Tag: Squamish

Questionable UFOsQuestionable UFOs

April 4, 2023 Whistler MuseumWhistler Museum 0 Comments

When Paul and Jane Burrows began printing the Whistler Question in their Alpine Meadows home in 1976, they created an incredible resource for researching happenings in Whistler. The Question reported on all sorts of stories, which means that you never know what you’ll come across. Recently, while looking into a story about a strata that passed a bylaw banning owners from having tourists or employees as tenants, one headline from September 5, 1996 jumped out: “UFO hotline gets report of strange sighting in Whistler.” A few days later, while confirming the origins of a photograph from 1986, we came across another headline referring to UFOs in the issue from July 10.

It seems that in June 1986 Squamish RCMP had a higher than usual number of reported sightings of unknown objects in the sky around the area. It began with a report of what appeared to be meteor crashing behind Blackcomb Mountain on the night of Thursday, June 12. Two men were driving on Highway 99 when they saw “a small, spherical fireball” moving quickly to the northeast before crashing into the ground. According to the men, the object “lit up the trees like the northern lights” then flickered out after a few seconds. While the incident was reported to the RCMP and then the Squamish Forest Service office and the Rescue Coordination Centre on Vancouver Island according to procedure, there were no follow up explanations published.

Attaching a few lights to this paraglider would probably have created a mystery for those watching from the valley below. George Benjamin Collection.

Unlike the sighting on June 12, Squamish RCMP were able to give explanations for sightings reported later in the month. On June 27 a number of Squamish residents reported an amber light rising about the Stawamus Chief. One resident, however, was able to get a good view of the light using binoculars and described it as “a parachute device with three highway emergency flares attached.” A similar incident occurred a couple of days later over Garibaldi Highlands. Squamish RCMP concluded that both were probably pranks.

The last incident brought to the attention of Squamish RCMP in June 1986 came when a person walked into the detachment and described a UFO in the sky over Squamish. This one was cleared up quickly according to Sgt. Lee Joubert, who reported that “We were directed to the object which was obviously a star.”

The RCMP were not the first stop for people who saw something strange in the sky by 1996; that summer, a BC UFO hotline was set up and people could call a number in Vancouver to report any mysterious sighting. This is what a Whistler resident named Haley did when she, her friend Simon and her roommates saw strange lights in the eastern sky. At least two other people also witnessed the lights and called the hotline to report them. At the time it was unusual for the hotline to get calls from outside of the Lower Mainland and hotline coordinator David Pengilly was surprised to receive multiple calls from Whistler in one night. He thought at first that they might be looking at Venus but was told that they could see Venus in the background of the light. According to Haley, the light would “hover for a while and then go zipping around, spiraling from side to side” and “was so bright it was strobing.” She and her friend watched it for quite a while and then got her roommates up to see it as well. Like the supposed meteor in 1986, there was no follow up story to explain this sighting.

We often get questions about various aspects of Whistler at the museum and, depending on the type of question, the Question can be a good place to start to find answers. Because of the scope of the paper, however, you never know what other information you’ll find along the way.

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Remembering Trips to Alta LakeRemembering Trips to Alta Lake

November 16, 2021 Whistler MuseumWhistler Museum 0 Comments

When the museum conducts oral history interviews, one of the questions asked is how the interviewee first came to the Whistler area. This question is often interpreted in one of two ways, with answers as varied as the individuals. Some interpret it as why they visited or moved to the area, while others answer more literally (one memorable answer was simply “car”). In a 2012 conversation with Kenneth Farley, he provided answers for both variations, including a description of traveling from Vancouver to Alta Lake in the 1940s, featuring at least three different means of transportation.

Kenneth’s parents, Frank and Hilda Farley, first visited Alta Lake in 1943 and rented a cabin at Jordan’s Lodge on Nita Lake for a week in the summer. Frank was a keen fly-fisherman and so the couple decided to buy property along the railroad tracks by Alta Lake from a Mr. Noble, who they knew from their home in Vancouver’s Kerrisdale neighbourhood. According to Kenneth, he came to Alta Lake “to see what it was all about” after his parents told him they had already bought the property. This was the first of many visits for Kenneth and his family.

The Farleys’ trips began in Kerrisdale on 49th Ave. From there they would walk eight blocks down to 41st, where the family caught the number 7 streetcar, which would take them downtown. The next step was to walk across the overpass above the fright yards to the waterfront, where the Union Steamship would be waiting.

