Whistler Museum and Archives Society

Camping Inside Municipal BoundariesCamping Inside Municipal Boundaries

April 11, 2023 Whistler Museum 0 Comments

The first official campground inside municipal boundaries was the KOA (Kampgrounds of America) Campground, on the land that is now Spruce Grove.

Before the campground opened, people who wanted to camp in Whistler stayed in their campers and cars in the municipal day skier lots and lift company parking lots at Creekside and Blackcomb Base 2, managed by Whistler Mountain and Blackcomb Mountain respectively.

In 1981, the official position of the municipality stated that campers should park overnight at the Alpha Lake Aggregates pit by Function Junction. However, this was a long way from the ski slopes and campers were found far more often in the lots close to the lifts. Extended overnight stays were accepted and, in some cases, welcomed in the parking lots. Blackcomb even installed hookups so campers had electricity while staying in the Base 2 parking lot.

*Rows of campers staying in the Creekside day skier parking lot in 1981. Camping in the day skier lots was accepted until Whistler got an official campground in 1985. Whistler Question Collection.*

Ruth Buzzard had purchased a 15.2 hectare property running along both sides of Fitzsimmons Creek, north of White Gold, in 1980. After a difficult approval process, the KOA Kampground, or Whistler Campground as it became known, finally opened in November 1985.

Whistler Campground billed itself as a year-round camping resort boasting a hot tub, sauna, pond skating rink, hook-ups and a free shuttle bus to the Village. To better cater to winter weekenders, the campground allowed visitors to leave their RVs in the overflow parking during the week for a discount, allowing visitors to drive to their campers each week without pulling them up and down the Sea to Sky Highway.

With the campground finally available, parking overnight became illegal in the municipal day skier lots. This was both to encourage campers to move to the campground and to allow plowing of the parking overnight.

Additionally, in 1984, an amendment was made to the zoning bylaw for Rural Resource 1 (RR1) lands which banned overnight stays. Initially the amended bylaw was not enforced because campers had nowhere else to go. However, once the campground drew the council’s attention to the zoning discrepancy, the no camping regulation began to be enforced on all RR1 lands, which included the municipal day skier lots and parking at Blackcomb and Whistler Mountain. Campers were ticketed and threatened with towing in the day skier lots, and gates were put up to prevent overnight campers from accessing the lift company parking lots. Unsurprisingly, it was not a popular decision to stop free ski-in/ski-out camping and letters of complaint were regularly published in the Whistler Question.

*Whistler Campground in 1995 before the supreme court ruled that it had to be sold to Greensides. Whistler Question Collection.*

With visitors still choosing to camp elsewhere throughout the winter, keeping the campground open year-round was not economically viable. In 1992, the Whistler Campground started to close for the winter. They were still busy the rest of the year, with the 151 sites regularly hosting more than 600 campers on summer weekends. When the sites filled up, Ruth and the campground team, including her sons David and Mark, would help campers find spots across their large property. There were even stories of enterprising campers setting up on the gravel bar in the middle of the creek when all the sites were filled.

Unfortunately, the campground wouldn’t last. In 1989, Vancouver-based developer Greensides Properties Inc. bought an option-to-buy on the property, giving them exclusive rights to purchase the land in the future. In the early 1990s, they followed through on their option deciding to go ahead with the purchase. Despite three appeals to the Supreme Court, Ruth was required to sell the land. According to the Whistler Question, the property was sold for 3 million dollars, plus 35% of the money derived from the redevelopment.

*The picnic tables stacked after the closing of the Whistler Campground. Whistler Question Collection.*

Greensides took over the property in 1996, agreeing with the council to run the campground throughout the summer. With a few approval setbacks along the way, the development of the Spruce Grove subdivision began in 1998.

Whistler went without a campground again until Riverside Campground finally opened in December 1999.

Museum News & Events

Tales of Toad HallTales of Toad Hall

April 10, 2023 Whistler Museum 0 Comments

This spring will mark 50 years since the creation of the Toad Hall Poster, which means it will also be 50 years since the last residents moved out of Toad Hall. We are very excited to be joined by former Toad Hall residents John Hetherington, Terry Spence and Paul Mathews to learn more about both Toad Halls (yes, there were two separate locations!), what it was like to live there, and how the Toad Hall Poster came to be.

Event begins right at 7 pm; doors will open by 6:30 pm. Tickets are $10 ($5 for Museum members) and are available at the Whistler Museum or over the phone at 604-932-2019.

