Tag: Parkhurst

A Family BusinessA Family Business

February 4, 2025 Whistler MuseumWhistler Museum 0 Comments

Not all summer residents of Alta Lake came to the area for the fishing or a mountain holiday. When Everett Valleau moved his company, Valleau Logging Ltd., to the area in 1955, he came to log timber around Alta and Green Lakes.

Valleau Logging was a family business and over the years each of Everett’s sons (Bob, Eugene, Gerald, Howard, Laurence, Lindsay, and Ron), at least ten of his grandchildren, and three great-grandchildren all worked for the company in different capacities. The Valleaus operated from Parkhurst on Green Lake and later moved their logging camp to Mons. As skiing opened up in the area and development increased, the Valleaus formed a subsidiary company, Alta Lake Contractors Ltd., to provide excavation work, road building, and more. In 1965, they were hired by Garibaldi Lifts Ltd. to build the road from the valley to the midstation of Whistler Mountain while the logging side of the company removed the usable timber from some of the runs that were cut. The Valleaus and their crews also built roads and parking lots for the Cheakamus Inn (now Whistler Vale), the Highland Lodge, and the Alpine Villas development.

Long before the road was paved or the name of the building changed, the Valleau’s built the road up to the Cheakamus Inn. Whistler Question Collection, 1979

In 2023, the museum spoke with Karyn Smith, one of Everett’s granddaughters, who remembered coming to the area with her family each summer, though they lived on Vancouver Island throughout the rest of the year. She remembered Parkhurst as “a fun place to be” and also a busy place in the summer as it was a working camp with the mill, bunkhouses, and a dining hall, though each of Everett’s sons had their own cabin with their family. With so much family around, Karyn spent a lot of time with her cousins. The kids would often go swimming, though Karyn recalled that her grandfather was “the only adult I ever knew who would swim in Green Lake,” having grown up washing in the cold waters of Galway Bay in Ireland. They would also go on Sunday outings where they would walk down the railway tracks to go horseback riding at Buckhorn Ranch or to visit the Tapleys. Mr. Tapley (Myrtle Philip’s brother Phil) would collect their mail for them and they would have a ball game and eat the meal provided by Mrs. Tapley (Phil’s wife Doreen).

By the time they moved the logging camp to Mons, Karyn was old enough to start working as a “flunky” in the kitchen, peeling potatoes and other vegetables, fetching the meat from the walk-in freezer, doing the dishes, and keeping the coffee going. As Whistler Mountain developed more, Karyn got other jobs working at the Christiana Inn and the Highland Lodge.

Community members began Ice Stock Sliding on Alta Lake and moved to blacktop after the ice melted. Philip Collection

Throughout the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s, it was not uncommon for the Valleau name to pop up whenever there was a community project that needed support and an unexpected job that needed doing. In 1956, when a train crash led to three boxcars loaded with lumber jammed in place and blocking the line, the railway’s equipment couldn’t move the cars. The Valleaus used their logging machinery to pry out the cars and then drag them up the track and into the forest, where they are now a popular destination.

The Valleaus also offered office space in their administration building at Mons to serve as a post office after it moved out of Rainbow Lodge in 1966 and made their kitchen at Mons available to the Alta Lake Community Club to prepare fundraising dinners. When some residents of Whistler started up an Ice Stock Sliding Club during a cold but snowless winter, the Valleaus set aside an area of blacktop for them to continue playing throughout the year. In the early 1960s, when the Alta Lake District Ratepayers Association applied to lease acreage for a dump the Valleaus donated equipment and labour to excavate ditches and fill them in once full. They also provided equipment to help the Alta Lake Sports Club build a bridge over Fitzsimmons Creek when they were building Nordic ski trails around Lost Lake. Laurence Valleau was named Whistler’s Citizen of the Year in 1974.

Miss Valleau Logging Kristi King rides atop the Valleau float in the Pemberton parade. Whistler Question Collection, 1980

As Whistler became larger and more emphasis was placed on the resort development of the area, Laurence and his sons Rick and Dave moved Valleau Logging to Pemberton.

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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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Tales of Toad Hall: Beyond the PosterTales of Toad Hall: Beyond the Poster

April 25, 2023 Whistler MuseumWhistler Museum 3 Comments

In the spring of 1973, a group of residents (and some of their friends and relatives) who had been renting a property together took a photo as a memento before they moved out. Fifty years later, that photo is best known as the Toad Hall Poster and is widely recognized for its nudity and carefree spirit. While many people who come into the Whistler Museum know of the poster, we’ve heard a lot of different origin stories for the image and a range of names for those featured.

If you had arrived in the Whistler area in the late 1960s and asked where to find Toad Hall, you might have been directed to an entirely different building than the one featured in the Toad Hall Poster. The first Toad Hall in Whistler was a house built beside Nita Lake by Alf Gebhart in the 1950s. Alf and his wife Bessie moved their family to Alta Lake in 1936, when Alf purchased a sawmill and lumber camp. After operating the mill for some years, Alf built a house where he and Bessie lived until the closure of the their sawmill. The house was then occupied by their son Howard and his wife Betty while Howard was working for the railway. When they left the valley as well, the house was sold to Charles Hillman, a teacher living in Vancouver.

The Gebhart/Hillman/Toad Hall house on Nita Lake. George Benjamin Collection.

