Tag: Alec Greenwood

Creating Whistler’s Parks: Rainbow Park, appropriate to expropriateCreating Whistler’s Parks: Rainbow Park, appropriate to expropriate

May 23, 2023 Whistler MuseumWhistler Museum 0 Comments

The Whistler Question wrote in 1980, “The Municipality has reviewed the opportunities in the Alta Lake area and without expropriation or purchase of private land property, the recreational opportunity in the Alta Lake area for swimming, especially a beach area for young children, is extremely limited.”

It was clear all along that more public access was required for Alta Lake and the Resort Municipality of Whistler (RMOW) had been looking into buying lots on the foreshore of the lake to turn into parks. When Drew Meredith became Mayor in 1986 the council started to think bigger than buying single-family lots, and Rainbow Lodge caught their attention.

Rainbow Lodge, where Rainbow Park is now located, had a long history of tourism. Myrtle and Alex Philip opened the popular vacation destination for summer visitors in 1914. Then in 1948, they sold Rainbow Lodge to the Greenwood family where it continued as a summer resort. In its heyday Rainbow Lodge contained over 40 buildings, including a main lodge, post office, stables and many cabins.

Rainbow Lodge and surrounding facilities, ca 1930. Philip Collection.

Rainbow Lodge was sold to Joan Saxton, a speculator from Vancouver, in 1970. Resort operations ceased in the early 1970s, however, people could still rent rooms and cabins on a more long-term basis. Disaster struck in 1977 when the main lodge burnt down during renovations, and by 1986 many of the remaining buildings had fallen into disrepair.

Whilst Whistler had gone through a period of booming development throughout the 1970s and 1980s, Rainbow Lodge remained rather unchanged. Joan Saxton said during the expropriation in 1986, “Pat Carleton said he wanted to get the town centre going, and then after that it would be my turn. They’ve down zoned me and put me off the sewer system.” In Saxton’s eyes this unfairly reduced the value of the land, and the RMOW and Saxton could not come to an agreement on purchase price.

The RMOW had the land appraised twice, and then went to the Provincial Government where they received permission to expropriate the land for public interest. In 1987, the 43.2 hectare (108 acre) parcel of land on Alta Lake was expropriated for $367,000.

The lakeside cabins at Rainbow Lodge. Philip Collection.

If the owners had been living on the property the expropriation process may have been more difficult, but the Saxtons lived in the city and rented out some of the remaining cabins. Many of these buildings were in rough shape and had to be demolished when the area became a park. Three of the cabins were preserved for historical value, however, and you can still see these in Rainbow Park today.

Three remaining guest cabins at Rainbow Park. Photo courtesy of Jeff Slack.

The park was quickly developed, opening for public use during the summer of 1987. Early improvements to the property included creating a pedestrian crossing over the railway, building up the marshy pathway which was often flooded, and clearing vegetation from the sandy beach. Open wells that had been used for the lodge were filled in, the parking was cleared, and picnic tables added. The beachfront and facilities continued to expand and the park quickly reached the goal of becoming the top beach park in Whistler.

While the council at the time believed the deal was signed and done, the story of Rainbow Park does not end there. In what would become one of the longest lawsuits the RMOW has faced to-date, the Saxton family continued to fight for further compensation. They argued that the land appraisals were not taking into account the size and development potential of the property.

In 2012, the decades-old dispute was finally settled with the judge ordering the RMOW to pay an additional $2.4 million to the Saxton family, valuing the land at $12,000 an acre, comparable to the value of the Nicholas North lands in the early 1990s. With hindsight, the land was revaluated to $1.3 million dollars, and the RMOW was required to pay the difference, plus an additional $1.5 million for unpaid interest.

While Drew Meredith disagreed with judgement, he said Rainbow Park was worth it even at $2.4 million. With the number of people enjoying the sunshine recently, I tend to agree.

Rainbow Park in September 1990. Griffith Collection.
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Alta Lake DancesAlta Lake Dances

January 17, 2023 Whistler MuseumWhistler Museum 0 Comments

Before the ski resort brought power and paved roads to the valley, and it was renamed Whistler, Alta Lake was a fairly small and remote town. Without developed roads it could be hard getting around and residents from opposite sides of the valley rarely crossed paths. One thing that would bring the community together, however, was the Alta Lake dances. While the music and location of the dances varied over the years, fond memories are recounted by many people that visited or called Alta Lake home.

Fred and Elizabeth Woods lived in Alta Lake with their children from around 1926 until the 1940s, and during this time their family band was the staple entertainment at dances and community events. Dances featuring the Woods family band helped raise money for the first Alta Lake School, which children Helen, Pat, Jack and Kenneth Woods attended. When the one room schoolhouse was built in the 1930s it doubled as a community hall where regular dances continued to be held.

