Tag: Jenny Betts

Early Aches and Breaks at Alta LakeEarly Aches and Breaks at Alta Lake

November 12, 2024 Whistler MuseumWhistler Museum 0 Comments

A broken bone and accompanying cast are not an uncommon sight in Whistler during any season and are likely to become even more common as the mountains open and we begin another winter season. While these days most injuries are treated by medical professionals at the Whistler Medical Centre, a few stories from our archives show that residents of the Alta Lake area, prior to the development of Whistler Mountain, sometimes had to take a more hands-on role in treating themselves.

Louise Betts is the daughter of Jenny Jardine, whose family first came to Alta Lake in 1921 when Thomas Neiland, Jenny’s step-father, started a logging business. Jenny and her brothers grew up in the area and she married Wallace Betts, who had been working at one of the logging camps in the area, in 1937. Though the couple and their children did later move away from Alta Lake, Louise would often visit her grandmother Lizzie Neiland at her house in what is now Function Junction. A story from one of her visits would make anyone who has a bone set in Whistler today appreciate the care they receive.

Louise Betts with her brother Sam and grandmother Lizzie Neiland at the garden at 34 1/2 Mile (today the Function Junction area), around 1943. Jardine/Betts/Smith Collection

Louise and her cousin Alfie were playing in the field near their grandmother’s house. As Louise described it, “We’d go to the top of these little humps and lie down and roll to the bottom.” On one of these rolls, Alfie broke his arm. The pair ran to find Louise’s mother (according to Louise, “I can remember he just came screaming up”) and Jenny “grabbed him by the shoulder and straightened his arm out. Like that, thank you!” After creating a splint for his arm, Jenny, Alfie and Louise got on the train (Louise could not remember if it was a passenger or freight, though she thinks they waited for the passenger train) and headed for Vancouver. Luckily for Alfie, the doctors there concluded that Jenny had done a good job splinting his arm and after putting a cast on they were able to return to Alta Lake.

Like the Jardine-Neilands, the Kitteringham family also came to the Alta Lake area because of the forestry industry. Olie and Eleanor Kitteringham and their children Ron, Jim, and Linda lived at Parkhurst from 1948 to 1956 and, unlike many of the people who worked at the mill, stayed at Parkhurst year round.

Part of the townsite at the Parkhurst mill on Green Lake. Debeck Collection

With no doctor in the area, Eleanor told her family, “If you are going to get sick it has to be on a Wednesday, Friday or Sunday” as those were the days when the passenger train came through from Lillooet to Squamish. When Ron was about nine years old, however, he became sick and delirious for three days with a high temperature. Eleanor consulted her “doctor book,” which said that it might be bronchial pneumonia, and used the phone in the mill office to call up Dr Kindree in Squamish and ask that he put some penicillin on the train for her. The penicillin was “thrown off by the next freight at [the] station” and Ron soon recovered.

Not all of the stories in our archives have such fortunate endings and accidents at the mill could have life-altering results, as could untreated illnesses. In 1980, Dr Christine Rodgers and Dr Rob Burgess both set up practices in Whistler and began seeing patients, providing the first full time, year round medical care in Whistler.

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Jenny Jardine at Alta LakeJenny Jardine at Alta Lake

January 7, 2020 Whistler MuseumWhistler Museum 3 Comments

In the museum collections is one photograph of a New Year’s celebration held at the Alta Lake School in 1937.  We don’t know who all of the people in the photo are, but a few names are written on its back, including the name of Jenny Jardine.  Although Jenny and her family attended social events at the school (Jenny was even in charge of the refreshments for a time), she never attended the school as a pupil.  We know a lot about Jenny’s life in the valley through her memoir, letters with Florence Petersen, and oral history interviews with the museum.

New Years celebrations held at the Alta Lake School House – Jenny Jardine is pictured far right.  Philip Collection.

Jenny was born in Kelowna in December 1912.  Her parents, Lizzie Laidlaw and John Jardine, had met aboard the ship that brought their families from Scotland to Canada and married a few years later.  Jenny was their first child, followed by Jack eighteen months later.  Lizzie and the children remained in Kelowna when John went to fight in the First World War, moving to Vancouver after he was wounded at Mons and sent to Vancouver General Hospital.  When he was released, John found work on the Pacific Great Eastern Railway (PGE) and the family settled in Squamish.

John was killed when a speeder he was riding on collided with a train and Lizzie moved her family back to Kelowna, where their third child, Bob, was born.  They soon relocated again, moving to North Vancouver where Lizzie was offered work keeping house for Thomas Neiland, a friend of John’s.  In 1921, the entire household moved to Alta Lake, where Neiland planned to start his own logging business.

Formal portrait of Thomas and Lizzie Neiland taken in the 1940s.  Betts/Smith/Jardine Collection.

Jenny was only 8 1/2 when here family moved to Alta Lake.  She had attended school in Squamish, Kelowna, and North Vancouver, but at the time there was no school in Alta Lake.  She and her brother Jack were enrolled in correspondence courses, but learning by correspondence in the 1920s was frustrating to say the least.  After Lizzie married Thomas Neiland and had another son Tom Neiland, keeping Jenny and Jack at their studies became more of a struggle.  According to Jenny, however, her mother did ensure they all learned how to read and that became “the road to other things.”

Left to right: Jenny Jardine, Flossie the dog, Jack Jardine, Tom Neiland Jr. and Bob Jardine in Lizzie Neiland’s garden at 34 1/2 mile, about 1930.  Betts/Smith/Jardine Collection.

In her memoirs, Jenny said that, during her early life at Alta Lake, most employment in the valley was “cutting railway ties, making and shipping telephone poles, prospecting, trapping, and renting a few cabins to summer visitors.”  There was also some work at an iron ore operation and on the railway.  By the time she was 12, Jenny was working for her step-father out in the woods, driving horses, cutting poles and ties, and hauling and piling the lumber.

(L-R) Sue Hill, Kay Hill, Charlie Chandler, Wallace Betts holding daughter Louise, Charlie Lundstrom, and ‘Sporty’ the dog on Alta Lake docks, 1939. J Jardine Collection.

Jenny met Wallace Betts through her brother Tom, who had met Betts at one of the logging camps in the area.  After their marriage in 1937, Jenny and Wallace moved quite a few times, often in the Alta Lake area.  They lived for a time at Parkhurst, and at the Iron Ore Spur where Jenny remembered she learned to knit socks.  Their first two children, Louise and Sam, were born in Vancouver but spent time with their grandmother Lizzie at her house in what is now Function Junction.

The Jardine/Neiland children hauling logs to the portable sawmill at 34 1/2 mile with the aid of horses, 1926. From left to right: Jenny, Jack, Bob and Tom Jr.  Betts/Smith/Jardine Collection.

Jenny’s life at Alta Lake, like that of the rest of her family, was not easy.  She later wrote that as children, “We loved living at Alta Lake, but those [logging] outfits and NSF (non-sufficient funds) cheques and no schools were not what we needed.”  Jenny felt education was very important and, according to her daughter Louise, learning became “one of the most important activities of her life.”  She passed on this belief to her children, and was very proud that all four of her children graduated from universities.

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