Whistler Museum and Archives Society

The First Pride Parade in WhistlerThe First Pride Parade in Whistler

February 8, 2022 Whistler Museum 0 Comments

Last month, the Whistler Museum opened our latest temporary exhibit, Pride & Progress: From the Grassroots Altitude to the Fearless Whistler Pride and Ski Festival, which looks back at the thirty year history of the Whistler Pride and Ski Festival. One of the most public and visible events of the festival is the Pride Ski + March, where skiers and snowboarders and rainbow flags make their way down Whistler Mountain towards Olympic Plaza. The first march through Whistler Village, however, took a shorter route and happened not during the festival but during the 2010 Olympic Winter Games. It was led by the first Pride House.

*Pride House in Whistler. Photo courtesy of Clare Johnson*

The idea of an LGBTQ2S+ space modeled on the hospitality houses set up by national Olympic committees took a few years to come together. While attending the 2007 InterPride conference in Zurich, Switzerland, WinterPRIDE (now the Whistler Pride and Ski Festival) organizer Dean Nelson was inspired while learning more about what pride meant in other countries, especially nations more hostile towards LGBTQ2S+ communities.

Three years later, with a lot of hard work, organization, and dedication, the first Pride Houses opened in February 2010, one in a portion of the Pan Pacific Whistler Village Centre and another in Vancouver (Pride House hosted a daily in QMUNITY, BC’s Queer, Trans, and Two-Spirit Resource Centre, while the sports bar SCORE on Davie St. served as a celebration space). In both locations, Pride House was designed to have multiple functions. They served as educational centres, with resources on many topics including homophobia in sport and Canadian immigration and refugee protection. They were also a welcoming space for LGBTQ2S+ athletes, coaches, officials, family, friends, and fans. Additionally, Whistler’s Pride House hosted a media room for unaccredited media, to which Nelson credits the high exposure of Pride House, as it offered a new Olympic story and a chance at more airtime. Over the 2010 Games, 5,000 people visited Whistler’s Pride House, including skeleton gold medallist Jon Montgomery and Olympic swimmer Mark Tweksbury.

*The parade down Village Stroll to Whistler Media House. Whistler Pride Collection.*

Whistler Pride House’s march through the Village came about in response to disparaging remarks made by two commentators about American figure skater Johnny Weir, in which they questioned his gender and the example he set for young skaters. Pride House contacted Whistler Media House (located in the Maury Young Arts Centre) to arrange a press conference with accredited media (Weir held his own press conference in Vancouver to respond to the remarks) and, quite literally, marched over with rainbow flags and banners.

Their march took them from the Pan Pacific Whistler Village Centre, down the stairs, along the Village Stroll, down to Celebration Plaza (today Olympic Plaza), around the Olympic Rings, and back to the theatre in what Nelson described as “probably the most dramatic press conference that the Whistler press team held during the Olympics and Paralympics.”

*The parade takes a pause on the steps outside Pride House. Whistler Pride Collection.*

With a few changes to the route the following year, the march became part of WinterPRIDE. According to Nelson, “We’ve held onto that tradition ever since and I think it’s really important to have that visibility.” The festival has grown increasingly visible within Whistler over the past thirty years, from the Resort Municipality of Whistler raising rainbow banners in the Village to businesses putting flags in their windows.

You can learn more about the growth of the Whistler Pride and Ski Festival and the legacy of Pride House at Pride & Progress, which will be on display at the Whistler Museum through April 19, 2022.

Whistler's Answers

Whistler’s Answers: February 3, 1983Whistler’s Answers: February 3, 1983

February 3, 2022 Whistler Museum 0 Comments

In the 1980s the Whistler Question began posing a question to three to six people and publishing their responses under “Whistler’s Answers” (not to be confused with the Whistler Answer). Each week, we’ll be sharing one question and the answers given back in 1983. Please note, all names/answers/occupations/neighbourhoods represent information given to the Question at the time of publishing and do not necessarily reflect the person today.

Some context for this week’s question: Students at the original Myrtle Philip School often remember helicopters landing on the field near the school in the early 1980s. There was no municipal airport, though a tri-service airport facility had been under discussion. At the beginning of 1983, a helicopter pad was proposed for the roof of the Tantalus Lodge, in order to have a site near to the Whistler Village.

Question: Where do you think a Whistler helicopter landing pad should be?

Warren Borden – Shipwright – North Vancouver

This is not a matter of convenience but of safety. The maximum period of danger with helicopters is during takeoff and landing so they just must be away from people. Ideally they shouldn’t be landing near tall buildings because of the updraft. If you’re going to land outside your medical centre they should cordon off an area as well.

Keith Dalley – Lift Maintenance Supervisor, Whistler Mountain – White Gold

The roof of Tantalus parking structure seems fine to me because it’s handy to transport injured people from the medical centre. My next choice would be Function Junction. The thing you have to remember is that no matter where the pad is, in a real emergency, a helicopter will land wherever the pilot wants.

