Category: Profiles

Profiles of Alta Lake and Whistler residents.

Dick Fairhurst of Cypress Lodge: Part TwoDick Fairhurst of Cypress Lodge: Part Two

May 5, 2020 Whistler MuseumWhistler Museum 0 Comments

This week we’re continuing the story of Dick Fairhurst, who first came to Alta Lake in 1943. (You can read part one here) By 1955, he owned three adjoining lots on Alta Lake, including the property today known as The Point, and was operating a collection of cabins and a tearoom under the name Cypress Lodge.

At Cypress Lodge, guests could participate in many activities, including fishing, hiking, berry picking, and picnics, as well as community events in the summer such as movies and dances.  Luckily, Dick did not have to run the entire business by himself while continuing to work on his traplines and in forestry.

Cypress Lodge, September 1962. Fairhurst Collection.

In the summer of 1955, his mother Elizabeth Alice Fairhurst came up from Vancouver to run the tearoom for him.  She also looked after the cabins, did the laundry, and cooked for guests, running what others would describe as “a tight ship.”  Though she originally came for just one season, she stayed for fifteen years.  Dick added a bedroom to his house on the property and enlarged the kitchen, ensuring his mother would be comfortable at Alta Lake.

Dick also had some new neighbours move in that summer when a group of teachers from the Lower Mainland bought the Masson house.  June Tidball, Florence Strachan, Eunice “Kelly” Forster, Jacquie Pope, and Betty Gray became regular Alta Lake visitors and rechristened their cabin “Witsend.”  According to June, Dick brought them hot water on their first evening at the cabin to welcome them to Alta Lake and became a trusted friend of the group.

Three of the original Witsend owners! (Left to right) Jacquie Pope, Kelly Fairhurst and Florence Petersen.  Whistler Question Collection.

Dick and Kelly Forster (the same Kelly who once sewed her friends’ pyjamas shut) married in 1958 and Kelly moved to Alta Lake full-time, becoming involved in the running of Cypress Lodge.  The pair made a plan to replace the old cabins on the waterfront and build a new lodge building.  They began by clearing the point constructing new cabins, completing four by 1962.  These cabins had the distinction of housing the first coloured plumbing at Alta Lake, though sadly we do not know what colour their plumbing was.

Cypress Lodge as seen from the lake. Fairhurst Collection.

In February 1963, apparently not an incredibly snowy winter, the Fairhursts laid the forms for the foundations of their new lodge.  Fully booked for the 1965 Victoria Day long weekend, Cypress Lodge was finished just in time, with the furniture arriving on the Saturday and assembled by friends, neighbours, and even guests.

Along with the lodge, the Fairhurst family had grown during these years.  Dick and Kelly had two children, David and Carol, who grew up at Alta Lake, attending the Alta Lake School.

Cypress Lodge became a gathering place for the small Alta Lake community through the 1950s, 60s and 70s.  The wharf was the base for the Alta Lake Sailing Club’s Dominion Day Derby on July 1 and the annual Regretta (named for the regret at the season ending) on Labour Day, where events such as pie eating contests and a fish fry took place alongside boat races.  In the winter Dick and Kelly would also open the lodge for New Year’s Eve parties.

Dick Fairhurst, the owner of Cypress Lodge, was a ski-doo enthusiast, pictured with his children David and Carol. Fairhurst Collection.

The Fairhursts continued to operate Cypress Lodge, renting cabins out to Whistler Mountain employees and highway crews, until 1972 when they sold the property to the Canadian Youth Hostels Association.  In 1973 they moved into their new home built by Andy Petersen on Drifter Way, where they stayed until both David and Carol had graduated from high school in Pemberton.  In 1980 Dick and Kelly moved into a house Dick had built for them in Parksville, where Dick took up golfing, salt-water fishing, and gardening.  Sadly, Dick died in October 1983.

Dick Fairhurst is remembered for many things in Whistler in addition to Cypress Lodge.  He also helped found the Black Tusk Snowmobile Club, maintained the dump site with the Valleau logging family, served as the Fire Chief for the volunteer force, put the barrel out on the lake for the Alta Lake Community Club’s Ice Derby, and was named Citizen of the Year in 1972.

Dick Fairhurst, Stefan Ples and Doug Mansell rafting the Alta Lake fire shelter and its contents across the lake to Alta Vista, 1967. Petersen Collection
READ MOREREAD MORE

Dick Fairhurst of Cypress LodgeDick Fairhurst of Cypress Lodge

April 28, 2020 Whistler MuseumWhistler Museum 6 Comments

Though his name has come up several times in recent columns, we recently realized we haven’t specifically written about Dick Fairhurst’s story yet.  It was a promise to Dick and Myrtle Philip that led Florence Petersen to found the Whistler Museum & Archives Society in the summer of 1986, as they worried that the stories of life at Alta Lake would be forgotten as skiing became the dominant activity in the valley.  Both had lived at Alta Lake for decades and had already seen many changes.

