This Week in Photos: May 17This Week in Photos: May 17
1978
1980
1981
1982
1983
1984
Tag: Green Lake
Whistler Junction: The Village that Wasn’tWhistler Junction: The Village that Wasn’t
With Whistler Village now firmly established at the base of Whistler Mountain it’s hard to imagine the town centre anywhere else. Whistler without Eldon Beck’s plans, the Village Stroll or Skier’s Plaza would be a very different experience for visitors and residents.
Before the Resort Municipality of Whistler was formed in 1975 there was already talk of creating a centralized commercial centre for the area, but opinions differed on where to locate it. Both John Taylor and Norm Paterson believed the centre should be built on their own properties.
Taylor had bought the Jordan’s Lodge property (now Nita Lake Lodge) and proposed building the centre near the Creekside base of Whistler Mountain. Norm Paterson and Capilano Highlands Ltd. had already developed much of Alpine Meadows and Emerald Estates and proposed building a central town site on the shores of Green Lake.
Paterson’s town centre was first announced in the Spring 1969 edition of Garibaldi’s Whistler News. Five years later, on September 21, 1974 he and Tom Wells of Imperial Ventures shared their model with the public. From their plans it is possible to imagine a very different Whistler.
The development, called “Whistler Junction”, was to be located on Green Lake, bordered on one side by Highway 99 and on another by the railway tracks. The entirety of the town centre would be located within the current site of Nicklaus North. This plan had some similarities to the village we know today. For example, it included shops, restaurants, plazas, cafes, hotels, commercial and civic buildings and multi-dwelling residential units, all accessible by foot.
Parking would be located on the edges of the development. Some underground parking would also be located at the transportation terminal on the railway that would service both rail and bus passengers. This terminal was to be connected to the shopping and residential areas via an overhead walkway.
At their presentation the developers stressed that the natural setting would be disturbed as little as possible. Wells pointed out that “as many trees as possible would be left standing” and that “the plan is drawn around these and the other natural features.”
With a lakeside location, it’s no surprise that water was to feature prominently in the design. A lagoon and waterways were to be built into the site, not completely unlike the river that runs through Whistler Village. A pier would be located at the lagoon and a boardwalk would be built along the shore of the lake.
Unfortunately for Paterson and Wells, the provincial government had frozen all commercial development in Whistler in 1973, a year before they unveiled their model. In 1974 a report by James Gilmour of the Ministry of Municipal Affairs’ planning services department recommended a single town centre located on the central dump and a new form of municipal government.
When the Resort Municipality of Whistler was created, the new council supported a plan to build a town centre at the recommended site of today’s village. Paterson, Taylor and other members of the Whistler Development Association continued to push for their own vision but the province ultimately approved the central location we see today.
Family Life at Parkhurst: Before the Modern KitchenFamily Life at Parkhurst: Before the Modern Kitchen
With the holiday season upon us many people will be heading to their kitchens to create the meals and treats associated with this time of year, or, alternatively, enjoying the labours of others who head into the kitchen.
Today the standard kitchen in Whistler usually includes running water (hot and cold!), electric refrigeration and an oven of some kind. Eleanor Kitteringham, however, prepared meals in a very different kind of kitchen.
The Kitteringham family (Olie, Eleanor and their children Ron, Jim and Linda) lived at Parkhurst from 1948 until the mill shut down in 1956. During that time Parkhurst employed about 30 men, including millwright Olie.
For the first few years the Kitteringhams were the only family to stay at Parkhurst through the winter. They made extra money shovelling the snow off the mill’s buildings so that they wouldn’t collapse in the spring when the rains made all that snow very heavy. According to Eleanor, Olie hated snow for years after their time at Parkhurst.
The Kitteringham kitchen was equipped with a sawdust-burning stove, a convenient fuel when living at a sawmill. Sawdust was loaded into the hopper attached to the side and then fed through the hopper into the burn pot.
The stove took eight large pails of sawdust a day, a daily chore for Ron and Jim. The winter supply was hauled up before the mill closed in the fall and stored in the back of an old log cabin near the house.
