Whistler Museum and Archives Society

Getting Groceries to the VillageGetting Groceries to the Village

January 9, 2024 Whistler Museum 0 Comments

It is rare that any event goes exactly according to plan and, no matter how much you might attempt to expect the unexpected, there is almost always something that comes up. This was certainly the case for the opening of the Whistler Grocery Store, Whistler’s first dedicated supermarket, in January 1981.

The Grocery Store was scheduled to open on Thursday, January 22, 1981. At the time, there were few businesses open in the Whistler Village and, while the buildings around Village Square were recognizable to those familiar with the Village today, many of the other buildings were still under construction or yet to be started. The Blackcomb Lodge, the first major lodging to open in the Village, had opened on December 29, 1980, and its restaurant Russell’s opened in January, though the Brass Rail Lounge in the same building was still unfinished. Smaller businesses in the finished buildings had begun operating late in 1980 and Tapley’s Pub was slated to open in January, followed by Stoney’s Restaurant the following month.

Stoney’s Restaurant with a clear view to the mountains, where today there are buildings. Whistler Question Collection

Delays to the various openings in the Village began in December, when it began to rain on December 24 and kept raining. By December 26, flooding was occurring around the Lower Mainland and other areas of British Columbia and Highway 99 had been washed out around Culliton Creek and north of the Rutherford Creek junction, cutting Whistler off from the rest of the Sea to Sky. The road reopened by the beginning of 1981, but closed again on January 21 when the detour around the Culliton Creek washout was washed out.

The rain also caused problems on the mountains, particularly on Blackcomb Mountain, which had only begun operating on December 4. Higher elevations had good skiing and both mountains worked hard to make snow when possible and move snow around in order to get skiers to the lifts, but there was very limited terrain and there were long lines to download each afternoon (Blackcomb reportedly even began handing out lemonade to those waiting to download Lift 2). Whistler Mountain was able to continue operating in a limited capacity, but Blackcomb temporarily shut down operations and laid off staff.

One of two destroyed power lines when flood waters washed out footings south of the Tisdale Hydro Station. Whistler Question Collection, 1981

Both the Blackcomb Lodge and Tapley’s Pub delayed their openings for a few days to a week because of the weather and road closures. The Grocery Store’s manager Ted Pryce-Jones, however, decided to open as scheduled on Thursday, January 22, though not exactly as planned.

According to the Whistler Question, Pryce-Jones decided to open “when it became apparent that the Whistler and Pemberton residents were in danger of running out of certain foodstuffs.” Even though the Grocery Store had no fresh meat or produce, residents “flooded” the store to buy milk, bread, cereal, and other foods. In order to meet the demand for milk, Pryce-Jones organized daily Dairyland deliveries by rail, which was also being used to supply restaurants and other goods. Deliveries were limited by the availability of freight space and by the time the highway reopened on Monday, January 26, the Grocery Store and other stores that carried food had run out of fresh produce and milk.

Ted Pryce-Jones, manager, poses near the pop in the new grocery store soon to open in the Village. Whistler Question Collection, 1981

Because of the lack of supply, Pryce-Jones decided to delay the Grocery Store’s Grand Opening Sale until they could restock, but the store did offer various “In Store Specials.” By the end of the month, regular deliveries had resumed and the Grocery Store did very good business, especially in fresh produce, where Pryce-Jones reported “people buying the vegetables and fruit almost as fast as it could be put out.” The store was open seven days a week and, perhaps, unsurprisingly, was busiest between 4:30 and 6:30 pm, when skiers had come down from the mountains (it did begin snowing by the end of the month).

The Grocery Store was able to offer its Grand Opening Sale from February 5 – 8, just a little later than expected and continued to be busy as the only full-service grocery store in Whistler. Despite a somewhat shaky start, the Grocery Store continues to operate today out of the same space in the Hearthstone building over forty years later.

Whistler's Answers

Whistler’s Answers: January 3, 1985Whistler’s Answers: January 3, 1985

January 4, 2024 Whistler Museum 0 Comments

Another year, another year of questions and 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 1985. 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: This one seems pretty self explanatory, so we think we’ll leave it there.

Question: What are your New Year’s resolutions?