Frank Thiessen – Professional Pilot – Alpine Meadows

The critical thing with helicopters is that they stay away from congested areas. I don’t think either the practice fairway or Tantalus are particularly good spots for a landing pad around here. Although the odds of something going wrong are small – they are really safe machines – you’ve just got to be away from crowds. I suggest they move back to the school or to Function Junction.

A Harrowing Journey to WhistlerA Harrowing Journey to Whistler

February 1, 2022 Whistler Museum 0 Comments

For many people, their first impression of Whistler begins with a trip up Highway 99 from Vancouver. Depending on the time of year and the weather, this can be anything from an inspiring journey with spectacular views to a frustrating slow-moving slog through traffic to a harrowing experience sharing the road with drivers unprepared for snowy conditions. For Lynn Mathew’s mother, her first impressions were closer to the last.

Lynn’s mother had already visited the west coast before her first visit to Whistler; when Lynn and David Mathews first moved out to Vancouver from Quebec in the 1960s, both her parents came out to see their new home. At the time, Lynn’s mother had never been in an airplane and didn’t particularly want to be in one, so she boarded a bus in New York and three days later Lynn’s father boarded a plane. Lynn picked up her father at the airport and then together they drove to Vancouver’s bus station to collect her mother. A year or two later, when Lynn had her first child in November 1967, her mother got on her first plane and ventured out to visit her new grandson in Whistler.

*With snow on the road, Highway 99 could easily become a treacherous, one-lane route. Laforce Collection*

She arrived the day after her grandson was born and, until that day, there had been no snow in the Whistler valley. David picked her up at the airport and they stopped at the Squamish hospital where Lynn and the baby were staying the night. While they were there, it began to snow in Squamish. David, who had the lift company truck, suggested that they leave before it snowed too much. When they returned to collect Lynn and the baby the next day, she got to hear about their adventures driving up to Whistler.

The highway between Squamish and Whistler today is very different from that of 1967 but, as Lynn put it, “the hill at Daisy Lake is still there.” She described this section at the time as “a very narrow hill with no shoulders, and very steep.” Though there wasn’t a large number of cars traveling up the highway, many of those that were encountered difficulties getting up that hill. By the time David and Lynn’s mother got to the hill, there were cars off the side of the road, some of them leaning towards the cliff. As they told Lynn, it was fortunate that no cars ended up in the lake.

*Prior to the development of Whistler Mountain in 1965, the “roads” were in even more questionable condition. MacLaurin Collection.*

David and Lynn’s mother came across a couple on their way home to Pemberton whose car was “definitely in the ditch.” Despite the fact that the bench in the lift company truck would only comfortably fit three, David and Lynn’s mother offered the couple a ride as far as Whistler, where they could arrange for friends to pick them up. The four of them squished into the truck and zigzagged up the hill between the cars stuck on the sides.

As it happened, one of the people they had picked up was from Norway, not too far from where Lynn’s mother was from. The two had a great visit as David drove them safely through the snowy conditions to Whistler. The next day, David and Lynn’s mother returned to Squamish to bring Lynn and the baby home to Whistler.

It continued to snow steadily in the area and, according to Lynn, “My mother wasn’t sure just what I had moved to.” This sentiment was echoed by David’s mother when she came out to visit from Quebec in January 1968, a visit that involved a lot of snow, a power outage, and an evacuation by snowcat to the Ski Boot Motel, but that’s a story for another day.

Whistler's Answers

Whistler’s Answers: January 27, 1983Whistler’s Answers: January 27, 1983

January 27, 2022 Whistler Museum 0 Comments

It’s a new year, which means we are on to a new year of Whistler’s Answers!

In the 1980s the Whistler Question began posing a question to three to six people and publishing their responses under “Whistler’s Answers” (not to be confused with the Whistler Answer). Each week, we’ll be sharing one question and the answers given back in 1983. Please note, all names/answers/occupations/neighbourhoods represent information given to the Question at the time of publishing and do not necessarily reflect the person today.

Some context for this week’s question: In the midst of a recession in the early 1980s, the Ministry of Education cut back the funding to school boards. For the Howe Sound School Board (today SD 48 (Sea to Sky)), this meant cutting almost $700,000 from its budget in 1983. 37 teachers’ aides were let go and five teachers and services and programs were scaled back.

Question: Do you think the school board budget cuts have been reasonable?

Alexander Fordham – Grade One Student – Whiski Jack

I like the field trips we go on. Last year our class saw the firehall and the Children’s Festival. Now I know about those things. Mrs. King (teachers’ aide) helps me with my work a lot too. It’s too bad she will go.

Bob Daly – School Principal – Alpine Meadows

It makes no difference how they institute cutbacks because someone is always going to feel it. The board had to come up with a list of priorities. Teaching was at the top of that list and things farthest down on the list are the first to go. Unfortunately this meant the end of extra help and field trips, but there’s not really any other way they could do this.

Melanie Causton – Village Employee – Pemberton

Reading, writing and arithmetic are not all there is to a child’s education. I think the board should take a long look at other ways of cutting back before they eliminate field trips and other social activities which make up a big part of education. There might, for example, be certain other fringes the schools could do without.