Tag: Alta Lake Echo

From Alta Lake to WhistlerFrom Alta Lake to Whistler

February 11, 2025 Whistler MuseumWhistler Museum 0 Comments

When Glen Creelman arrived in the Whistler area in 1960, it wasn’t for the skiing or for the fishing. Glen moved to Alta Lake (as it was known at the time) to work for the Pacific Great Eastern Railway (PGE) as a communications lineman, maintaining the telephone line and new microwave station.

Glen had recently graduated from technical college and his arrival at Alta Lake in April was newsworthy enough to be remarked on in the “Alta Lake Echo,” the newsletter of the Alta Lake Community Club, which stated “Our new telephone lineman is young, handsome, single Glen Creelman.” Over the following months, as he became part of the small Alta Lake community, his comings and goings and activities were also reported on in the “Echo,” including which his family came to visit, when he bought a canoe, and when he started organizing softball teams for Alta Lake residents and the nearby logging operations. As a resident of Alta Lake, Glen was a founding member of the Alta Lake Volunteer Fire Department, along with Dick Fairhurst, Doug Mansell and Stefan Ples (Glen served as Assistant Chief), and a founding member of the Alta Lake Sailing Club.

Members of the Alta Lake Volunteer Fire Department raft their fire shelter and its contents across the lake to Alta Vista, 1967. Petersen Collection.

As the communications lineman, Glen was responsible for looking after the microwave station on Whistler Mountain. The road up to the station (now known as Gondola Way) could be driven up in his vehicle for much of the year, but in the winter Glen was given a Tucker snowcat to make the journey. In an interview in 2023, Glen described this snowcat as “hopeless” and recalled that he would often park it, put on snowshoes, and then walk most of the way up to the station. He was later given a better machine, which he called “Little Tucker,” that could make it all the way up to the station. As one of the few people in the area with a snowcat, Glen had the experience of driving Franz Wilhelmsen and other members of the Garibaldi Olympic Development Association up Whistler Mountain in the early 1960s when they began planning for lifts and ski runs. Glen was also there when they began constructing these lifts in 1965 and helped pull the cable for the Red Chair when it was installed.

Another part of his job was to maintain the telephone line that ran along the railway which was also made more difficult by snow. According to Glen, winters could be pretty snowy and wet and it was not uncommon for the snowplow that cleared the tracks to throw wet snow onto the telephone line and break it. Glen would have to go out, go up the telephone pole, tie a rubber-covered cable to one end of the break, and then go along the tracks to find the other end and reattach the wire, climbing and working alone as the only lineman for the section.

Bob Williamson, one of Glen’s predecessors, at work on the lines. Smith Collection.

After Whistler Mountain opened for skiing in 1966, Glen started teaching skiing on the weekends, first for Roy Ferris and Alan White and then for Jim McConkey after he took over the ski school. It was through skiing that he met his wife Trish, who first visited Whistler Mountain in February 1971. She was promptly offered a job at the Mount Whistler Lodge and moved up for the rest of the winter. According to Trish, the first time Glen saw her she was climbing on the bus at the bottom of the dump run after a long day of skiing. Like Glen, Trish taught skiing for Jim McConkey, as well as working at the Mount Whistler Lodge and then Rudi’s Steakhouse.

Apart from one year when he went traveling, Glen continued to work as the PGE (and later BC Rail) lineman for the area until 1973, when he and Trish left to get married in Ireland and then settle in the Kootenays, where Glen grew up. By the time they left, Glen had seen the small Alta Lake community he arrived in transform into a growing ski area.

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News for the community, by the communityNews for the community, by the community

June 29, 2021 Whistler MuseumWhistler Museum 0 Comments

Just how many communities can boast that their first reporters were a group of schoolchildren? Like most of Whistler’s history, the history of print news in Whistler is far from conventional, and relied heavily on community input, support, and organization.

The Whistler Question was published for the first time in 1976 from the basement of the Burrow’s home in Alpine Meadows, and, although it was the first newspaper about the valley, it was not the first source of community news.

The Burrows’s home in Alpine Meadows. Whistler Question Collection.

Early reporting in Whistler (circa 1930-1960) often centered around events that many would no longer consider newsworthy. Reports of gatherings for tea and details of newcomers in the valley featured prominently in Whistler’s (then Alta Lake) early newsheets. Whistler is by no means a roaring metropolis now, but the small community of Alta Lake was a fraction of the size, and the reports showcase the quiet life many residents led.

