As we celebrate Bear Month here at the Museum, we thought we would tell the story of Whistler’s most famous bear, Teddy. Whistler has a long history of living with bears, but very few instances take the “living with” part quite as literally!
In the spring of 1926, Myrtle Philip and some guests from her Rainbow Lodge were out berry picking in the forest when they heard what sounded like a crying baby. They went to investigate and found a bear cub. They could not find the bear’s mother, and since such a young orphaned cub had very little chance of surviving they decided to take him back to Rainbow Lodge.
He was named Teddy the Bear, and he soon became very popular with all the guests and staff at Rainbow Lodge. Teddy was the lodge’s unofficial mascot for the summer. He seemed to especially enjoy climbing, eating treats, and cuddling.
Over the summer Teddy grew, as bears tend to do! Myrtle knew that Teddy could not stay at Rainbow Lodge, but was probably too domesticated to survive in the wild, so she contacted a friend at the Stanley Park Zoo in Vancouver to see if they would be willing to take Teddy. The zoo officials wrote Myrtle back right away saying they would be happy to take him.
Myrtle made the trip down to Vancouver with Teddy a few weeks later. Myrtle was sad to leave behind Teddy, she had become very attached to him, but she knew that she could not keep him. After that, whenever Myrtle was in Vancouver she would try to go and see Teddy at the Zoo.
For many years Teddy would recognize the sound of Myrtle’s voice and would go running over to her when she called his name. Myrtle would spend hours talking to Teddy, even having conversations with him that consisted of them grunting back and forth to each other.
Although the other zoo visitors surely thought she was some crazy wilderness lady, talking to a bear, Myrtle did not care. She loved Teddy, and was just happy to spend some time with her old friend.
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As part of Bear Month, we are holding 3 consecutive “Family Bear Days” on Saturday August 17th, 24th, and 31st. Each Bear Day will feature a unique presentation by local bear researcher Michael Allen, followed by a fun bear-themed craft activity. The activities run from 2-4pm at the Whistler Museum, and are included with a regular museum admission. See you there!
One of the great joys of a Whistler summer is the chance to see one of our valley’s dozens of resident black bears. Still, they remain widely misunderstood by visitors and locals alike. Thus, in the name of black bear education, with a healthy dose of celebration as well, August is officially Bear Month at the Whistler Museum.
Quite possibly the cutest photo in our archives, or anywhere else for that matter. Best buds Molly & McGee share a laugh at Parkhurst Logging Village, circa 1937.
We kicked things off with our 17th annual LEGO-building Competition last weekend, where 50 kids built some awesome LEGO creations along the theme, “What if you were a Whistler bear?” We saw everything from cozy bear dens, to high-tech airplanes to assist bear conservationists of the future, and lots more.
For the upcoming 3 Saturdays we will be bringing even more bear events with our Family Bear Days featuring renowned local bear researcher Michael Allen. Each day will feature a special presentation by Michael Allen on a different bear-related topic, followed by a family friendly bear craft. Everyone is welcome and all the activities are included with a regular admission to the museum.
Tomorrow, the series starts off with the presentation “Behaviour of Whistler black bears,” providing a solid overview of the other “local population” and the particular adaptations they have made to Whistler. Afterwards, you can make your own bear mask and practice your bear-y behaviour!
On August 24th, Michael Allen presents “10 mothers, 20 years: a look at the changing bear family.” Following the talk we will make families of bear puppets using pine cones, and other materials! Finally, on August 31st we conclude with “Nocturnal fishing bears of the Squamish River.” Sneaky stuff. For this week’s craft, everyone will get to create their own bear stamps!
There’s a photograph in the Museum collection of an unlikely pair of friends: a bear cub and a piglet, leaning into each other as they happily lay on their backs. Until very recently, we assumed that the bear cub in the picture was none other than Alta Lake’s most famous bear cub: Teddy.
The photograph in question. If you look deep into the background you will see a dog looking on – his name was Freckles and he preferred to keep to himself. The original print belonging to the Museum was very faded, so we weren’t able to see that this bear does not have a distinctive white patch on its chest. This print came from former resident Norm Barr, and the bear’s lack of markings is easy to spot.
