Tag: 1960s

The Skiers’ ChapelThe Skiers’ Chapel

September 5, 2023 Whistler MuseumWhistler Museum 0 Comments

The Whistler Mountain Skiers’ Chapel was one of the most iconic buildings from the early development of Whistler as a ski resort. Remembered for its distinctive A-frame design, the building was one of the first skier chapels in Canada, as well as one of the first interdenominational churches in Canada. 

The chapel was designed from conception to be integrated into the ski culture blossoming in Whistler. Franz Wilhelmsen, president of Garibaldi Lifts Ltd, set aside a small parcel of land for an alpine skiers’ chapel. Wilhelmsen had fond memories of skiers’ chapels in the alpine villages of Norway, his home country, and envisioned something similar on Whistler Mountain. Likewise, the chapel’s status as an interdenominational chapel was envisioned since its beginning. Marion Sutherland and Joan Maclean, who formed the original board of trustees and established the fundraising committee in 1966, ascribed to different denominations of the Christian faith; Sutherland was a Protestant and Maclean belonged to the Roman-Catholic Church. 

A section of the original blueprints by Asbjorn Gathe for the skiers’ chapel.

Fundraising began in 1966 with Sutherland and Maclean seeking support from local faith communities, approaching both the Vancouver Council of Churches and the Kamloops diocese, both of which agreed to support the effort by supplying ministers. Architect Asbjorn Gathe contributed by donating plans for the chapel’s design, a simple A-frame, the layout left intentionally devoid of specific denominational features. A stained glass window designed by Donald Babcock was donated by the Southam family. Support for the chapel’s construction also came from local ski culture. Warren Miller, colloquially referred to as “dean of ski cinematographers,” held a benefit screening of his film Ski on the Wild Side and donated a portion of the proceeds to the construction of the chapel.

  • Warren Miller’s advertisement for his charity screening, with proceeds going to the Skiers’ Chapel and Ski Patrol, in Ski Trails Volume 1, No. 10, 1966.
  • The chapel’s iconic stained glass window by artist Donald Babcock. Wallace Collection

The $15,000 needed was swiftly raised, and the chapel’s construction was completed in December, the first service being held on Christmas Eve 1966. The dedication ceremony included representatives from Lutheran, United, Anglican and Jewish faiths. As Whistler expanded over the years, the chapel also grew and changed. It held regular services for many denominations, ranging from Catholic to Seventh Day Adventist. It also became a de-facto community center, as local groups such as Alcoholics Anonymous and community health services utilized the space. 

  • The chapel with skis and a map of Whistler Mountain in the foreground. Whistler Mountain Ski Corporation Collection.
  • A view of the chapel’s entrance. Wallace Collection

The growth of Whistler and the chapel’s evolving role exposed the physical limitations of the A-frame building, forcing some groups such as the Whistler Community Church to split up services. Additionally, as the Creekside location developed, the chapel was forced to relocate multiple times, and was finally given the option to move to the new Village Centre. However, the projected moving cost of $10,000 and the growing spatial limitations prompted the Skier’s Chapel Society to launch a fundraising campaign for a new building in 1989. 

The Skiers’ Chapel being moved to a new location adjacent to the Whistler Mountain Ski Club Cabin in 1979. Whistler Question Collection.

The vision for what the new chapel would be had changed by 1991, becoming more ambitious with the hope of constructing a building that could fulfill the needs of both secular and faith communities in Whistler. The committee also exchanged their plot of land in Village Centre for one in Village North in 1996. Both the Catholic Church and the Whistler Community Church, two of the chapel’s larger congregations, decided to pursue their own buildings, but the Whistler Skiers’ Chapel Society continued to fundraise for a new interfaith building in the Village, spearheaded by members of the Jewish faith and United Church, as well as community members with no particular religious affiliations.

By 1999, the majority of the funds for a new building in Village North had been raised through donations from organizations including the Chan foundation, the RMOW, and the Whistler Blackcomb Foundation, as well as more personal donations. $2 million was donated by the Young and Barker families in honour of William Maurice Young, who had been the president of the Whistler Mountain Ski Corporation. When the new interfaith building opened, it was named Maurice Young Millennium Place (the building is now known as the Maury Young Arts Centre). The last service held in the original skier’s chapel was for Easter of 2000.

A proposed add-on to the Skiers’ chapel. Skiers’ Chapel Collection.
Concept Drawing for a new Christian Community Centre. Skiers’ Chapel Collection.

READ MOREREAD MORE

The first decade of grooming on Whistler MountainThe first decade of grooming on Whistler Mountain

March 21, 2023 Whistler MuseumWhistler Museum 2 Comments

Today Whistler Blackcomb has a fleet of 30 snow cats grooming the resort each night. This is a far cry from the limited grooming that occurred when Whistler Mountain opened in 1966.

Those lucky enough to have skied on Whistler Mountain in the 1960s may remember moguls the size of Volkswagens and ski runs covered in felled trees. Whistler Mountain had a single Thiokol and a bulldozer to maintain the ski runs in the early years. The Thiokol was essentially a van on tracks, which was useful for knocking the air out of powder and breaking up ice crusts, but it could not do anything about icy moguls. These machines could turn ice crust into sugary snow at the rate of half a run per night, so it took two days to groom one run.

Watching cornice blasting from the Thiokol groomer in 1968. At this time the Thiokol was one half of the grooming fleet on Whistler Mountain. Photo courtesy of Cliff Jennings.