Though he grew up in BC mining towns, Dick spent many years working in the forestry industry.  He would have logged in very similar conditions to this man pictured here. Fairhurst Collection.

Richard “Dick” Fairhurst was born to Richard and Elizabeth Alice Fairhurst in 1914, the third of five children.  His parents had come to Canada from Lancashire, England in 1906 and at the time were living in East Arrow Park, British Columbia.  Dick’s father was a miner and so Dick grew up in mining towns in the Kootenays, moving first to Michel and then to Sandon before settling in Silverton in 1929.

After graduating, Dick spent a short time working underground in one of the silver mines before he secured a job building tramlines for hauling ore.  In 1940, Dick moved to Vancouver to work at the shipyards in North Vancouver during the war, a job he later said he hated.

Dick’s first trip to the Alta Lake valley was for his honeymoon with his wife Doreen.  The pair stayed at Jordan’s Lodge on Nita Lake.  According to Dick, “I came up here on vacation once in 1943 and I thought, well, this is the place for me.”

Dick and Doreen bought two lots on the west side of Alta Lake the next year and Dick began working for Alf Gebhart at the Rainbow Lumber Mill Company, both in the mill and on the boom.  He supplemented his income by trapping, taking over some of the traplines of Bill MacDermott and Bill Bailiff on Rainbow, Blackcomb, and Whistler mountains and catching mostly marten and beavers.

George Churchill poses with a day’s catch from Alta Lake. Fairhurst Collection.

Life at Alta Lake was very different from city life and was not to Doreen’s tastes.  The couple divorced in 1948 and Doreen left the valley while Dick remained and decided to try his hand in the early tourist industry.  He began by building two log cabins, a workshop, frames for two more cabins, a storage shed, and a garage.  Bert Harrop, who was well known in the area for his carpentry skills, taught Dick to build cedar bark furniture.  Some cabins were rented by loggers so they could bring their families from the city.

Lodge guests aboard Dick’s 1942 Reo pickup truck. The truck was used to transport guests for picnics, hikes, and more. Fairhurst Collection.

In 1954, Dick purchased an adjoining property (formerly known as Harrop’s Point), adding three existing cabins and a tearoom to his business.  He changed the name to Cypress Lodge on Cypress Point and began accepting guests, while continuing to work in forestry in the valley.  The next year, Dick secured the water rights to install a wheel and generator on Scotia Creek, providing mostly reliable power for Cypress Lodge, except when something plugged the nozzle and the lights would go out.

In 1955, two people came to Alta Lake who would play a large part in the next stages of Cypress Lodge and Dick’s life in the valley.  We’ll be bringing you more about Dick Fairhurst, Cypress Lodge, and life at Alta Lake in the 1950s and 60s next week, so be sure to check back!

READ MOREREAD MORE

Grace Woollard at Alta LakeGrace Woollard at Alta Lake

April 14, 2020 Whistler MuseumWhistler Museum 0 Comments

While some of the stories we hear or read about at the museum provide only a glimpse into the lives of individuals who lived in the Whistler Valley (such as Josef Janousek, the subject of last week’s article), others provide a much more complete picture of an individual or family.  One such individual was Grace Woollard, a nurse who began visiting Alta Lake in the summer of 1912.

When Woollard first came to Alta Lake, there was not train service to travel by, or Rainbow Lodge to stay at.  She traveled first by boat, and then on foot and by horse with two friends, fellow nurse Grace Archibald and her brother Ernie Archibald, who were looking to preempt land around Alta Lake.  The two Graces stayed at a cabin on the east side of the lake, while Ernie stayed at the survey camp of the Pacific Great Eastern Railway on the west side.  This first excursion introduced Woollard to an area that she would continue to visit for the next six decades.

Grace Woollard and Grace Archibald in the Cheakamus Canyon on their way to Alta Lake, 1912. Clarke Collection.

Woollard grew up in Ontario, where she met and married Frederick Ray.  The two had twin boys, but after the death of Frederick and of both her sons from whooping cough in 1910, Woollard decided to train as a nurse.  By 1912, she was working at the Bute Street Hospital in Vancouver, where she befriended Grace Archibald.

Two years after her trip to Alta Lake, she married Charles Woollard, a doctor in Vancouver.  The pair returned to Alta Lake and bought their own lot, where they had a summer cabin built.  They were not, however, able to spend much time at this cabin.  In February of 1915, Charles joined the Canadian Army Medical Corps and traveled to England.  He was soon joined there by Grace and their newborn daughter Betty.

Grace stands on the path to the cabin during the winter of 1944/45. Clarke Collection.

 

Grace and Betty stayed in England while Charles went on to serve with the Field Ambulance, a mobile frontline medical unit, in France.  The family returned to Vancouver in 1918, where Charles would become the commanding officer of the Vancouver Military Hospital.