The first news-sheet in the valley was the Alta Lake School Gazette, a single page publication put together by a group of students at the Alta Lake School. It had a total of six issues, and ran from February to June, 1939.

Students at the Alta Lake School, some of which contributed to the publication. Jardine Collection.

The second news-sheet was published by the Alta Lake Community Club from 1958 until 1961. The single page publication changed names a few times before the Club settled on the Alta Lake Echo. As of its second issue, it featured a subtitle that read “published for fun”, which highlights the nature of the sheet. It was never intended to be a serious newspaper, and it never became one. Rather, it was a way for members of a small community to be kept up to date with the goings on of the past week, and informed of upcoming events.

By the time the Question was introduced, the community had changed significantly. Its first edition was published mere months after the Alta Lake community had been incorporated as the Resort Municipality of Whistler. Despite the significantly larger readership warranting a different approach than earlier publications in Whistler (just imagine if an article was written for every new arrival or departure from the valley), the Question nevertheless still encouraged, and relied on, community involvement.

The Question featured many different columns, some more conventional than others. A perennial favourite, called “Bricks and Roses,” was published from 1981 until 1998, and was in some ways reminiscent of an earlier and quieter time in Whistler when community happenings made up all of the news. The idea for the article was suggested to Glenda Bartosh (editor of the Question) by Gary Raymond, who at the time was the treasurer at the RMOW and had seen a similar column in a Quebec newspaper. A few months before it was introduced, the editor’s column had encouraged readers to send in their input in order to “make this community paper a dialogue – rather than a monologue.” The Bricks and Roses column set out to do just that. It created a forum for readers to express their gratitude for the good deeds of individuals and organizations by bestowing roses, or to call out and (rather publicly) condemn what they considered bad behaviour. More importantly, it gave people a direct path to the publication that did not require a comprehensive letter to the editor.

As you can imagine, people seized the opportunity to submit either a Brick or a Rose, and a wide variety of colourful submissions began to pour in. Some submissions were phoned in, while others were given verbally to one of the Questionables (name given to the staff at the Question) while they were out and about.

Keely Collins is one of two summer students working at the Whistler Museum this year through the Young Canada Works Program.  She will be returning to the University of Victoria in the fall.

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Reporting on Alta LakeReporting on Alta Lake

March 30, 2021 Whistler MuseumWhistler Museum 0 Comments

Last Thursday (March 25, 2021) the Whistler Museum’s second virtual Speaker Series took a look at journalism in Whistler since the 1970s. Our guests Paul Burrows, Charlie Doyle, Bob Barnett, and Clare Ogilvie, have worked on and founded some of the best known publications in the valley: The Whistler Question, The Whistler Answer, and Pique Newsmagazine. Before we explored recent journalism, we took a look back at earlier sources of news in the area.

The entire Alta Lake School student body, 1933.  Some these students were the ones to start the Alta Lake School Gazette. Back row (l to r): Wilfred Law, Tom Neiland, Helen Woods, Kay Thompson, Bob Jardine, Howard Gebhart; front row: Doreen Tapley, George Woods, Jack Woods.

The first source of news published in Alta Lake came from the Alta Lake School in 1939. Older students at the school created the Alta Lake School Club, which sponsored The Alta Lake School Gazette.  The Gazette published six issues from February 11 to June 5, 1939, and was staffed by names that may sound familiar: Bob Jardine, Tom Neiland, and Helen, George and Jack Woods. The stated purpose of the Gazette was “to give a current account of happening each month as seen by its editor and his staff.”  Its column “Local News of Interest” included a mix of opinions, observations, and gossip about the residents of the Alta Lake area and their comings and goings. The Gazette also included a few pieces about news outside of Alta Lake, such as a boxing match and an editorial on the Canadian Navy, which were most likely put together with information from the radio or The Vancouver Sun, which was available at the store at Rainbow Lodge.

First Alta Lake Community Club picnic on the point at Rainbow.  Philip Collection.

In 1958, the Alta Lake Community Club (ALCC) began publishing a newsletter to which members and friends could subscribe. The newsletter went by various names between 1958 and 1961: The Alta Lake Reminder, Community Weekly Sunset, the Alta Lake Echo, and the Alta Lake Owl. As a community newsletter, it wasn’t necessarily known for its serious reporting but did keep people up-to-date on the travels of residents and frequent visitors to the area, community events such as dances and clean-ups, and the weather. The newsletter also included a series about the local environment by then-club president Bill Bailiff and an abridged version of Hamlet (sadly, the museum does not have a complete retelling of Hamlet from the ALCC, which appears to be far more humorous than Shakespeare’s version).  In 1961, the newsletter was taken over by the Alta Lake Ratepayers Association and then ceased publication.