For those of you who have never heard the story of Teddy, it goes like this: In 1926, Whistler pioneer Myrtle Philip was out picking berries to make a pie with some Rainbow Lodge guests in the woods when they heard a whimpering sound. They soon discovered it was coming from a lone bear cub, whose mother was nowhere to be found.
Eventually, they decided to take the bear back to Rainbow Lodge, where he was given the name Teddy and spent the summer happily playing with lodge guests. By the fall, Teddy was getting too big to remain at the lodge, and was taken to the Stanley Park Zoo, where he lived out his days. Myrtle continued to visit him at the zoo over the years, where he would run up to the bars to greet her.
Teddy the bear in 1926 – note the white patch of fur on his chest.
Teddy is the subject of many photos in the Museum collection, so it was easy to surmise that the bear in the photograph with a piglet must be Teddy as well. Recently, Archivist Sarah Drewery interviewed Norm Barr, the son of former Parkhurst owners Ross and Alison Barr, and discovered that there was another bear cub in the Alta Lake area, a decade after Teddy. This bear was named Molly, and Molly’s best friend was McGee – a piglet that had been purchased in New Westminster by a teenage Betsy Henderson (née DeBeck).
Betsy was interviewed this past month about the two summers she spent at Green Lake with her family, in 1936 and 1937. Her brothers worked in the logging industry, and her mother was eager to get the whole family together, so they rented a cabin at what used to be the Lineham’s mink ranch, prior to the Depression. According to Betsy, the remnants of the mink ranch remained, in the form of cages all over the property.
Making their way to Green Lake, the family of six didn’t travel lightly. At a time when travelling meant you had to take the train, the DeBecks managed to bring what might as well have been their own zoo with them: a cow, McGee, Molly, and a spaniel named Freckles. Not to be limited to four animals, they also rented two horses, and had a third horse which her brother Denis apparently found. Not one of them had prior experience riding a horse as they led their rentals away from the barn, but that’s another story altogether.
So if McGee came from a farmer’s market in New Westminster, where did Molly come from? Apparently Molly formerly went by the name “Crisco,” after her penchant for breaking into the cookhouse in Bella Coola, where she lived, and eating Crisco to her heart’s content. Betsy’s father Edward was working in Bella Coola, and decided to bring the bear cub to his family, staying at the mink ranch. As you can imagine, her owners were not remotely reluctant to give her away. Although Betsy’s mother initially said she would leave the instant the bear cub arrived, she was easily swayed when Molly got off the train and promptly wrapped her arms around her legs.
Molly standing on her hind legs. She looks quite different from Teddy in this photograph.
The travel from Bella Coola included taking a ship to Vancouver, and then the train from Vancouver to Alta Lake. While onboard the ship, Molly spent her time in Edward’s sleeper cabin. When Edward ran into a friend who had a rough night on the boat and needed some sleep, he promptly turned over the keys to his cabin, neglecting to mention that Molly was fast asleep on the couch. It seems that the friend initially thought he was hallucinating, but was a bit of a jokester too, so he quickly saw the humor in the situation.
After the second summer at Green Lake in 1937, the DeBeck family was moving on to Victoria. While they had a large lot in New Westminster and were able to keep animals, they were moving to a small city lot in Victoria, and had to say goodbye to their motley crew of pets, save for Freckles the spaniel. The DeBecks approached the Alaric family, who had a logging operation on Green Lake, and sold them the cow, Molly and McGee.
Molly and McGee enjoy a meal together in 1937.
The story of Molly the Bear highlights how easy it is for something to take hold and then continue to be perpetuated until it becomes an inextricable part of the history, taken to be true. One such tale is that Teddy and the piglet (now know to be Molly and McGee) were the best of friends until one day Teddy got a bit hungry and decided to eat the piglet. There is no truth to this, but it was repeated so many times it became easy to believe. Even when we learned that the piglet wasn’t consumed, we no longer questioned whether the bear in the photograph was Teddy. It’s amazing to realize the power of a single image.
By collecting oral histories, we are working to build a stronger understanding of Whistler’s history – Molly is just a small (and cute!) example of how effective these interviews are proving to be. Perhaps there are other photographs in the collection like this one, waiting for the story behind them to be unlocked as we speak with early residents of the valley.