Pat Woods was quite young when he started playing at the Alta Lake dances with his family. “We used to load the toboggan with the guitars, accordion, and a violin. We’d ride the toboggan down to the dance hall, play crib, then make some music. We weren’t very old then, but everybody was up dancing. We were 9 or 10.”

The Woods family band played at community events, such as dances and fundraisers.

Almost everyone was up dancing. School desks were pushed to the side for the dances and really young children would sleep through the event under the desks. The schoolhouse, like most buildings, was lit by coal oil lamps. When the home waltz started and the lamps turned off it was time to bundle up and head home.

Kenneth Farley’s family came to Alta Lake in 1943, after the Woods family band had moved on. “The music was the wrangler,” recounted Kenneth. “Philip’s wrangler looked after the horses. He played a fiddle and he would keep the time with the heel of his cowboy boots to set the pace, while the whisky in his back pocket would be sloshing away. You didn’t need to be able to dance because it was so crowded you could hardly move.”

Alta Lake School doubled as the community hall where dances were regularly held. Philip Collection.

For those living along the lake, the festivities started before arriving at the dance. A boat with an outboard motor would start at the north end of the lake, picking up everyone in rowboats on the way past. By the time they arrived to the dance there would be a long string of boats pulled along behind the motorboat.

John Burge first came to Alta Lake in 1956 and spent the summers here while growing up. Not quite the same as the dances you’ll find at Garfs or The Longhorn today, he remembers learning the foxtrot, waltz, schottische and polka from Florence Petersen. “We just learned all these dances and people did them. It was a fun time.”

John started working at Rainbow Lodge when he was around 13 and after working for five summers he had saved enough money to pay for university. One of his jobs was to wax the floors after the Saturday night dances held in the Rainbow Lodge dining room, which could be attended by up to 100 people. By then Rainbow Lodge was owned by Alec and Audrey Greenwood, who had bought the lodge from Myrtle and Alex Philip when they retired in 1948. The lodge was made of wood and the whole building would dance, with the deteriorating wood floor bouncing up and down as much as six inches as people boogied.

The dining room at Rainbow Lodge. Philip Collection.

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The Disappearance of Rainbow LodgeThe Disappearance of Rainbow Lodge

July 26, 2022 Whistler MuseumWhistler Museum 0 Comments

While visiting Rainbow Park, you may have noticed a few old cabins by the railway tracks; these are the last remaining structures of Rainbow Lodge. Opened by Alex and Myrtle Philip in 1914, Rainbow Lodge operated fo decades as a successful summer destination for those looking to fish, sail, hike, and more. The Philips sold their business to the Greenwood family in 1948, who continued to run the lodge until 1970, when they retired to Arizona and sold Rainbow Lodge to Joan Saxton. As Rainbow Lodge at one time included forty cabins, stables, and a store, as well as the main lodge, you might wonder why there are so few buildings left on the site today.

A panorama view of Rainbow Lodge in the 1930s, though the cabins by the lakeshore are difficult to make out. Barr Collection.

In the early 1970s, Rainbow Lodge ceased operating as a summer resort, though rooms and cabins could still be rented out. Then, on April 21, 1977, the main lodge building caught fire. According to the report in the Whistler Question at the time, there were plumbing alterations being done on the upper level of the building and somehow the fire began in the course of this work. Because the plumbing was being worked on, the water to the building had been shut off. The Whistler Volunteer Fire Department arrived at Rainbow Lodge only fifteen minutes after the call had gone out to its members and were able to contain the fire. However, they ran out of water and had to get a pump to supply water from Alta Lake as the nearest hydrant that could fill their tanker truck was at the located on Timber Lane in Alpine Meadows. The fire department was still able to prevent the fire from spreading to most of the buildings on the property but the main lodge and part of the bathroom block were described as “burned out.”

Rainbow Lodge on fire, April 1977. Busdon Collection.

The remaining cabins on the Rainbow Lodge property continued to be lived in by tenants, often younger people working in Whistler, but the main lodge building was not rebuilt after the fire. Ten years later, the municipality announced that it was going to expropriate the Rainbow Lodge property in an effort to increase public access to the waterfront. Their plan was to turn the property into a public park (the Rainbow Park that we have today). At that point, the property had quite a number of the cabins of Rainbow Lodge still standing, many of them along the shore of Alta Lake, and the municipality took over the rental agreements with any tenants.

The result of the fire in 1977. Busdon Collection.

In February 1989, a master plan for Rainbow Park was presented to Council. This plan aimed to “integrate the historical character of the area with recreation.” The central area of the park, including the location of the main lodge building, was to be left as a seeded grassy area, which would leave open the option of rebuilding the lodge. The plan also suggested building a boardwalk to link the trail that would come through the park with the remaining buildings, which would house concessions. As well, the plan called for the reconstruction of the Bridge of Sighs and the Rainbow Lodge gateway at the park’s entrance.