Garibaldi’s Whistler News advertises spring skiing in their Spring 1969 issue.  The entire publication was meant to promote Whistler Mountain.

A lot changed in the area between 1961 and 1967, when Garibaldi Lifts Ltd. began publishing Garibaldi’s Whistler News (GWN) in November.  Early editions of GWN were put together by Jack Bright and Lynn Mathews, who described the publication as a “good news” newspaper meant to promote Whistler Mountain.  GWN reported on developments in the valley, such as new lodges and businesses, and some years included a column by Ray Gallagher of Brandywine Falls Resort similar to the community news reported in earlier newsletters. However, as the purpose of GWN was, as Lynn stated, “to get people up that road,” few stories said anything negative about the area and the development happening around Whistler Mountain.

Outside of the Alta Lake area, local news could be found in the newspapers of Squamish. The Squamish Times, owned by Cloudesley Hoodspith from 1957 to 1992, and the Squamish Citizen (also published by Hoodspith) included Alta Lake/Whistler news, but their primary focus was not on this area.  It was not until the 1970s that the newly formed Resort Municipality of Whistler would be represented by an official local newspaper.

To learn more about journalism in Whistler from the 1970s to the present, you can find the video from last week’s event here.

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Before Opening DayBefore Opening Day

December 3, 2019 Whistler MuseumWhistler Museum 3 Comments

One of the most-talked about topics in Whistler each November is opening day: when it will be, what the conditions will be like, and how the rest of the snow season looks.  Often this causes us to look back at previous opening days, but this week we thought we’d look further back, and see what the community of Alta lake was talking about 60 years ago, years before lifts started operating on Whistler Mountain.

Alex Philip stands on the snow he’s been clearing from the door. A fascination with snow and weather was just as popular in the early days of Whistler. Philip Collection.

According to the Alta Lake Echo, the (more or less) weekly newsletter of the Alta Lake Community Club (ALCC), those living at Alta Lake in 1959 found the topic of November weather just about as fascinating as we find it today.  The newsletter of November 3 reported clear skies, a brisk north wind, and snow within a couple hundred metres of the lake, with a chance of flurries int he afternoon.  Don Gow was even reported to have said, “This is the year of the big snow.”

The next few weeks didn’t seem quite as promising.  A lack of snow, however, didn’t seem to be as unwelcome as the thawing ice on Alta Lake.  By the beginning of December, there was reportedly “beautiful” ice forming on the lake, but rain and warmer temperatures washed it away with the snow.  This, it would seem, was particularly frustrating for some “would-be skaters who got their Christmas presents early.”

Though ice stock sliding came later in the 1970s, Alta Lake residents spent many winter days out on the frozen lake. Petersen Collection.

Unlike today, when many people arrive for the season in November and businesses are busily preparing for a bustling winter, Alta Lake residents were looking ahead to a slower pace after a full summer.  Rainbow Lodge officially closed for the season soon after the Armistice Day Holiday, and the fishing season would appear to have been finished.  Bill and Phyllis House, who visited Alta Lake each November to fish, determinedly went out in the snow but reportedly caught nothing, a first in 20 years.

Some Alta Lake residents took the slow winter season as a chance to take a holiday, visit friends and family, or even return home after seasonal work, such as Ivor Gunderson who returned to Norway once Valleau Logging ceased operations for the winter.  Alex and Audrey Greenwood, the owners of Rainbow Lodge, left for two weeks to San Francisco, and Russ and Maxine Jordan, the proprietors of Jordan’s Lodge, left to wait out the cold season in warmer climes.

Many of the cottages and lodges on Alta Lake were built for the summer, and were not always winterized to keep occupants warm through the winter. Photo: Mitchell

There were few evening entertainments at Alta Lake once the summer guests left and the days grew shorter.  The ALCC began organizing poker sessions in November.  Participants took turns hosting, and some games were played at the Alta Lake School building.  Though scores and winnings were not printed, the Alta Lake Echo did give a fair impression of how the games went, reporting on December 8 that, “Last week saw a good turnout at Cruickshank’s Casino.  This week, Kelly & Dick [Fairhurst] are going to win their shirts back.  They’ll use their own cards.  Come one, come all…”  Interestingly, these reports were printed in the newsletter’s “Wildlife” section.

We, and many others, are looking forward to a busy winter, but it was not so long ago that winters meant something very different in the Whistler valley.

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