Tag: Margaret Bellamy

Wartime by the LakeWartime by the Lake

July 8, 2025 Whistler Museum 0 Comments

Last year marked the 80th anniversary of D-Day, the Allied land invasion of Normandy which initiated the liberation of Europe from the Nazi regime. The Second World War managed to disrupt Alta Lake’s idyllic summers, and for one of its longtime families, June 6th, 1944 would prove to be especially memorable.

Margaret Bellamy (née Clarke) was born in 1946 and started journeying up to Alta Lake with her family a few weeks later. Her grandmother, Grace Woollard, had first arrived at Alta Lake along the Pemberton Trail in 1912 with her friend, Grace Archibald, and her brother, Ernie Archibald, who was working for the Pacific Great Eastern Railway.

In an oral history from 2012, Margaret recounted how her mother, Betty Clarke (née Woollard) and father, Douglas Clarke, spent summers at Alta Lake growing up. Their fathers were colleagues at the Shaughnessy Military Hospital, and the two families had become good friends. Betty was Alta Lake School’s second teacher, replacing Margaret Partridge in 1936. After Betty and Douglas’ marriage in 1941, Douglas departed for the war, and Betty decided to buy a cabin at the south end of Alta Lake, rather than stay in Vancouver. Wanting to be closer to her daughter and grandchild, Grace Woollard sold her cabin on the east side of the lake, and purchased a neighbouring cabin at the southern end.

Betty and her sister Eleanor along the tracks at Alta Lake. Lundstrom Collection

Prior to her father’s 33rd birthday on June 6th, 1944, soon to be cemented in history as D-Day, Margaret’s mother sensed something major was about to occur concerning the war. She knew that her husband had been stationed in the south of England for “months and months and months and months” and Vancouver newspapers had long discussed an impending invasion, but no one knew when or where this assault would take place. Although Margaret was not born until 1946, she shared her family’s memories of the day as they were later told to her.

The first Canadian soldiers landed on Juno Beach just before 10 pm Vancouver time on June 5th. The Germans reported the amphibious assault on Normandy at 9:37 pm Vancouver time, and Allied sources would later verify the accounts. As news of the invasion finally crackled through the radio, Betty had no indication as to whether her husband was involved in the battle.

While casualties and updates came through, Margaret described how her older sister Susanne, then a toddler, dropped her beautiful Cowichan sweater down the outhouse. With tears running down her face, Betty fished the soiled sweater out with a stick. She brought it down to the lake to rinse it out, all while frantically trying to listen to the radio. Very little information was coming through, and the short clips that were audible were followed by twenty minutes of maddening static.

“It was a bad day. And all this being my father’s birthday,” said Margaret. Thankfully, her father survived the war and would have many more birthdays, passing away in 1986 at the age of 74. His ashes were spread at Alta Lake.

Logan Roberts is the Summer Program Coordinator at the Whistler Museum through the Young Canada Works Program.

Generations of Alta LakeGenerations of Alta Lake

July 29, 2017 Whistler Museum 0 Comments

Though there are some scattered throughout the valley, not many houses in Whistler have been passed down through generations, and fewer can claim to have been occupied by five generations of the same family. The cabin of the Woollard/Clarke/Bellamy family, is one such home.

Grace Woollard and Grace Archibald in the Cheakamus Canyon on their way to Alta Lake, 1912.

Betty Woollard, later Betty Clarke, was the second teacher at the Alta Lake School, replacing Margaret Partridge in 1936. Betty’s mother, Grace Woollard, first came to Alta Lake along the Pemberton Trail in 1912 with Grace Archibald. Both nurses in Vancouver, the two Graces came to visit Ernie Archibald (who would later disappear into Alta Lake in 1938) and fell in love with the valley. After her marriage to Charles Woollard, a doctor, Grace Woollard returned to Alta Lake and the couple preempted a quarter section of land. Their two daughters, Betty and Eleanor, spent their summers at Alta Lake, along with the Clarkes, family friends of the Woollards who built a cabin on what is now Blueberry Hill.

Betty earned a combined honours in English and History at the University of British Columbia and then attended normal school to become a teacher. She was visiting her mother at Grace’s cabin in the valley when the search was on for a replacement for Margaret Partridge, the school’s first teacher who had previously been a waitress at Rainbow Lodge, and Betty got the job.

The Alta Lake School where Betty Clarke taught in the 1930s.

Betty Woollard taught at the one room schoolhouse for a couple of years. While at the school she, like Margaret Partridge before her, was devoted to the students and even went to great lengths to teach the The Sailors Hornpipe, a dance which imitates the life of a sailor and their duties aboard ship. As her daughter Margaret Bellamy recalled, Betty had to write out the directions for her students but found the only way she could do that was by doing the dance herself. She would do one step, write it down, do two steps, write down the new step, do three steps, write it down, and so on until she made it through the whole dance. It took Betty hours and she was completely exhausted.

Betty Woollard (left) and her sister Eleanor along the tracks at Alta Lake.

Both Betty and her sister married men they knew from Alta Lake. Eleanor married Mason Philip, the nephew of Alex Philip, and Betty married Douglas Clarke, one of the Clarke boys she had grown up knowing. While Doug was overseas during World War II Betty and her young daughter Susanne bought their own cabin at the south end of Alta Lake. Betty’s mother, Grace, sold her original cabin and moved to be closer to her daughter. So far five generations of Betty’s family have spent summers in that cabin, including her mother, her daughter, her grandchildren, and her great-grandchildren.