Grace Woollard on a Union Steamship on the way up to Squamish, a bit earlier than the Farley family’s trips. Clarke Collection.

The trip aboard the Union Steamship was hardly an express route. After sailing through the Narrows, the ship stopped at most of the small colonial settlements along the Howe Sound, including Woodfibre and Britannia, before arriving in Squamish. As Kenneth recalled, it was often so windy in Squamish that the journey was made even longer as the captain faced the challenge of docking. Upon arrival in Squamish, Kenneth recalled navigating around “great big puddles full of water” to the Chinese restaurant, where they would eat apple pie while waiting for the train to be loaded with its freight. Eventually, the engineer would whistle and everyone would run to board the train before it went “rambling off in a cloud of dust and smoke.”

According to Kenneth, the cars used by the Pacific Great Eastern Railway were “real antique,” with sliding windows, a potbelly stove for warmth, and oil lamps suspended from the ceiling. The views along the route, however, made up for any discomfort on the train. Passengers could even disembark at Brandywine Falls to walk over and take a look at the Falls before continuing north.

The view from the train through the Cheakamus Canyon. Traveling to Alta Lake by train provided views that the highway could not. Clarke Collection.

The train usually reached the Alta Lake Station around 5:30pm and the Farleys would leave their baggage there while they walked to their cabin. When making the first trip of the spring, they often had to fix the chimney (which the snow had pushed over) and bail out the skiff made of rough planks. Once the skiff was emptied, someone would have to row back to the station to collect the baggage and then row back, finally completing the journey.

Kenneth remembered one memorable occasion traveling with his wife Shirley and sons Patrick and Greg when an additional stage was added to the journey. As he recalled, “It was raining, rain was slashing against the windows, and the train stopped in the middle of nowhere. And people started to get out of the train and go across the ditch on a 2×12 plank and the conductor was helping them across. And I thought, ‘Gee, this must be some new settlement or something or other,’ and then he came and said, ‘It’s your turn.'” There had been a derailment ahead and the passengers were taken to dump trucks with makeshift benches that took them up rough logging roads to a point further along the railway. There they boarded what Kenneth described as “vintage rolling stock,” with him and his family riding the caboose at the end.

During the Farleys’ early trips, the “road” to Alta Lake wasn’t smooth sailing.. MacLaurin Collection.

The Farley family began driving to Alta Lake after a road was constructed from Vancouver in the 1960s, though the journey could still be eventful. Kenneth Farley’s recollections of earlier trips, however, provide useful information about how visitors used to travel.

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The Beginnings of the Pacific Great Eastern RailwayThe Beginnings of the Pacific Great Eastern Railway

November 19, 2019 Whistler MuseumWhistler Museum 0 Comments

If you’ve ever been out hiking near the train tracks on the western side of Whistler, you know how difficult the terrain can be.  The cliffs, creeks, and rivers running through the valley make for beautiful scenery and photographs, but they can make travel very difficult.  As a result, building a railway from coastal British Columbia to the Interior was an expensive, difficult venture, and it took a long time to build the rail line that exists today.

The first company that was meant to build a railway from coastal BC to the BC Interior was incorporated in 1891, but not much came of it.  Once the Howe Sound and Northern Railway Company (HSN) was incorporated in 1907, however, things really started moving in the right direction.  Surveys from Squamish through the Cheakamus Canyon were conducted in secret by the Cleveland and Cameron engineering firm, and the demand for a railway into the BC Interior was very high.  When a feasibility report was published by the HSN Railway Company in 1909, it was the talk of the town, making headlines in the Daily Province newspaper.  The feasibility report announced that the construction of a railway through the Cheakamus Canyon was possible, and the first rails were laid that very same year.

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

The HSN Railway was taken over by the Foley, Welch, and Stewart Firm in 1912.  They renamed the company the Pacific Great Eastern Railway (PGE), and within a year of the new company’s incorporation, track was being laid on two separate sections of the route.  The PGE Squamish Line finally reached Pemberton in October of 1914.  The new railway brought many opportunities for people in the Whistler valley, especially Alex and Myrtle Philip.  Their Rainbow Lodge opened the same year the railway reached Pemberton, and they received a lot of encouragement from the PGE workers to host fishing tours.  The first tours were held in May of 1915, and fishermen, with rods and tackle in hand, arrived by train to stay at Rainbow Lodge.

