This isn’t just any old boat. This beautifully restored Peterborough cedar-strip canoe was first purchased by none other than Alex and Myrtle Philip in 1916 for the use of guests at their recently opened Rainbow Lodge. After the Philips retired and sold the lodge in 1948, Myrtle kept it as her personal canoe for the next 25 years.
Getting out on the water was a major attraction for early guests to Rainbow Lodge, and the Philips owned a variety of boats and canoes for that purpose.
A few years ago the near-antique was starting to show signs of its age, and so the canoe ended up with Dave Lanthier, an expert vintage canoe restorer and member of the Wooden Canoe Heritage Association.
The canoe, pre-restoration.
David did an amazing job restoring the canoe to its former beauty, and the Whistler Museum purchased the wooden work of art and repatriated it to its former home. The canoe’s purchase was made entirely thanks to the generous support of the British Columbia Provincial Government.
Post-restoration, the red cedar has an amazing warm glow.
A detail of the bow deck and internal ribbing, post-restoration.
There is perhaps nothing more quintessentially Canadian than the canoe, as the eminent Canadian historian Pierre Berton so eloquently reminded us. This canoe is a pretty cool example of a classic, early-1900s design, fully restored to its original glory. Knowing that this specific canoe was taking avid fishermen out on Alta Lake nearly a century ago, and has been on countless River of Golden Dreams tours since, its only right that it has returned to its original home.
Among the tens of thousands of historical photos that the Whistler Museum holds in our archives, I think Neal Carters’ are my favourites. Carter was one of the most prolific mountaineers on the BC Coast during the 1920s and 1930s, gaining several first ascents. He also managed to turn his climbing hobby into a career, working as a surveyor first on Hydro crews around Garibaldi Lake, and then playing a major role in creating the first official topographic map of Garibaldi Park in 1928.
The mountains immediately surrounding Whistler were of special interest to him. Not only did he personally map much of the area (original copies of his massive topo map are in the Vancouver City and BC Provincial Archives), he was also instrumental in convincing the Provincial Government to expand Garibaldi Park in 1928 to approximately its current boundaries, including the Spearhead Range and the Wedge groups of peaks.
His first excursion into our local mountains occurred in September 1923 when he, along with fellow Vancouver climber Charles Townsend, spent two weeks bagging first ascents in the region. Beyond the sheer joy of two weeks climbing in such sublime terrain, the two were also on the lookout for potential sites for future BC Mountaineering Club summer camps, which had been held almost exclusively in Black Tusk Meadows for the last decade.
Their first night’s camp on the flanks of Wedge. Tent pole technology has come a long way in the last 88 years.
Using Rainbow Lodge as their base (they gave Myrtle Philip copies of their photos from this trip, which is how the museum ended up with them) they first scrambled up Wedge Creek with a week’s worth of provisions. Townsend’s very matter-of-fact account printed in the BC Mountaineer belies their huge, gruelling days of bushwacking, navigating crevasse mazes, and scrambling up terribly steep and loose talus slopes in uncharted terrain.
The view south from Wedge to our familiar W-B backcountry: (l to r) Overlord, Pattison, Fissile, Trorey, Davidson, Castle Towers and Decker.
They managed to bag the first ascents of the twin giants of Wedge Mountain and Mount James Turner (whose summit was almost too small to build a cairn), while surveying and naming many of the surrounding peaks and glaciers, over seven days. Along the way they were treated to remarkably clear conditions, which, combined with Carter’s substantial technical skills as a photographer (crucial for accurate topographic surveys), produced some striking images of the surrounding landscape.
Returning back to Rainbow Lodge, they revelled in a massive dinner and comfortable night’s sleep in a bed, but were back at it early the next morning heading for the “largely unexplored” Spearhead Range. They first headed for Singing Pass-then known as “Avalanche Pass” and spent a night in the prospector’s cabin.
Impressive solitude near Whistler’s peak.
Getting radical near Mt. James Turner.
The rest of that week was spent climbing surrounding peaks such as Fissile (then known as Red Mountain), Overlord, and a further excursion for the first ascents of Mount Diavolo, which they named for their difficult experience on its steep and exposed north ridge.
This is just a small sample from more than fifty photos in our collection that Carter produced over the two-week dream trip. Most of them are beautiful in their own right, but are just as interesting as a unique perspective on a landscape that has become so familiar to us. Scanning through the images, you get a sense of Carter’s excitement and wonder as he peered out over vast expanse of completely undeveloped, largely unknown terrain.
Whistler prides itself on being a pretty dog-friendly community. Our community-run animal shelter is more than three decades old, and dogs even have their own dedicated section of beach at Rainbow Park. Canines have always been prominent citizens in this valley; one could even argue that they were more important during the early days of Alta Lake, when they helped with the essential tasks of hunting and shooing away bears, as well as warming hearts like only dogs can.
Dogs appear in tons of the photos in our archives, so much so that you start to feel like you know some of them personally. You find dogs out on the hunt, hiking high up in the mountains, chasing horses, playing around the lake…
One prominent pooch, a spaniel named Binkie, led an especially unique life.
Growing up on the idyllic shores of Alta Lake, from a young age Binkie led a particularly leisurely lifestyle. In her abundant spare time she developed the habit of standing on her hind legs like a person.
Binkie was clearly quite proud of her bipedalism, and she was always keen to show off for the camera.
Binkie became a minor celebrity thanks to her unique skills, even landing a holiday-card contract with Hallmark…
What started out as an attention-gaining stunt morphed into something much greater as Binkie began to recognize the meditative qualities of prolonged balancing on her hind legs.
Binkie’s devotion increased with time, and she soon came to prefer Rainbow Lodge’s quiet winters, when she could practice in peace. It became a common early-morning ritual to find Binkie in her favourite spot behind the lodge, having stood all through the night.
Binkie’s focus became the stuff of legends. As remarkable as it was, however, sometimes her dedicated practice interfered with the busy work of running a popular tourist resort. Look how unfazed Binkie was by this fuming-mad horse that clearly had places to be and things to do.
The photographic record gets sparser in Binkie’s later days, but clearly she continued to experiment with balance, meditation, and focus. Many local yoga teachers consider Binkie to be a guru of sorts, a pioneer practitioner of what is today one of Whistler’s most popular and fastest-growing activities.
Whistler’s history is full of visionaries such as Binkie. Uncovering such stories broadens our perspective on this seemingly young community, and opens our eyes to new possibilities. Binkie was truly ahead of her time, and her story can offer inspiration to us all.
[Just in case it wasn’t clear, we might have fabricated certain elements of this story. All of the photographs are actual, unedited images of Binkie from our archives. We promise that all the other stories on our blog are truthful.]