Anne-Marie Bell – Student – Langley

I am going to tell people exactly what I think -mainly things that will help them, but about things that bug me. And maybe I’ll be nicer to my brother. Also, I plan to reverse the roles in our society – forget about a girl having to wait until a guy asks her for a date. I think people are too old-fashioned in their ways.

Lisa Morrison – Student – Langley

Well, I was going to keep my room clean, and study harder. I also want to watch less television, because I watch too much now. And I’d like to be more outgoing next year too.

Jocelyn Laidlaw – Student – Langley

I want to promote a more healthy atmosphere around my home and be happier and more liable – and more easy going. I guess I’ll have about a 50-50 success ration, as usual. I find New Year’s resolutions exhausting after the first few days.

Whistler’s Corporate CupWhistler’s Corporate Cup

January 2, 2024 Whistler Museum 0 Comments

Whistler has hosted many Cup competitions, from World Cup races for various sports (such as the Eberspächer Luge World Cup races held at the Whistler Sliding Centre this past month) to the Whistler Cup that celebrated its 30th edition in 2023. Most of the participants in these events are professional athletes or, like in the Whistler Cup, younger competitive athletes. In 1983, however, the first Sun Life Whistler Corporate Cup pitted teams of corporate employees against each other in hopes of winning prizes and bragging rights.

Over one weekend in January 1983, twenty-five teams competed for the overall Corporate Cup title. Teams came from companies, firms, union locals or professional groups and had to be made up of ten full-time employees. Each team also had to have a minimum of three men and three women. In its first year, participants included teams from the Vancouver City Police Department, BC Hydro, and Canada Safeway.

Sue Worden of Body Works puts a group of Corporate Cup die-hards through the paces in Village Square. Whistler Question Collection, 1983

These teams went head to head in six different events. The first was golf on the Whistler Golf Course, with holes ranging in length from 50m to 90m and made more difficult by the presence of snow. There was also a 5km cross-country ski race on the Lost Lake trails, a downhill race adjacent to the 1982 World Cup downhill run (the only World Cup race to have finished just above the Whistler Village), a snowshoe obstacle course, an inner tube pull named “Sliding Inflation,” and a snow sculpture competition called “Frozen Assets.”

Corporate Cup teams ran, hopped, slid and jumped through an obstacle course wearing snowshoes at Myrtle Philip School. Whistler Question Collection

At the end of the weekend, an awards ceremony recognized the team and individuals who had performed the best. Prizes included skis, boots, stays at Delta hotels and more, as well as prizes from the event sponsors Sun Life and Molson’s. The team from Envirocon came out ahead, due in part to their “dramatic” sculpture of a BC salmon, which put them ahead of the Vancouver Police who had created a representation of a reclining pig. According to event organizer Laurie Vance, “We had 250 people who had a positive experience at Whistler,” and the first meeting for the next Corporate Cup was already planned. Vance also thanked the sponsors and the more than 100 volunteers who helped make the event a success.

The 1984 Corporate Cup was very similar to the first event. The makeup of teams and form of most of the events stayed the same, though the winning team was from Touche Ross, an accounting and consulting firm. The biggest change was probably the subject matter of Frozen Assets, which saw entries such as “1984 George Orwell” (a likeness of the author by BC Hydro), a mermaid, a giant telephone, and two different BC Places (BC Place was completed in 1983).

Touche Ross successfully defended their title against nineteen other teams in 1985. The Beauvallon Club, the only team to enter that was from Whistler, came second while the team from ICBC finished third. Though the downhill race had been replaced with a dual slalom race, most of the competition remained similar to the one held in 1983. The standout sculpture of 1985, according to the Whistler Question photographers, seems to have been “Reclining Nude in a Bathtub” by Pacific Press.

Ah, for the delectable treat of glaced salmon, especially when it’s been served up through two hours of hard work by the Envirocon team. This jaunty fellow was the first-place finisher out of 27 entries in the ice sculpture contest. Whistler Question Collection

By 1986, the organization of the Corporate Cup had been taken over by June Paley. That year, the competition was held earlier (“too early” according to Paley), and had only ten teams. Nevertheless, the teams that competed enjoyed themselves and the title again went to Touche Ross. There is not record of a Corporate Cup in 1987; instead, different events took its place in January, such as other races and the Finlandia Ice Festival, which featured ice carving rather than snow sculpture. 1986 appears to have been the last Corporate Cup held in Whistler, leaving Touche Ross the undefeated winner.