Whistler's Answers

Whistler’s Answers: April 5, 1984Whistler’s Answers: April 5, 1984

April 6, 2023 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 1984. 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: As mentioned last week, in the March 29, 1984 edition of the Whistler Question an article was published that announced a new sales tax to be levied by resort municipalities. In the editorial announcing the article as an April Fool’s joke, the editor wrote: “We wanted to plant the seed of an idea that not only the provincial government should seriously consider, but one that Whistler, as a community, should ponder. Should resorts have special taxing powers to provide all the necessary tourist amenities that make European and American resorts tick?” Throughout April, the Question ran a multi-part series on the idea of such a tax in Whistler, looking at where Whistler’s money came from, how such taxes worked in American resorts, and more.

Question: What do you think of the Whistler Question’s April Fool’s stories on user pay taxes?

Mark Angus – Mayor – Gondola Area

I am always one for April Fool’s. As long as you take it lightly no damage is done. People in Victoria reading the paper might react. It might put some ideas into their heads.

David King – Surveyor – White Gold

As long as everyone knows afterwards that it’s a joke it’s all right. It’s up to you guys who are writing the stories. I did a couple of jokes on some friends this year myself.

Craig Stephen – Carpenter – Whistler Cay

My roommate believed it. I think it’s great. I remember the one you did on Drew Meredith (donating $2 million lottery winnings to the municipality). The was hilarious. I have seen user taxes happen in other resorts so I guess I’d believe it.

Questionable UFOsQuestionable UFOs

April 4, 2023 Whistler Museum 0 Comments

When Paul and Jane Burrows began printing the Whistler Question in their Alpine Meadows home in 1976, they created an incredible resource for researching happenings in Whistler. The Question reported on all sorts of stories, which means that you never know what you’ll come across. Recently, while looking into a story about a strata that passed a bylaw banning owners from having tourists or employees as tenants, one headline from September 5, 1996 jumped out: “UFO hotline gets report of strange sighting in Whistler.” A few days later, while confirming the origins of a photograph from 1986, we came across another headline referring to UFOs in the issue from July 10.

It seems that in June 1986 Squamish RCMP had a higher than usual number of reported sightings of unknown objects in the sky around the area. It began with a report of what appeared to be meteor crashing behind Blackcomb Mountain on the night of Thursday, June 12. Two men were driving on Highway 99 when they saw “a small, spherical fireball” moving quickly to the northeast before crashing into the ground. According to the men, the object “lit up the trees like the northern lights” then flickered out after a few seconds. While the incident was reported to the RCMP and then the Squamish Forest Service office and the Rescue Coordination Centre on Vancouver Island according to procedure, there were no follow up explanations published.

*Attaching a few lights to this paraglider would probably have created a mystery for those watching from the valley below. George Benjamin Collection.*

Unlike the sighting on June 12, Squamish RCMP were able to give explanations for sightings reported later in the month. On June 27 a number of Squamish residents reported an amber light rising about the Stawamus Chief. One resident, however, was able to get a good view of the light using binoculars and described it as “a parachute device with three highway emergency flares attached.” A similar incident occurred a couple of days later over Garibaldi Highlands. Squamish RCMP concluded that both were probably pranks.

The last incident brought to the attention of Squamish RCMP in June 1986 came when a person walked into the detachment and described a UFO in the sky over Squamish. This one was cleared up quickly according to Sgt. Lee Joubert, who reported that “We were directed to the object which was obviously a star.”

The RCMP were not the first stop for people who saw something strange in the sky by 1996; that summer, a BC UFO hotline was set up and people could call a number in Vancouver to report any mysterious sighting. This is what a Whistler resident named Haley did when she, her friend Simon and her roommates saw strange lights in the eastern sky. At least two other people also witnessed the lights and called the hotline to report them. At the time it was unusual for the hotline to get calls from outside of the Lower Mainland and hotline coordinator David Pengilly was surprised to receive multiple calls from Whistler in one night. He thought at first that they might be looking at Venus but was told that they could see Venus in the background of the light. According to Haley, the light would “hover for a while and then go zipping around, spiraling from side to side” and “was so bright it was strobing.” She and her friend watched it for quite a while and then got her roommates up to see it as well. Like the supposed meteor in 1986, there was no follow up story to explain this sighting.

We often get questions about various aspects of Whistler at the museum and, depending on the type of question, the Question can be a good place to start to find answers. Because of the scope of the paper, however, you never know what other information you’ll find along the way.