Hillman began renting out his house soon after lifts opened on Whistler Mountain in 1966 and it was some of his tenants who gave it the name of Toad Hall. Tenants came and went over the next few seasons and by the time Hillman decided that he wanted to start using his house as a ski cabin in would appear that none of the original tenants he had rented to were left. Those who were living there were reportedly amicably evicted and the Toad Hall name moved to a different property.

Before it became known as Toad Hall, that property operated as the Soo Valley Logging Camp. The camp, which included a collection of small cabins, was located at the north end of Green Lake, across the lake from the Parkhurst mill site. The logging camp can be seen in the background of some of the photographs taken by the Clausen family, who lived at Parkhurst in the 1950s. By the 1970s, however, the mill at Parkhurst was long closed and the Soo Valley Logging Camp no longer housed loggers.

If you look closely, the red roofs on the other side of Green Lake from Birthe and Ron Clausen are some of the buildings of the Soo Valley Logging Camp. Clausen Collection.

In the early 1970s, the Soo Valley property housed skiers looking for affordable housing near Whistler Mountain. The entirety of the property was reportedly rented for $75/month (adjusted for inflation, that would be just over $500/month today), which could be quite reasonable when divided amongst enough residents. By 1973, this second Toad Hall was a popular place to find a party or a bed. Unfortunately, however, for those who found a home there, the buildings were scheduled to be demolished that summer and their days at Toad Hall were numbered. The end of Toad Hall was marked by the creation of the Toad Hall Poster.

While we know some of the stories behind Whistler’s Toad Halls, there are a a lot of things we don’t know. How did two different properties on two different lakes come to be named after the home of Mr. Toad from Wind in the Willows? In a time long before there were dedicated Facebook groups for housing in Whistler, how did people hear about and find Toad Hall from across the country?

The building best known from the Toad Hall Poster. George Benjamin Collection.

We’re looking forward to finding out more about Toad Hall from a few former residents on Wednesday, April 26 (tomorrow evening!), when we’ll be joined by John Hetherington, Terry “Toulouse” Spence, and Paul Mathews at the Whistler Museum for our next Speaker Series. Tickets for the event are, however, sold out. Find out more here.

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An Oasis in the BushesAn Oasis in the Bushes

November 30, 2021 Whistler MuseumWhistler Museum 0 Comments

A couple of weeks ago (Wednesday, November 17), the Whistler Museum opened Parkhurst: Logging Community to Ghost Town, a temporary exhibition about the Parkhurst Mill site. Though the Parkhurst Mill (or Northern Mills, as it was later called) closed in 1956, the site continued to be inhabited and cared for by various people squatting on the privately owned land into the 1990s.

While preparing for this exhibit, we were able to speak with one of the last (as far as we know) full-time residents of Parkhurst. Eric (also known to some as the Sheriff of Parkhurst) lived at Parkhurst from 1995 to July 1996. He first came to Whistler in 1989 and lived in various small cabins before hearing that Parkhurst had become available. He and a friend went over to talk to the previous occupant, who is believed to have lived there for twelve years, and look around the area. At that time, a two-bedroom house and a smaller cabin down the road were still habitable and the pair decided to move in. A few things needed a little bit of fixing up and the structures had no power, but there was an outhouse, gravity-fed running water, a woodshed, and a large garden. Eric and his friend invested a lot of time into the garden by keeping it up, adding a moss garden, collecting wrought iron and decorative ornaments, and making it “a little bit showy for people that were mountain biking in there.” The garden was meant to be shared with those who came by the area.

Part of the buildings and garden that were still present in 1999. Photo courtesy of Jennifer Jackson.

This garden is also part of a bit of a mystery at the museum. In 2007, guestbooks from the Parkhurst garden ranging from 1995 to 1999 were mailed to the Whistler Public Library and then given to the museum to add to our archives in 2016. We don’t have any information about who sent the books to the library, who removed them from Parkhurst, or where they were kept at the garden. (If you have more information about the books, please let us know.)

Along with messages, visitors would leave drawings in the guestbooks, such as this one left in 1998.

Though some of the earlier entries are addressed to Eric, most of the entries in the books are addressed to a mysterious caretaker named “John.” Friends left messages to let John or Eric know they had been by to water the garden or take out some garbage, and two former Parkhurst residents from the 1970s wrote that they had stopped by. Anyone was welcome to write in the books and many people who hiked, biked, or paddled over to Parkhurst recorded their impressions. In July 1995, a group of Swedish physicists came across the garden and left a note to say hello and, in 1997, a hiker asked how John put up with all the mosquitoes. Occasionally, John would respond, such as when Rachel left gifts including a candle and picture for his walls.

The overarching message through the entries is gratitude for what one person described as a “nice oasis in the bushes.” The garden meant something different to each visitor but was appreciated as a peaceful, beautiful space open to all. In 1996, Christine wrote of the garden, “It has been a haven for me ever since I discovered it,” a sentiment that was expressed by many others as well.

As far as we know, this was the only wedding held in the Parkhurst garden area. Photo courtesy of Jennifer Jackson.

In September 1999, a wedding was held in the garden and gazebo when Jen and Rob paddled 75 guests over for their ceremony. By that time, it appears no one was maintaining the garden full-time and the pair did some work to the area before their wedding took place. Today, there are few traces of the garden left and the surrounding buildings have become more dilapidated.

Parkhurst: Logging Camp to Ghost Town will run through January 17, 2022 at the Whistler Museum. If you have a story about the Parkhurst area you would like to share, please let us know!

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