Cooking Up WhistlerCooking Up Whistler

December 26, 2023 Whistler Museum 0 Comments

While food may not be the first thing that many people associate with the Whistler Museum, the abundance of baking and celebratory meals this time of year recently had us looking at three cookbooks that are kept as part of the Museum’s reference section. Whistler Recipes, Festive Favourites, and The Whistler Weekend Cookbook all contain recipes, as expected, but they can also tell us about what businesses were operating in Whistler, who was working in the valley, and what was being eaten at the time of their publication.

Whistler Recipes is the first of two cookbooks published as fundraisers by the Whistler Museum & Archives Society’s Cookbook Committee. Published in 1997, it includes recipes gathered from past and then-present residents of Whistler and Alta Lake, as well as a few recipes from a cookbook published by The Vancouver Sun in 1940. Whistler Recipes included recipes like Yorkshire Puddings from Ann Bright, Myrtle’s Muffins from Myrtle Philip, Granny Cosgrave’s Scones from J’Anne Greenwood, and Lemon Loaves from Elaine Wallace, which we even tried making when the museum was closed in 2020.

The Whistler Museum and Archives cookbook committee, April 1997: Janet Love-Morrison, Florence Petersen (founder of the Whistler Museum and Archives Society), Darlyne Christian and Caroline Cluer. Whistler Museum Collection

The second book published by the Cookbook Committee in 2001, Festive Favourites, tells us less about the individuals who contributed recipes, but makes up for it by including food trivia and tips throughout. Many of the recipes and festive tips appear to focus on the December holiday season, with instructions for preparing The Scent of Christmas, Spiced Yule Cake, and more alongside a short history of Christmas trees and stockings, though there are also some recipes for other holidays, such as Halloween Spicy Hot Chocolate.

Festive Favourites also suggested different ways to share meals with friends, proposing a “Dine Around Party,” which is “great for a small group of friends who live close together” as the group walks over to a different residence for each stage of the meal, and providing ideas for entertaining and involving children for “When Adults and Children Party Together.”

For anyone interested in the history of restaurants in Whistler, The Whistler Weekend Cookbook compiled by Diane Nicholson in 1987 is a very useful resource. It begins with a list of all restaurants and delicatessens in Whistler at the time, of which seven are still operating under the same name today. For every recipe contributed by a chef at one of the restaurants, their name and place of work are credited. For example, Rolf Gunther of the Rimrock Cafe supplied his version of Mahi Mahi with Bourbon Pecan Cream while Toshi Saito of Sushi Village provided his Tempura Toshi.

A sunny game of volleyball outside the Highland Lodge, today the location of the Highland Lodge. Whistler Question Collection

It is made clear by the sections of the book, such as “Mid-day & Apres Ski” and “Goodies & Supplies for Your Pack etc.,” that the book caters to a population that spends quite a bit of time on the mountain. Each recipe is also accompanied by a difficulty rating in the form of a circle, a square, or a diamond, symbols that could easily be interpreted by most skiers.

The recipes and their contributors also reflect the prevalence of sports in Whistler. Dave Murray provided instructions to make his Breakfast of Champions (oatmeal with nuts and apples) while Leanna Rath and Richard Kelly of Lifestyles Adventure Company included their Mountain Bike Greek Salad and Rob Boyd supplied his recipe for World Cup Granola Bars (cooking must a family affair, as his mother Molly Boyd’s Sunshine Pie can also be found in this book).

Molly Boyd receives the plaque honouring her as the Chamber of Commerce Citizen of the Year Saturday. Brian Walhovd, 1983’s winner, announced to the crowd that Boyd was the 1984 winner for her involvement and extra commitment to the community. Whistler Question Collection

Like the cookbooks published by the Cookbook Committee, The Whistler Weekend Cookbook was also a fundraiser, with a portion of the proceeds going to the Whistler Public Library to purchase New Age/Self Help books. Today, the books produced for such fundraisers can tell us more about the people and food in Whistler at that particular time. They can also be very helpful if you’re trying to recreate a meal you once had at your favourite restaurant, whether you miss the Southside Hot Antipasto Hero from the Southside Deli or the wings that you used to get at Dusty’s Cantina.