Though not an exact copy, you will find a similar looking sign welcoming you to Rainbow Park today. Philip Collection.

As Rainbow Park was developed, the Bridge of Sighs and the gateway were rebuilt according to plan. Most of the buildings on the property were removed and three structures were moved further back from the shore. Today, the remaining cabins at Rainbow Park are used to share the history of the Rainbow Lodge property through interpretive panels installed in many of the windows.

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Fire at Alta LakeFire at Alta Lake

February 11, 2020 Whistler MuseumWhistler Museum 3 Comments

Prior to the formation of the Alta Lake Volunteer Fire Department (ALVFD), the Alta Lake area had no official response to fires – they were put out by the small community.  But after two large fires in the early 1960s, some residents decided to form their own fire department.

The first fire is still a little mysterious.  One a reportedly beautiful morning in April, a single passenger got off the Budd car at the Alta Lake Station.  His outfit, a trench coat and dress shoes, drew the notice of everyone at the station as he asked Don Cruickshank, the station agent, how to get to the other side of the lake.

Waiting for the train at Alta Lake station, 1937. Left to right: Bill Bailiff, Mr and Mrs Racey, Ed Droll, Betty Woollard, Larry, Flo and Bob Williamson.

Later that same day, Dick Fairhurst received a call from Cruickshank to check on smoke coming from the area of an old empty lodge.  Fairhurst and Louis White grabbed a small fire extinguisher and a bucket each and ran to Fairhurst’s boat.  When they arrived at the lodge, they found that the fire had taken hold in some piles of lumber inside the three-storey building and that their buckets and extinguisher would be of no use.  They also found a piece of candle at the back of the lodge, and footprints from dress shoes in the soggy ground.

By the time the evening train arrived, two RCMP officers from Pemberton were aboard and waiting to arrest the stranger in the trench coat, who had been pacing in the station while waiting for the train.  Though we don’t know what happened to this mysterious man after his arrest, we do know that the date of the trial was set for June 6, 1962, the date of the second fire.

Cypress Lodge as seen from the lake. Fairhurst Collection.

This second fire appears to have been far more accidental than the first.  The provincial government was building a new highway to connect old logging roads, small community roads, and the Pemberton Trail.  The surveyors and their families were staying in cabins and lodges throughout Alta Lake.

One couple, Bruce and Anne Robinson, were staying in a cabin at Cypress Lodge, owned by Dick and Kelly Fairhurst.  Anne chose June 6, a warm day with no wind, to make bread in the old Kootenay Range in the cabin.  Dick was at the trial in Vancouver and Kelly had gone to vote at the Community Hall (it’s not entirely clear what the vote was for, but it is likely it was for the federal election).  She and her children had just arrived home when Bruce arrived at Cypress Lodge to discover the roof of his cabin on fire.  Kelly got on the party line, interrupting Alec Greenwood’s call to his mother-in-low to announce the fire.

Bert Harrop built cedar-bark furniture that was used in Harrop’s Tea Room, later the site of Cypress Lodge.  The museum has some of his creations in our collection, but most were destroyed in a fire.  Philip Collection.

Luckily, Bill and Joan Green and a group of loggers were hanging out at Rainbow Lodge after voting.  Bill radioed to the Van West logging operation to bring their fire pump, and Alex loaded his pump onto his tractor.  Soon everyone in the area know about the fire, and many of them came to help.

The fire, which had started from smouldering sparks in needles on the shake roof, had spread to a storage shed, but the lack of wind prevented it from spreading further.  Someone moved Dick’s truck onto the road, but other vehicles, piles of dry wood, and cans of gasoline, paint, diesel and propane were still around the property.

The two pumps were used to get the fire under control, and then to keep wetting everything down.  The Robinsons lost almost everything in the cabin, and many pieces of Bert Harrop’s cedar-bark furniture that were stored in the shed were lost, along with the two-rope for skiing on Mount Sproatt.

Alex Philip spent the night patrolling the area for sparks, but the fire was truly out by the time Dick arrived home the next day.  The community came together again to help with the clean up.

Dick Fairhurst, Stefan Ples and Doug Mansell rafting the fire shelter and its contents across the lake to Alta Vista, 1967. Petersen Collection

When the ALVFD was formed later in 1962, its members were Dick Fairhurst, Doug Mansell, Stefan Ples, and Glen Creelman.  They held regular practises and, until the formation of the Resort Municipality of Whistler in 1975, relied on fundraisers such as the Ice Break-Up Raffle and the Fireman’s Ball to buy supplies.  The residents of the valley relied on them in case of emergencies.

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