Tag: Whistler Mountain

Binty was hereBinty was here

September 29, 2025 Whistler MuseumWhistler Museum 0 Comments

Operating from 1965 to 1992, the first gondola installed on Whistler Mountain was a hard working lift that brought skiers (and later snowboarders) from the valley base at today’s Creekside to the bottom of the Red Chair. Gondola cars from this lift can still be found today throughout the valley and beyond, including in the Whistler Museum. They often show signs of their years of use, from dents to scratches to added stickers. If you look closely at some of the gondola cars, you might even find a name or two scratched into the surface. One name that could be found on many of the cars over the years was Binty, also known as Vincent Massey.

The original Whistler Mountain gondola. Whistler Mountain Ski Corporation Collection

The Massey family began visiting in the early 1960s when Geoffrey Massey, the well known architect, became involved in the Garibaldi Olympic Development Association. He and his wife Ruth brought their four children, including Binty, up to ski regularly. Looking back at his childhood visits to Whistler Mountain, Binty recalled a low of snow, slow lifts, and long line ups. According to him, “It was such a cold ride up, it would take about 40 or 50 minutes to get up out of the valley to the Roundhouse because the lifts were so slow.” By the time they reached the Roundhouse, they would be so cold that they would go straight inside to warm up. Despite this, to Binty, Whistler was “a big deal, it was a big mountain.”

According to Hugh Smythe, who began working for Whistler Mountain soon after it opened in 1966, Binty and his “mischievous look” became well known to lift company employees, especially after his name started appearing on more and more gondola cars. As Hugh saw it, “his goal was to carve his name in the plastic of the gondola cars in every car.” Unfortunately, this made lift company president Franz Wilhelmsen “apoplectic” and one of Hugh’s assigned tasks was to try and catch Binty in the act.

Binty Massey in his Whistler pottery studio. Whistler Question Collection, 1991

Binty, who grew up in Horseshoe Bay, moved to Whistler full-time after finishing high school. Unfortunately for him, the winter of 1976/77 is best remembered by those who there as the year that Whistler Mountain closed for skiing for three weeks in January. Warm rain after the holidays worsened already marginal conditions and then the weather got cold and dry, which made for great ice skating but no skiing. After working construction in Whistler for a year, Binty decided to go to art school.

A few decades late, after Binty and his wife Cheryl and moved back to Whistler and started a family, his labeling of the gondola cars appeared again in what might seem like an unexpected setting: a fundraising event of the Myrtle Philip Community School (MPCS) Parent Advisory Council (PAC).

Hugh Smythe reenacts his days working for the lift company as a lineup of parents look on. Whistler Question Collection, 1992

The Amuse Cruises of the 1990s were held to raise money for the MPSC, which opened in its Lorimer Road location in September 1992. They were held at the Fairmont Chateau and featured skits put together by the parents from different classes. One such skit at the event held in November 1992 featured a recently-decommissioned gondola car and Hugh Smythe reenacting some of the tasks that came up during his early days working for Whistler Mountain, including attempts to stop Binty from adding his name to the lift.

While the gondola car included in the skit made it a bit more obvious (“Binty was here” was painted on in large letters), it’s likely that if any attendees had examined it closely, they might have found the familiar name scratched into a window at least twenty years before.

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The Lifty OlympicsThe Lifty Olympics

August 26, 2025 Whistler MuseumWhistler Museum 0 Comments

Thirteen years before Whistler and Vancouver hosted the Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games, Blackcomb Mountain began hosting a smaller, perhaps less prestigious, but likely no less competitive event called the Lifty Olympics.

The Lifty Olympics began in April 1997 as part of the second World Ski and Snowboard Festival (WSSF). In its first year, WSSF had featured 22 events over ten days, including the Couloir Ski Race Extreme, the Whistler Cup, and the WestBeach Classic, along with performances by bands such as Vancouver’s 54•40. For its second year, additional events were included such as the Norco Challenge (Norco factory riders competed to see who could go the fastest on their bike down Whistler Mountain’s Saddle) and the Backbone Enduro Vertical Challenge. While most WSSF events catered to those who skied or snowboarded on the mountains, the Lifty Olympics featured those who worked in mountain operations.

