working in Switzerland. The first full moon event would seem to have gone well, with another planned during the World Cup Week in March. When the participants did not know, however, was that theirs was not the only part on Whistler Mountain that evening.

A full moon over the Coast Mountains. Greg Griffith Collection

At a recent Speaker Series featuring mountain caretakers, Janet Love Morrison, Laird Brown and Colleen Warner shared stories from their time living on Whistler Mountain in the 1980s. Laird and Colleen spent over two years living at midstation and Janet and Gord Harder lived at the Alpine Service Building at the top of the Red Chair. According to Janet, while guests and staff (including Whistler Mountain Ski Corporation President Lorne Borgal) were enjoying a fine dining experience at the Roundhouse, she and Gord decided to have their own party at their place.

At the time, Laird had built an ice rink between the Roundhouse and the Alpine Service Building and, according to Janet, they “just wanted to go outside and go ice skating.” Knowing that the event was still ongoing, however, their party of six to eight people decided to stay inside until those at the Roundhouse had departed. Once the official guests had headed down the hill, the unofficial party went for a moonlit skate, had a few more drinks, and then decided to go skiing.

The Alpine Service Building also housed the alpine caretakers. Whistler Question Collection, 1978

With the help of two ski-dos driven by Gord and another friend, the party did multiple laps of Upper Whisky Jack before rolling one of the ski-dos, breaking the flag, the key and the windshield. It was about 4 am by the time they got the machine back up to the Alpine Service Building and Janet stayed up to do the 5 am weather reading, a daily duty of the alpine caretaker. Later that day, Janet and Gord went to the office of Jamie Tattersfield to confess what had happened to the ski-do. He looked at them, asked if everyone was alright, and said, “Ok.”

Being out in the alpine during a full moon was far from a new experience for Gord and some of his friends. Prior to the construction of the Peak Chair in 1986, the Peak Bros. would camp on the peak for every full moon, hiking up for about an hour from the top of the T-bar at the end of the ski day and setting up tents. According to Shawn Hughes (also known as SO), this tradition went on faithfully every winter full moon for over six years.

Peak Bros from left to right: ‘SO’, ‘Rox’ and ‘Crazy Harry’. Harder Collection

The construction of the Whistler Express Gondola in the summer of 1988 made the alpine caretaker position redundant and the mid-station and valley caretaker positions were phased out over the next few years. Whistler Mountain’s full moon dinners at the Roundhouse, however, continued into the 1990s.

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The Inn CrowdThe Inn Crowd

April 29, 2025 Whistler MuseumWhistler Museum 2 Comments

It’s not uncommon when looking through newspapers to find letters responding to stories and events in previous issues. It is less common, however, for letters to be given a whole page, be accompanied by multiple photographs, and to be addressed to a building. In the April 16, 1981 edition of the Whistler Question, Jan Systad wrote a letter to the Cheakamus Inn after learning from the April 9 issue that the lodge she had worked at was going to be torn down.

The Cheakamus Inn, rebranded as the Whistler Vale after a change in ownership, though the restaurant retained the Cheakamus name. Whistler Resort Association Collection

The Cheakamus Inn was built for $300,000 in 1965 by Eric Beardmore, one of the founding directors of Garibaldi Lifts Ltd., and his business partner Frank Menendez. It had two dormitories (one for men, one for women) and 22 private rooms and could reportedly sleep up to fifty guests. The Cheakamus also had a dining room and bar. According to Ian Beardmore, the Cheakamus was modelled after the lodges at Alta, Utah, where his parents would often go for a week or two each ski season with the Wilhelmsens and the Woodwards (fellow directors of the Garibaldi Olympic Development Association and Garibaldi Lifts); Frank Menendez even worked at the Rustler Lodge in Alta for over a decade before coming up to Alta Lake.

Through the 1960s and into the 1970s, the Cheakamus served as a gathering place for guests and others around the ski hill. In 1967, Tony and Irene Lyttle held their wedding reception there following a ceremony at the Whistler Skiers’ Chapel and on Sundays the Cheakamus hosted General Information Night, where skiers at Whistler for the week could come see a slide show and ask questions of mountain representatives. Some winters also saw film nights at the lodge courtesy of Pacific Ski Air and the Cheakamus was known for events such as their annual New Year’s Eve masquerade party, which in 1970/71 was given a Disneyland theme.

Ted Pryce-Jones presents opening gifts to John (J.R.) Reynolds and Roland Kentel of Tapley’s Pub. Before opening Tapley’s, John Reynolds came to Whistler to run the bar at the Cheakamus Inn. Whistler Question Collection, 1981

The Cheakamus was also the site of some more unexpected events. In August 1970, according to Garibaldi’s Whistler News, the Cheakamus was the host of the Simon Fraser Solid State Physics School, a two week summer school that gathered scientists from around the world. The lodge was also the site of one of Dag Aabby’s more memorable stunts at Whistler when he jumped off the rood on his skis and landed in the parking lot below.

When looking back at the Cheakamus before its demolition, what Jan Systad remembered most were the people she had met and the friends she had made there, a sentiment reflected in most stories about the Cheakamus Inn. Providing room, board and a ski pass, the Cheakamus employed many long-time Whistler residents during their early years in the valley, including Colin Pitt-Taylor, Roger McCarthy, Bob Daniels, Connie Cathers, Charlie Davies, Roger Systad and more.

In 1965, John Reynolds, also known as J.R., came to the Cheakamus to work as a bartender and assistant manager under Frank Menendez, who filled both the chef and manager roles. According to Jan, under John the bar was “respected and cherished” and “your drink was poured as you came through the door and by the time you reached the bar it was waiting for you.” After leaving the Cheakamus and the Whistler area for a time, John returned to Whistler in the 1976/77 season to run the bar at JB’s and opened Tapley’s Pub in 1981.

The original Cheakamus Inn building was demolished in the summer of 1981 to make way for a larger building. Whistler Question Collection, 1981

The Cheakamus Inn changed hands in 1975 and by 1981 was operating under the name Whistler Vale. It was announced in April 1981 that the Whistler Vale would be torn down and a new, larger hotel would be built on the site, incorporating salvaged lumber and reusing part of the foundation. It was expected that the new hotel would be ready to open by December 1981. Although the building was demolished in June, construction did not got as planned and no hotel had arisen by the end of the year. For those who knew the Cheakamus Inn, however, Jan concluded that “the memories and friendships will never go.”

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