Category: Whistler: A Town

As well as being a resort, Whistler is town (kind of) like any other.

The Bucking Bronco of Après: Part II of a not-so-Dusty-tale

The Bucking Bronco of Après: Part II of a not-so-Dusty-taleThe Bucking Bronco of Après: Part II of a not-so-Dusty-tale

March 10, 2026 Whistler MuseumWhistler Museum 0 Comments

Featured Image: The Den at Dusty’s photo. Intrawest Collection. Does anyone have any information about ‘The Den’? The Museum would love to learn more…

Last week, the adventures of Dusty – the one-time stuffed bucking bronco – from the bar that still bears his name, were chronicled. This mythic tale takes up where the last article trailed off…

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 was set up in the Volly cabin, right next to Honest Eddie: the pop-turned-beer machine. One dollar bought you a brew-with-a-view with the dead horse.

Only in Whistler: Tales of a Mountain Town (Harbour Publishing, 2009), the book by longtime local Stephen Vogler, relays that Dusty also became a prankster. Or perhaps, more aptly, the mascot for mayhem-makers. He showed up on top of the lift evacuation practice tower, surely after going up the Pony Trail: a sky-high stallion who stirred the concerns of animal rights activists, stating it was inappropriate treatment of a dead animal. He was removed.

The bar which still bears Dusty’s moniker claims, “One of the greatest legends of our time, our namesake’s origin is as much a mystery as his whereabouts today.” But…or maybe, more appropriately, well… that is not entirely correct, nor incorrect. 

The order of operations of his subsequent adventures is hazy at best: but he did transition to ‘the dark side’. The missing-a-leg Dusty made his way to Blackcomb. He rode by snowmobile and then was transferred to toboggan. The injured horse (whose head apparently may have partly fallen off in the process) was hoped to be moved to the upper alpine, but was only able to make it to the top of Chair 2, halfway up the hill. Vogler’s telling shares many more of the bumps and bruises of the journey, including the fact that in the morning, he was promptly removed and sent to the dump.

But the story doesn’t end there… and as Vogler points out, “perhaps it’s best to leave names out when the police become involved.” And so it goes…the driver of the horse-disposing truck (again, no mention of it being a Bronco!) apparently could not bear the thought “of dumping a once-famous museum-worthy equine in the landfill” (*and as far as Museum records show, no attempt to contact the archivist was made!). The truck rolled over the old log bridge and from there “Dusty made one last jump for freedom” into the Cheakamus River. 

But, then there was the kayaker. The kayaker who called the RCMP. And the RCMP who dispatched the dive team and called in a crane to remove the horse who had “clearly stumbled over the rugged banks to its death.” The cops called in the cowboy who ran the stables at Mons, whereupon seeing the horse is reputed to have said “That’s Dusty. He’s been dead for fifty years.”

The RCMP wanted to lay charges. None were ever filed.

Back into the truck Dusty went and back to Blackcomb Base II did Dusty take his last ride. With a match, and a can of gasoline, it is rumoured that Dusty saddled up to become a blazing effigy to Après adventures and the legacy of rodeo-like-ski-resort town…

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The Bucking Bronco of Après: a not-so-Dusty-tale

The Bucking Bronco of Après: a not-so-Dusty-taleThe Bucking Bronco of Après: a not-so-Dusty-tale

March 3, 2026 Whistler MuseumWhistler Museum 0 Comments

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 …

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Boarder Bob: Whistler-based 1990’s Comic Strip

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

February 24, 2026 Whistler MuseumWhistler 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.
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Binty was hereBinty was here

September 29, 2025 Whistler MuseumWhistler Museum 0 Comments

Operating from 1965 to 1992, the first gondola installed on Whistler Mountain was a hard working lift that brought skiers (and later snowboarders) from the valley base at today’s Creekside to the bottom of the Red Chair. Gondola cars from this lift can still be found today throughout the valley and beyond, including in the Whistler Museum. They often show signs of their years of use, from dents to scratches to added stickers. If you look closely at some of the gondola cars, you might even find a name or two scratched into the surface. One name that could be found on many of the cars over the years was Binty, also known as Vincent Massey.

The original Whistler Mountain gondola. Whistler Mountain Ski Corporation Collection

The Massey family began visiting in the early 1960s when Geoffrey Massey, the well known architect, became involved in the Garibaldi Olympic Development Association. He and his wife Ruth brought their four children, including Binty, up to ski regularly. Looking back at his childhood visits to Whistler Mountain, Binty recalled a low of snow, slow lifts, and long line ups. According to him, “It was such a cold ride up, it would take about 40 or 50 minutes to get up out of the valley to the Roundhouse because the lifts were so slow.” By the time they reached the Roundhouse, they would be so cold that they would go straight inside to warm up. Despite this, to Binty, Whistler was “a big deal, it was a big mountain.”

According to Hugh Smythe, who began working for Whistler Mountain soon after it opened in 1966, Binty and his “mischievous look” became well known to lift company employees, especially after his name started appearing on more and more gondola cars. As Hugh saw it, “his goal was to carve his name in the plastic of the gondola cars in every car.” Unfortunately, this made lift company president Franz Wilhelmsen “apoplectic” and one of Hugh’s assigned tasks was to try and catch Binty in the act.

Binty Massey in his Whistler pottery studio. Whistler Question Collection, 1991

Binty, who grew up in Horseshoe Bay, moved to Whistler full-time after finishing high school. Unfortunately for him, the winter of 1976/77 is best remembered by those who there as the year that Whistler Mountain closed for skiing for three weeks in January. Warm rain after the holidays worsened already marginal conditions and then the weather got cold and dry, which made for great ice skating but no skiing. After working construction in Whistler for a year, Binty decided to go to art school.

A few decades late, after Binty and his wife Cheryl and moved back to Whistler and started a family, his labeling of the gondola cars appeared again in what might seem like an unexpected setting: a fundraising event of the Myrtle Philip Community School (MPCS) Parent Advisory Council (PAC).

Hugh Smythe reenacts his days working for the lift company as a lineup of parents look on. Whistler Question Collection, 1992

The Amuse Cruises of the 1990s were held to raise money for the MPSC, which opened in its Lorimer Road location in September 1992. They were held at the Fairmont Chateau and featured skits put together by the parents from different classes. One such skit at the event held in November 1992 featured a recently-decommissioned gondola car and Hugh Smythe reenacting some of the tasks that came up during his early days working for Whistler Mountain, including attempts to stop Binty from adding his name to the lift.

While the gondola car included in the skit made it a bit more obvious (“Binty was here” was painted on in large letters), it’s likely that if any attendees had examined it closely, they might have found the familiar name scratched into a window at least twenty years before.

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