Lifties are an integral part of keeping the mountain running smoothly, especially when working with fixed grip lifts. Whistler Mountain Ski Corporation Collection

According to organizer Jim Tutsch, the Lifty Olympics was “specifically designed to test the wiles of local lifties” and “demonstrate the activities of a lift operations specialist in the course of their daily duties.” Teams from both Whistler and Blackcomb Mountains competed in four timed events. In one, they had to set up 36 maze gates in a standard pattern used to merge four lines of skiers down to one. Teams also had to transport garbage cans of snow up the mountain, perform a net drop rescue with a fireman’s net, and complete a full shut down procedure. Tutsch warned that these activities would be made a bit harder, such as by scattering rakes, shovels, ropes and gates around the bottom terminal that would need to be stacked when shutting down. The team that completed their duties with the fastest times won a keg of beer and year’s worth of bragging rights.

With space for six teams, all of the positions were reportedly filled within one day. Each team had four people, of which one member had to be female and one (though it is unclear if it could be the same one) had to be “an Australian or a reasonable facsimile.” A few days before the competition on April 7, Tutsch told the Question that staff members on both mountains were in training “polishing shovels, moving maze gates and counting down the days to the event.” This early enthusiasm for the Lifty Olympics had Tutsch thinking of expansion, whether to other mountain departments or to teams from other ski resorts.

A lifty needs to be prepared for anything, including a visit from a wizard. Blackcomb Mountain Collection, Greg Griffith, 1992

While the Lifty Olympics doesn’t appear to have spread to other departments, the Cascade Toboggan Ski Patrol Challenge joined the WSSF line up in 1999 and featured ski patrollers from across North America in five events such as the Dual GS Toboggan Challenge, Speed Packaging, and the Multiple Transceiver Search.

The Lifty Olympics at Blackcomb’s Base II continued as part of WSSF over the next few years, though it is not part of the WSSF line up these days. In 2000, Tutsch told the Question that the event was not just a competition, but also “a big thank you and formal recognition of the invaluable input of these unsung heroes.”

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Starting Up Whistler’s CourierStarting Up Whistler’s Courier

June 3, 2025 Whistler MuseumWhistler Museum 0 Comments

When Cherie Chaffey took part in the Great Snow Earth Water Race in 1979, she was not expecting it to lead (in a roundabout way) to starting her own business in Whistler.

The Great Snow Earth Water Race was a relay race founded by Bryan Walhovd that included skiing, cycling, canoeing, and running. Cherie was the cyclist for Ken Hunter’s “Nearly Normal Racing Team,” which meant she met the running skier at the bottom of Whistler Mountain and then had to cycle along the highway to the north end of Green Lake, where the baton was handed off. Unfortunately, when Cherie reached Emerald Estates she was hit by a car coming out of the neighbourhood. While she doesn’t remember much about the aftermath of the accident, in a recent interview she recalled waking up to see Chuck Blaylock standing over her and that the driver of the car was an off-duty ambulance driver, which meant that he was able to provide assistance before she was taken to Squamish Hospital. Instead of finishing the race, Cherie returned to Ontario to recuperate.

A cyclist races along the highway while traffic follows behind. According to Cherie, helmets became mandatory in the race the following year. Whistler Question Collection, 1979

Cherie had first moved out from Ontario three years earlier with a friend from school, Cathy Jewett. Despite the slow start to the 1976/77 season that year, the two got jobs with Garibaldi Lifts Ltd. working for Ron Johnson on the lifts. According to Cherie, on her first time up Whistler Mountain, she managed to make it to the top of the Red Chair where she asked the lifites where she could find the T-bars, where she was supposed to be working. They pointed her in the right direction and she asked, “Ok, how do you ski?” She was told, “Go straight until you fall, get up, and do it again.” Although she soon switched to working the gondola, she did get better at skiing with more practice.

Over the next few years, Cherie worked on various lifts and at different jobs for the lift company, though her favourite was that of lift supervisor during the Toni Sailer Summer Ski Camps. She would drive up to Midstation in an “old army truck” to start up the gondola and the Red Chair and was usually done her shift by about 2 o’clock, when it was time for windsurfing on Alta Lake. During the day, she and a small team would do jobs such as painting lifts or removing rocks from runs.

Just before Cherie returned from Ontario in the summer of 1979 following her recuperation, her father gave her money to buy a car as he didn’t want her riding her bike on the highway anymore. She bought a Honda Civic in Vancouver and, after thinking about what she wanted to do upon returning to Whistler, decided that she would start a courier service and Whistler Courier Service was born.