The Rainbow Lodge station could be a bustling place when a train came in, especially the Sunday excursion train. Philip Collection.

Expansion of the rail line continued, but not without difficulty.  The PGE line from Squamish reached as far as Lillooet, but going further was a financial problem.  The BC Provincial Government stepped in, and the PGE received a loan of $10 million ($200 million adjusted for inflation today) in order to continue extending the rail line in 1916.  The money didn’t help much, through, and in 1918 the PGE was forced to default on the loan.  The Provincial Government took over the PGE Railway Company, but, again, building a railway was very expensive.  The Provincial Government even listed the PGE for public sale in 1924, but there were not takers.

A southbound PGE train pulling in to Rainbow Lodge. J Jardine Collection

Despite everything, the railway pushed on.  The Provincial Government undertook a $10 million redevelopment program for the PGE in 1949 (over $110 million today).  It took a lot of work, a lot of money, and a lot of time, but the PGE did eventually reach its destination.  Finally, after over 50 years of planning and development, the PGE Railway reached Prince George on September 11, 1952.

If you would like to learn more about the influence the PGE had on Whistler, stay tuned for future articles!

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A Wet End to August, 1991A Wet End to August, 1991

September 10, 2019 Whistler MuseumWhistler Museum 0 Comments

Recently, we were tasked with finding more information about a flood that washed out and damaged several bridges over Fitzsimmons Creek in the 1990s.  As it turned out, the flooding had happened exactly 28 years before we looked into it, with the bulk of information found in the September 5, 1991 edition of The Whistler Question.

The first mention of an unusually wet end to August appeared in the previous week’s editorial section, where editor Bob Barnett opened a piece on government money granted in the area with the thought, “The old adage it never rains, it pours, has applied to the weather this week, but also to government handouts.”  Between August 16 and 31, 155 mm of rain were reported to have fallen in Whistler, with the bulk of the rain falling between August 29 and 30.  The average rainfall for the entire month of August was historically under 50 mm; this unusually large quantity of water caused destruction throughout the Sea to Sky corridor.

An excavator removes rock and gravel carried down Fitzsimmons Creek during Labour Day weekend’s floods. Whistler Question Collection, 1991

During the five days of intense rain, water levels at the Pemberton Airport and the Golf and Country Club were recorded at over two metres and BC Rail recorded at least twelve places between Britannia Beach and Lillooet where the crushed rock that supported the rails was washed away, leaving sections suspended over the ground.

In Britannia Beach severe flooding caused Britannia Creek to change course through the lower townsite and the highway around Squamish was blocked for 36 hours.  According to the Ministry of Forests, three quarters of the forest service roads in the Squamish Forest District were closed from washouts, flooding or slides, with multiple bridges destroyed.  North of Pemberton, some residents around Skookumchuck were evacuated to Pemberton by helicopter.

Within the Pemberton Valley, a Friday afternoon community effort to shore p a dike behind the Van Loon property attempted to mitigate the damage caused by the flood.  Approximately 100 people were reported to have come out to fill sandbags.  Their success was limited as the dike was breached a few kilometres north of their work, flooding fields and homes and ruining potato crops.

An aerial view of the flood at the airport. Whistler Question Collection, 1991

Compared to other areas of the Sea to Sky, the flooding would appear to have caused relatively little destruction in Whistler, mainly due to the community effort to keep Fitzsimmons Creek in its channel.

Through the evening of Thursday and Friday, local contractors, excavators and heavy equipment crews worked to shore up the banks of Fitzsimmons Creek and keep the waters out of the village and White Gold.  According to Tony Evans, public safety director, “If we hadn’t had that we could have made Britannia Beach look like a walk in the park.”

The footbridge over Fitzsimmons Creek, 1991. Photo courtesy of Jan Jansen

As it was, the high waters and debris in the creek took out two supports of the Nancy Greene Drive bridge, partially washed out two footbridges linking the village and benchlands, and destroyed Fitzsimmons Creek Park.  The flooding also damaged sewer pipes and interrupted water supplies to White Gold.

At this time 28 years ago, Whistler and the surrounding communities were still in the midst of their clean up efforts as the water receded.  It would take weeks to clear debris, assess damages, rebuild bridges, and construct measures to prevent future flooding, such as deepening Fitzsimmons Creek.  Some of these measures can still be seen while walking across Fitzsimmons Creek today.

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