When Wylie Came to WhistlerWhen Wylie Came to Whistler
When Doug Wylie first came to the Whistler area in April 1971, it was for just a short visit. He and his wife stayed at Doug McDonald’s Alpine Lodge in Garibaldi and enjoyed four days of skiing on Whistler Mountain before Doug reported to his new engineering job on Vancouver Island, which he remembers starting with an “absolutely sunburned face.”
Doug had grown up skiing in Ontario but after skiing at Sunshine in Alberta knew that he wanted to move west for the big mountains. After he finished grad school he took a job in Victoria (which he hadn’t fully realised was on an island) and soon after bought a lot at Forbidden Plateau where they built an A-frame and their daughters learned to ski.
Most winters, Doug would come over to ski on Whistler two or three times with the Victoria branch of the Alpine Club of Canada. The group would pile into a van and arrive on Friday night, hiking up to the club cabin from the parking lot. They would ski for the weekend and then return to the Island.
The Club Cabin area was located just next to Whistler Mountain in what is now Nordic Estates. When lifts were first planned for Whistler in 1964, planners for the area and the Garibaldi Olympic Development Association (GODA) also planned to create a specific area where outdoor clubs could build cabins for their members to use. This would help ensure that the lift company had customers. By the time the provincial government officially granted permission for this use and sent out surveyors in late summer 1965, the first club cabin in that area, that of UBC’s Varsity Outdoor Club, was already under construction on a lot that they had surveyed themselves.
Other clubs (including SFU, BC Hydro and the Alpine Club) also began building cabins, though they were not accessible by road and shared a parking area next to the highway, near the current pedestrian bridge. The area was redeveloped beginning in 1982 and, in the mid 1980s, the area was renamed Nordic Estates.
Doug returned to Whistler in time to witness this redevelopment. After Vancouver Island, the Wylie family moved to Prince George for two years where Doug worked as a municipal engineer. As Doug recalls, he attended a staff meeting one day and somebody left an ad on the table for a municipal engineer in Whistler. When everybody left, the ad was still on the table and so Doug put it in his pocket and applied for the position.
Doug was interviewed for the job by Al Raine, then an alderman on the Whistler council. They walked along the railway tracks and Al pointed out the sewers and described municipal projects, and then Doug was invited to a party that Al and Nancy were throwing that evening. Doug had previously met Nancy at his university’s sports banquet when he was a member of the ski racing team and, when reminded of her attendance, Nancy was able to pull out the gift she had been given as guest of honour: a “sterling silver engraved box for putting cigarettes or cigars in.” After the party, Doug managed to lock the keys for his rental car inside the car and had to get Al to come help him get into the car at 2 o’clock in the morning. He was still offered the job.
Doug started working for the Resort Municipality of Whistler in May 1981, just a few weeks before Muni Hall was moved to Function Junction and the Keg building was moved from Alta Lake. The RMOW had a very small staff and so over the next few years the engineering department was responsible for the sewage treatment plant, water systems, park construction and the early stages of the Valley Trail.
During his time with the RMOW, Doug was also part of founding the Blackcomb Ski Club, worked on the fire department, and became a Weasel Worker, even serving as “Chief of Transportation” for the 1984 World Cup Downhill. Though he left the RMOW in the late 1980s to work for West Vancouver, he continued to spend his weekends in the mountains and moved back full-time after retiring.