When the Woollards did make it back to their Alta Lake cabin, they found it already occupied.  A family, supposedly from Victoria, had a daughter who was suffering from tuberculosis and had moved into the cabin after a doctor suggested the fresh mountain air might benefit her.  Rather than make a fuss, the Woollards let the family keep the cabin and found a new lot for themselves.  They settled in the area known today as Blueberry Hill, alongside friends of theirs, the Clarke family.

Though she did not live at Alta Lake full-time, Grace often found her nursing skills in demand there.  The nearest doctor was usually a day trip away and until 1948 (when a hospital was built in Squamish), the nearest hospital was in Vancouver.  Grace was called on for help in medical emergencies, such as when a woman in labour unexpectedly disembarked from the train at Rainbow Lodge and Grace delivered her twins.  She even gave advice at community events such as dances.

Betty Woollard (left) and her sister Eleanor along the tracks at Alta Lake. Lundstrom Collection

Charles and Grace had two daughters, Betty and Eleanor.  Grace sold their cabin on Blueberry Hill in 1941 and bought a cabin at the south end of Alta Lake to be close to Betty and her daughter, who were living there while Betty’s husband, Douglas Clarke, was away at war.  Eleanor and her husband Maison Philip, (nephew of Alex Philip of Rainbow Lodge) would also stay at that end of the lake.

Though Charles died in 1924, Grace continued to visit Alta Lake until her death in 1969.

READ MOREREAD MORE

Dick Fairhurst’s Memories: Josef JanousekDick Fairhurst’s Memories: Josef Janousek

April 7, 2020 Whistler MuseumWhistler Museum 0 Comments

Many of the people we learn about at the museum are introduced to us through the stories of others.  Sometimes these stories are told as oral histories and others come from documents in our research files at the museum.  One of these documents is a collection of stories, aptly called “Whistler Stories,” from Dick Fairhurst, in which he describes the area during his early years at Alta Lake and provides tales of some of the characters he got to know, or heard about from others.

Dick Fairhurst first moved to Alta Lake in 1943 and began working fro Alf Gebhart at the Rainbow Lumber Company Mill by the Alta Lake Station.  He later opened Cypress Lodge and continued to work in logging.  Because he worked in both the resource and tourism industries, Dick got to know a lot of the people who called the area around Alta Lake home in the 1940s and ’50s.

Dick Fairhurst, the owner of Cypress Lodge, was also a ski-doo enthusiast. Fairhurst Collection.

While some of these people, such as Alex Philip and Alex Greenwood, are well known to us, others we don’t know much about.  One example is a man named Josef “Joe” Janousek.  Dick recorded two stories about Joe, both involving a cold winter, one shifty individual, and examples of Joe’s accurate judge of character.

Though originally from Czechoslovakia where he worked as a game warden, Joe worked at Parkhurst, the logging and sawmill operation on Green Lake, in the 1950s.  In the winters, when most of the seasonal workers had departed for the cold, snowy months, Joe would look after the sawmill.

The settlement at Parkhurst in the 1950s, around the time Josef Janousek would have come to Green Lake. Clausen Collection.

One winter, a member of the crew from the logging camp was staying in one of the cottages by the sawmill, but Joe didn’t think he was entirely trustworthy.  This man was supposed to be looking after the house of Olie and Eleanor Kitteringham (you can learn more about the Kitteringhams and their family’s days at Parkhurst here and here) while they were in Vancouver for a couple of weeks.  In order to keep the pipes from freezing, the Kitteringhams had left their heat on and their taps running just a bit.  Unfortunately, the man entrusted with looking after their house didn’t check on it once, and Joe never got the chance to look in.  By the time the Kitteringhams returned to Green Lake, the oil for the heater had long run out and the water had kept running, welcoming the family home with snow to dig through outside and a thick icy covering inside.

Most activity at the mill ceased over the winter and many of the mill workers and their families went home. Clausen Collection.

Joe’s impression of the man was confirmed again when the man decided to leave the mill.  Tools had been going missing around the camp and the mill and Joe and a couple others decided to check this man’s trunk before he left.  Sure enough, when they opened the trunk they found all sorts of expensive gear that did not belong to him.  Instead of confronting the man who would soon be gone, they decided to refill his trunk, using heavy rocks.  As Dick put it, “He must have felt good when he found out he paid freight for all that!”

Apart from these stories, we know very little else about Josef Janousek.  According to Dick, he earned the nickname “Rocket Fuel Joe” by keeping the residents supplied with alcohol (presumably homebrewed) when their own supplies ran out, he was an experienced fisherman, and he was an excellent shot, even shooting a couple of wolverines around Green Lake.  Sadly, Joe died from drowning in Green Lake at the age of 48.

READ MOREREAD MORE