Tag: Lizzie Neiland

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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A Variety of Whistler CooksA Variety of Whistler Cooks

July 14, 2020 Whistler MuseumWhistler Museum 0 Comments

Over the past few weeks, while taking some time to prepare the museum to reopen for the summer (yes, we’re open!), we’ve been continuing our perusal of Whistler Recipes, the cookbook put out by the Whistler Museum & Archives Society as a fundraiser in July 1997.  The book brought together recipes from past and (then) present Whistler and Alta lake residents and, by looking into the stories behind the names attached to each recipe, it doesn’t take long to realize just how quickly the area has changed.

Lizzie Neiland and her children (Jenny, Jack & Bob Jardine) came to Alta Lake with Tom Neiland in 1921 and lived in a house on Alpha Lake, where Tom started his own logging business.  In 1923 the family moved into an old cabin at 34 1/2 Mile (an area today better known as Function Junction) where they would live for the next two decades.  From photos of the “Neiland Jardine Ranch,” we can tell that the Neiland family had an impressive garden and even kept chickens and, at times, other livestock.  This was not uncommon for the time, when many households grew their own produce, made their own preserves, and even raised their own livestock.

Jardine-Neiland property at 34 1/2 mile, today’s Function Junction

Whistler Recipes was dedicated to the early residents of Alta Lake “who cooked and baked under challenging conditions.”  This would have included Lizzie Neiland, who kept her family fed at a time when power and running water were not easily come by in the valley, groceries were ordered from Vancouver and delivered by train, and challenging economic conditions sometimes led to the shooting of a “government cow” (deer poached out of season).

There is one recipe in Whistler Recipes attributed to Lizzie Neiland, for “Barney Google Cake.”  Though we can’t find much information on the cake, Barney Google was a character in a daily strip first published in 1919, first called Take Barney Google, F’rinstance, and today known as Barney Google and Snuffy Smith.

Formal portrait of Thomas and Lizzie Neiland taken in the 1940s

Also included in the book was a recipe for “Warm Chicken Spinach Salad” from Chef Bernard Casavant, who spent his time in Whistler cooking in a kitchen very different form the one Lizzie Neiland would have had.

Chef Bernard grew up on Vancouver Island and knew before he left school that he was going to be a chef.  He became one of the first chefs from BC to earn the highest qualification of Certified Chef de Cuisine and was the first West Coast born and trained chef to represent Canada in the Bocuse d’Or Competition, France.  He moved to Whistler in 1989 to become the executive chef at the newly opened Chateau Whistler Resort.

Chef Bernard Casavant, one of Canada’s most noted culinary maestros. Whistler Question Collection, 1994.

Chef Bernard is considered to have played an important role in turning Whistler into a culinary destination.  After eight years at the Chateau he left to open his own restaurant, Chef Bernard’s Cafe, in the Upper Village and was voted Best Chef in Pique Newsmagazine’s Best of Whistler for multiple years.  Part of what made Chef Bernard (or “Cheffie” as one article referred to him) so popular was his support for the local farming community and belief in using fresh and local ingredients (in 1993 he was one of the founders of the Whistler Farmers’ Market), and his involvement in the community (he was also the founding chef of Whistler Search and Rescue’s Wine’d Up fundraiser).  He and his wife Bonnie moved to the Okanagan in 2006.

By the time Chef Bernard moved to the area it would have been very different from the Alta Lake Lizzie Neiland first came to almost seventy years earlier, but we love that the recipes of early Alta Lake residents are included alongside those of renowned chefs, all of whom cooked in the same valley.

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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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Alta Lake Community ClubAlta Lake Community Club

September 20, 2014 Whistler MuseumWhistler Museum 0 Comments

The Alta Lake Community Club’s (ALCC) first meetings were held at the Rainbow Lodge store in 1926. In order to join the club each member had to pay $1. This, however was not where the story began for the ALCC.

In 1923, Grace Archibald thought that because there were a few regular summer visitors it would be a good idea to form a social club in the valley. As well as the regular summer visitors, there were also a number of permanent settlers such as Lizzie Jardine-Neiland and Flo Williamson. One afternoon these women met at Rainbow Lodge and planned a picnic. This picnic spawned the ALCC.

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First Alta Lake Community Club picnic on the point at Rainbow. “Boy in front: Lawrence Lineham; Dorrie Lineham; Mrs Lineham; Mrs Brown; Mr Brown; Ed Droll; girl in back: Dolly Archibald; Bill McDermot; Ernest Archibald; hat: Grace Archibald; Bert Harrop; Harry Horstman holds the coffee pot; End of plank: section foreman; girl – Sister Jean.”

The ALCC became the consolidating force in the Alta Lake area. This community connection was enhanced with the newsletter called the “Alta Lake Community Reminder” when it started in 1958. Later the name of the newsletter changed to the “Community Weekly Sunset” (Feb 1958-april 1959) and “Alta Lake Echo” (April 1959- June 1961). This newsletter ran from January 15th, 1958 until June 7th, 1961 when it was announced that the newsletter would no longer continue because the newly named Editor, Cruickshank, had left town.

Over the years the ALCC planned many community activities and social gatherings such as picnics, meetings, card nights, fund raising concerts, potlucks, film screenings, and parties, as well as special events for children at the school. The club even arranged for books to be brought to the Alta Lake area on the PGE through a travelling library program.

ALCC003
Clipping from the Whistler Question Feb. 5, 1981.

In 1933, after almost seven years of no meetings, the ALCC gathered at Myrtle and Alex Philip’s home to decide how it was they were going to spend the $207.40 the club had accumulated over the years. It was decided that this money would go toward building a community hall that the school could use when it needed. Throughout the summer of 1933 in order to help fundraise more money for the community hall the ALCC held weekly dances. The first meeting in the new building was held by the ALCC on October 28th, 1933.

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Clipping from the Whistler Question. Precise date unknown, sometime in the 1980s.
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