Cherie when she answered the Whistler Question’s Whistler’s Answers Question in 1983. Whistler Question Collection, 1983

On Friday, August 10, Cherie began offering delivery and pickup services in Vancouver, Squamish and Whistler three days a week. She charged customers $15 for a delivery to Vancouver (with an additional $2 for each additional stop) and $7 to Squamish (extra stops were only $1). According to her advertisement in the Whistler Question, there was “No job too big or small” and she offered to drop off bank deposits, mail, tools to be repaired, groceries and more. She even took dogs to the vet in Squamish and remembered all of the dogs being very well behaved in the car.

According to Cherie, as the Whistler Village was developed her jobs became more professional and she had more work delivering documents such as plans and drawings between Whistler and Vancouver. By spring of 1981, she was operating two runs five days a week and even hired another driver, Brian McPherson, and moved from her own landline into an office.

Cherie continued to run Whistler Courier until she was approached by Jeff Wuolle, the owner of Twin Peaks property management company, who offered to buy part of her company in exchange for part of his. After that, Cherie was no longer involved in the operations of the courier service as she began to learn more about property management and later moved away from Whistler.

You can learn more about the Great Snow Earth Water Race, which Cherie took part in, at our temporary exhibit now on display at the Whistler Museum through June 19.

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Moving Up to WhistlerMoving Up to Whistler

May 20, 2025 Whistler MuseumWhistler Museum 0 Comments

When we hear stories of people coming to the Whistler area and staying past a season it is not often that we hear of someone who first lived in the Whistler valley not because of the snow or the natural beauty, but because of the affordable housing.

In the early 1970s, when summers in the area were quiet and many people left town, Bert Melsness was working in heavy construction in the Squamish area. The company that he worked for was obligated to pay for accommodation for employees from outside of the area, either by paying for a hotel or by providing an allowance. Bert and another employee decided to use the allowance to rent a place together. They discovered that it would be cheaper for them to rent a house on Matterhorn Drive (in Alpine Meadows) for the summer than it would be to rent a house in Squamish.

Whistler Mountain’s grooming fleet in the 1980s. Whistler Mountain Ski Corporation Collection

Apart from the Toni Sailer Summer Ski Camp on Whistler Mountain, it was a quiet time in the area recreationally. Bert recalled that there were a few houses being built, but a lot of the activity was forestry related and concentrated around tow logging camps, one in Function Junction and another at Mons.

A few year later, Bert moved to Whistler permanently and took a job with Garibaldi Lifts Ltd. fixing and maintaining the lift company’s grooming equipment. Bert got his start as a “basic grease monkey” working on the delivery fleet for Woodward’s in Vancouver, learning as he worked. According to him, the truck shop’s foreman was an “ex-airforce type” who ensured that all scheduled maintenance was done correctly and as required, with no cutting of corners. He spent six years working on the groomers before switching to lift maintenance for a year. He was also part of the group from Whistler Mountain in 1980 that, along with a group from Blackcomb Mountain, provided some of the labour to install Whistler’s first northside lifts and Blackcomb’s first lifts. As well as working for the lift company, Bert worked for the contractors working on the Whistler Golf Course, the crews building the roads in Bayshores, Sabre and more.

Blasting work is carried out on lots for Bayshores

Like many Whistler residents, Bert moved around a bit before ending up in a cabin right at the south end of Alta Lake. At the time, BC Rail owned much of the land along Alta Lake Road and the railroad tacks and properties were leased from the rail company. According to Bert, the cabin that he lived in had been built by Norman Fairhurst, who held the lease from BC Rail. Living on the lake afforded Bert easy fishing access and a friendly relationship with the “railroad guys,” especially as he was just down the track from the Stationhouse. He became very familiar with the rail schedule, remembering six heavy trains running each day along with passenger service on Budd cars. When Disney was filming a Depression-era movie in the area, they used an old locomotive that they would park not far from his cabin. One day, he heard the sounds of a steam engine and went outside to discover the Royal Hudson switching cars on the nearby siding. In conversation with the engineer, he was told that driving the Royal Hudson from North Vancouver to Squamish at about 35 mph was “like putting a taxi cab sign on a Ferrari.” The locomotive, which had been designed to cruise at a much higher speed, could not get up to its full potential on the winding track.

The Royal Hudson heads south towards Vancouver on one of its first runs of the 1981 summer season. Whistler Question Collection

By the early 2000s, BC Rail was looking to develop some of the land that it owned in the Whistler area and in exchange had transferred ownership of its property on the lakeside of the tracks to the RMOW, including leases such as Bert’s. His lease was ended and he was offered first pick at one of the RMOW’s new developments. Looking back, Bert said that living on the lake did have one major drawback: if he hadn’t had that deal on the cabin he might have gotten into the real estate market much earlier.

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