Cliff Jennings spent two winters working as a groomer on Whistler Mountain when there were only the two machines. He remembers track packing the steep section of the downhill course known as the Weasel. (Track packing involves grooming the run by packing the snow down using only the bulldozer tracks.) “You would go over the edge and the snow was coming over the cab. You put your feet almost on the dash and put it into fourth gear so that the tracks were traveling as fast as you were otherwise you could lose the track. When the snow stopped coming over the top you knew you were on the road below midstation and you’d go back up around again.” Skiers’ side-slipping would then smooth the finish for race days.

Fixing a broken track on the John Deere bulldozer in 1967. Photo courtesy of Cliff Jennings.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the method of flying blindly down the hill in a bulldozer did not continue as the permanent method for grooming the Weasel, and volunteer Weasel Workers began grooming the slope entirely by ski.

The fleet of groomers grew over time and in 1975 the Fall edition of Garibaldi’s Whistler News included an article on the grooming on Whistler Mountain. ‘At Whistler we use over-snow vehicles called Thiokols, towing various pieces of machinery to literally farm the snow, just as a farmer cultivates his field. At Whistler we have four Thiokol 2100’s. The equipment they tow consists of four rollers, two mogul cutters, a powder maker (with another also on order for this winter) and a harrow.’

The article goes on to say, ‘The eight Thiokol operators work in two shifts to provide maximum coverage of the runs. The day shift starts up the Gondola run at 5:00 a.m. in the morning and begins grooming at midstation. Here they evaluate the snow conditions and decide what equipment to tow. Mogul cutters and powder makers and the harrow, if the snow is hard and heavily moguled, or if it is a typical deep powder day, rollers to make that fine packed powder skiing we all enjoy so much.’

A Thiokol grooming Whistler Mountain in 1974. Benjamin Collection.

Even with the improved technology most of the runs remained ungroomed and the machine tracks themselves would leave chunks of snow and ice along the runs. The corduroy that we know and love today would not come along until later.

Above: A groomer on Whistler Blackcomb in 2022. The machines grooming the mountain have changed slightly since 1966. Photo by Christie Fitzpatrick, courtesy of Vail Resorts.

READ MOREREAD MORE

Paul Burrows’ Early Years in WhistlerPaul Burrows’ Early Years in Whistler

January 13, 2018 Whistler MuseumWhistler Museum 0 Comments

This past September we were lucky enough to welcome Paul Burrows, founder of the Whistler Question in 1976, to the museum to talk about the early days of the paper.

The stories he told of The Question then are amazing, but while looking through our collection of oral histories we came across an interview Paul did with Whistler Cable nearly 20 years ago in which he described his early days in Whistler, back when it was still known as Alta Lake.

Paul first arrived in Canada in 1960 on a flight that hopped from London to Scotland to Iceland to Greenland to Newfoundland to Toronto.  He came west because “that was the place to be” and he and his friends started skiing.  It was thanks to some bumps and twists on the mountains that he first met and became friends with members of ski patrol in Vancouver.  They soon heard about a new ski area in Alta Lake and in 1965 Paul came up by train to take a look.

When Paul Burrows first came to the area Whistler Mountain was still under construction. Whistler Mountain Collection.

The second time he came up he was with a group in a Volkswagen and they brought their skis.  It was August.  As Paul recalled, “we put our skis on our back and walked up through the trees and we walked right up the west ridge of Whistler and we peered over the edge of Whistler Bowl and then we got to see them building the chairlifts on the Red Chair and cutting the ski runs.  So then we skied down and we got mixed up and ended up on a cliff and we got stuck there for a while.”  The group did eventually make it down the mountain.

Bill Southcott and Paul Burrows sport snow beards after a few run on Whistler in the 1970s. Whistler Question Collection.

In 1966 Paul returned as a member of the brown-jacketed ski patrol for the season before leaving to work for the ski patrol in Aspen for a year.  When he returned he got a job working on the pro patrol alongside Murray Coates and Hugh Smythe.  In his words, “It was pretty hairy.  We got buried a lot.  The safety procedures we used to knock avalanches down and everything else would not be tolerated today.  We didn’t even talk about the WCB.”

During this time Paul, like quite a few other “residents” at the time, was squatting.  He rented a 15-foot trailer from a place in Richmond for the season for $550 and parked in a lot at the bottom of the mountain.  The trailer was put up on bricks, insulation was installed beneath it and plywood was put around it and the trailer became home to six or seven people.

Parking lot and gondola at Creekside base, ca. 1980, a decade after the trailer took up residence.. Whistler Mountain Collection.

With no electricity or water the wash facilities in the day lodge came in very useful, as did a trusty oil lamp.  According to Paul, “I would shut all the doors and windows and you’re in there but the trouble is you keep running out of air.  So when you had a party in there in the winter and there were guys in there you kept running out of air.  So if you had this little oil lamp cranked up, it was a bit like the miner’s lamp, when the light started to flicker and go out you knew you had to open the door and let some more air in.”  Condensation was also an issue in the trailer.  Condensation build up could freeze the doors and windows shut and the lamp would then be used to melt one’s way out of the trailer in the morning.

After that season Paul again left Whistler, this time for Grouse and then work in the printing business.

The Burrows’ A-frame on Matterhorn, where the first editions of the Whistler Question were created.

In 1971 Paul married Jane and when she was offered a job teaching in Pemberton the pair moved back to Whistler, staying in their Alpine A-frame until 2000.

READ MOREREAD MORE