Although a sawdust-burning oven may sound like a lot of work today, when one can just push a few buttons or turn a dial, Eleanor seemed fond of her stove and remembered it making wonderful bread:
This old stove also had a wonderful warming-closet, on top of the back of the stove – perfect place to put the bread to raise. I used to bake 10 big loaves every other week, between grocery orders. You could smell the bread baking when coming up the trail from the tracks. What a wonderful smell on a cold winter day.
The grocery order arrived on the train every second Thursday so any special meals had to be planned in advance. With their closest neighbours two miles away it was next to impossible to quickly run over through the snow and borrow a missing ingredient.
After the stove, the two most important parts of the kitchen were the icebox and the root cellar. Ice cut out of the lake in the winter and stored in sawdust provided refrigeration through the summer. Bins of sawdust underneath the house held potatoes, carrots and other vegetable grown in the summer.
The root cellar also had shelves to hold cases of canned goods (and apparently made an excellent dark room). Not adverse to advancements, Eleanor wrote, “Later on we got a fridge run by kerosene – it was beautiful.”
Water came from a creek near the house, first using a flume and then piped in by Olie, who could “fix or do anything that was needed.” He got Ron and Jim to help dig down through the bush at 5¢ a foot. A water-jacket that lived on the stove provided hot water for washing dishes. Those washing up after holiday dinners this year should enjoy just how easy running water make it.
Summer Jobs at Rainbow LodgeSummer Jobs at Rainbow Lodge
The Barnfield family is best known in Whistler as the owners of a dairy farm that once operated where the Barnfield neighbourhood is located today (read more about that here). The farm was moved south to Brackendale in 1926, though the family continued to bring the cows and chickens back to Alta Lake for the summer tourist season. Vera Merchant, the only daughter of the Barnfield family, continued to come up for summers even after her family had stopped bringing up the farm and worked at Rainbow Lodge for three seasons. Her recollections provide a unique view of Rainbow Lodge and Alta Lake during the mid-1930s.
Although Vera worked at Rainbow Lodge in 1934, ’35 and ’36, her experiences seem familiar to anyone who has worked in Whistler’s busy tourism industry.
During the summer, employees at Rainbow Lodge didn’t get many days off. Vera was paid $25 a month and was provided with room and board. This meant that she and another girl (also coincidently named Vera) shared a small two-bedroom cabin at the lakefront.
Vera’s work included cleaning cabins, setting and clearing the dining room and leading activities such as hiking and horseback riding with guests. On Sundays, the Pacific Great Eastern Railway ran excursions where passengers could come to Alta Lake just for the day. These excursions were dreaded by Vera and her coworkers as they would have to rush to set up the dining room for lunch for guests and then again for day trippers and then reset the tables in time for dinner. The staff did not eat until after the guests had finished their meals and the tablecloths, dishes and food had been put away.
Though most of the guests at Rainbow Lodge kept their cabins relatively clean, Vera remembered some cabins were left “an awful mess.” A few times cabins were covered with “lemon peels and gin bottles and… no broken glass, but liquor all over the floor.” When Vera showed the cabins to Alex Philip, who she suspected of being in on the previous evening’s party, he assured her that she would not have to clean up the cabin and that he would have the guests take care of their own mess.
Despite working hard in the cabins and dining room, Vera enjoyed the work at Rainbow Lodge. She and the other girls she worked with would go to the dances at the schoolhouse and the next day employees and guests would ride to the Green River for a picnic breakfast on the bridge. Mason Philip, Alex Philip’s nephew, would go ahead with the faster riders and the horses with the supplies and Vera would bring up the rear with the guests less comfortable on horseback. By the time Vera and her group arrived the table was set, the fire was going and food was already being prepared. A full breakfast was provided, including eggs, bacon and hotcakes. Vera loved being surrounded by the trees and the glacier water of Green Lake (her personal record for swimming in Green Lake was five minutes).
Vera only worked at Rainbow Lodge for three years before her marriage but her summers at Alta Lake, both as a child with her family’s dairy and as a young woman with the Philips, provided memories that stayed with her until her death in 2014, just seven weeks before her 99th birthday.