Tag: Alf Gebhart

Tales of Toad Hall: Beyond the PosterTales of Toad Hall: Beyond the Poster

April 25, 2023 Whistler Museum 3 Comments

In the spring of 1973, a group of residents (and some of their friends and relatives) who had been renting a property together took a photo as a memento before they moved out. Fifty years later, that photo is best known as the Toad Hall Poster and is widely recognized for its nudity and carefree spirit. While many people who come into the Whistler Museum know of the poster, we’ve heard a lot of different origin stories for the image and a range of names for those featured.

If you had arrived in the Whistler area in the late 1960s and asked where to find Toad Hall, you might have been directed to an entirely different building than the one featured in the Toad Hall Poster. The first Toad Hall in Whistler was a house built beside Nita Lake by Alf Gebhart in the 1950s. Alf and his wife Bessie moved their family to Alta Lake in 1936, when Alf purchased a sawmill and lumber camp. After operating the mill for some years, Alf built a house where he and Bessie lived until the closure of the their sawmill. The house was then occupied by their son Howard and his wife Betty while Howard was working for the railway. When they left the valley as well, the house was sold to Charles Hillman, a teacher living in Vancouver.

*The Gebhart/Hillman/Toad Hall house on Nita Lake. George Benjamin Collection.*

Hillman began renting out his house soon after lifts opened on Whistler Mountain in 1966 and it was some of his tenants who gave it the name of Toad Hall. Tenants came and went over the next few seasons and by the time Hillman decided that he wanted to start using his house as a ski cabin in would appear that none of the original tenants he had rented to were left. Those who were living there were reportedly amicably evicted and the Toad Hall name moved to a different property.

Before it became known as Toad Hall, that property operated as the Soo Valley Logging Camp. The camp, which included a collection of small cabins, was located at the north end of Green Lake, across the lake from the Parkhurst mill site. The logging camp can be seen in the background of some of the photographs taken by the Clausen family, who lived at Parkhurst in the 1950s. By the 1970s, however, the mill at Parkhurst was long closed and the Soo Valley Logging Camp no longer housed loggers.

*If you look closely, the red roofs on the other side of Green Lake from Birthe and Ron Clausen are some of the buildings of the Soo Valley Logging Camp. Clausen Collection.*

In the early 1970s, the Soo Valley property housed skiers looking for affordable housing near Whistler Mountain. The entirety of the property was reportedly rented for $75/month (adjusted for inflation, that would be just over $500/month today), which could be quite reasonable when divided amongst enough residents. By 1973, this second Toad Hall was a popular place to find a party or a bed. Unfortunately, however, for those who found a home there, the buildings were scheduled to be demolished that summer and their days at Toad Hall were numbered. The end of Toad Hall was marked by the creation of the Toad Hall Poster.

While we know some of the stories behind Whistler’s Toad Halls, there are a a lot of things we don’t know. How did two different properties on two different lakes come to be named after the home of Mr. Toad from Wind in the Willows? In a time long before there were dedicated Facebook groups for housing in Whistler, how did people hear about and find Toad Hall from across the country?

*The building best known from the Toad Hall Poster. George Benjamin Collection.*

We’re looking forward to finding out more about Toad Hall from a few former residents on Wednesday, April 26 (tomorrow evening!), when we’ll be joined by John Hetherington, Terry “Toulouse” Spence, and Paul Mathews at the Whistler Museum for our next Speaker Series. Tickets for the event are, however, sold out. Find out more here.

Dick Fairhurst of Cypress LodgeDick Fairhurst of Cypress Lodge

April 28, 2020 Whistler Museum 6 Comments

Though his name has come up several times in recent columns, we recently realized we haven’t specifically written about Dick Fairhurst’s story yet. It was a promise to Dick and Myrtle Philip that led Florence Petersen to found the Whistler Museum & Archives Society in the summer of 1986, as they worried that the stories of life at Alta Lake would be forgotten as skiing became the dominant activity in the valley. Both had lived at Alta Lake for decades and had already seen many changes.

Though he grew up in BC mining towns, Dick spent many years working in the forestry industry. He would have logged in very similar conditions to this man pictured here. Fairhurst Collection.

Richard “Dick” Fairhurst was born to Richard and Elizabeth Alice Fairhurst in 1914, the third of five children. His parents had come to Canada from Lancashire, England in 1906 and at the time were living in East Arrow Park, British Columbia. Dick’s father was a miner and so Dick grew up in mining towns in the Kootenays, moving first to Michel and then to Sandon before settling in Silverton in 1929.

After graduating, Dick spent a short time working underground in one of the silver mines before he secured a job building tramlines for hauling ore. In 1940, Dick moved to Vancouver to work at the shipyards in North Vancouver during the war, a job he later said he hated.

Dick’s first trip to the Alta Lake valley was for his honeymoon with his wife Doreen. The pair stayed at Jordan’s Lodge on Nita Lake. According to Dick, “I came up here on vacation once in 1943 and I thought, well, this is the place for me.”

Dick and Doreen bought two lots on the west side of Alta Lake the next year and Dick began working for Alf Gebhart at the Rainbow Lumber Mill Company, both in the mill and on the boom. He supplemented his income by trapping, taking over some of the traplines of Bill MacDermott and Bill Bailiff on Rainbow, Blackcomb, and Whistler mountains and catching mostly marten and beavers.

George Churchill poses with a day’s catch from Alta Lake. Fairhurst Collection.

Life at Alta Lake was very different from city life and was not to Doreen’s tastes. The couple divorced in 1948 and Doreen left the valley while Dick remained and decided to try his hand in the early tourist industry. He began by building two log cabins, a workshop, frames for two more cabins, a storage shed, and a garage. Bert Harrop, who was well known in the area for his carpentry skills, taught Dick to build cedar bark furniture. Some cabins were rented by loggers so they could bring their families from the city.

Lodge guests aboard Dick’s 1942 Reo pickup truck. The truck was used to transport guests for picnics, hikes, and more. Fairhurst Collection.

In 1954, Dick purchased an adjoining property (formerly known as Harrop’s Point), adding three existing cabins and a tearoom to his business. He changed the name to Cypress Lodge on Cypress Point and began accepting guests, while continuing to work in forestry in the valley. The next year, Dick secured the water rights to install a wheel and generator on Scotia Creek, providing mostly reliable power for Cypress Lodge, except when something plugged the nozzle and the lights would go out.

In 1955, two people came to Alta Lake who would play a large part in the next stages of Cypress Lodge and Dick’s life in the valley. We’ll be bringing you more about Dick Fairhurst, Cypress Lodge, and life at Alta Lake in the 1950s and 60s next week, so be sure to check back!