We’re excited to announce that with the reopening of Gateway Loop the Valley of Dreams Walking Tours will now meet at our regular location outside of the Visitor Information Centre!
Walking tours begin every day at 1 pm and run for about an hour. All tours, as well as entry to the Whistler Museum, are by donation. Whether you’re visiting, new to the valley or a seasoned local, you’re sure to discover something new about Whistler’s history.
Ever found yourself lost in Whistler village? That unique flow of Whistler village was actually one man’s specific intention! This tour will help you can learn more about him and many others who have helped to shape Whistler as it is today. As we wander through Whistler village you’ll uncover the pioneer history, tales behind the mountain development, and hear Whistler’s story about the 2010 Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games.
The tour is approximately one hour long, and is for all ages, young and old. Each tour is led by a long-time local, each with their own personal knowledge of Whistler’s story to add. Whether you’re visiting, here to work for the season, or a long-time local we guarantee you’ll be sure to learn something new. Do you know why Whistler and Blackcomb mountain are named as they are? Or when the first Olympic bid was placed? This is your chance to find out the answers to these questions, and so many more!
Valley of Dreams Walking Tours occur every day in at 1pm in June, July, and August. Meeting at Armchair Books, the top of the steps at the village entrance, these daily tours are offered by donation. We are more than happy to provide private tours outside of these times or for groups. Simply contact the museum to book a private tour, preferably at least two weeks in advance. With sufficient notice we can also customize content and routes—to include public art and architecture, for example—to meet your group’s specific interests and needs.
For all tour-related inquiries please call the Whistler Museum at (604) 932-2019, 0r visit us behind the library.
The history of Whistler’s waste disposal is not often told, though some parts of it have become widely known. Most people have been told about how the Village used to be a dump, but how many know that the first garbage collectors were nor Carney’s Waste Systems but the Alta Lake Sons of Tipplers Society?
Before Whistler was Whistler and the valley was still known as Alta Lake, there was no centralized waste disposal. Lodges in the area made their own dumps and homeowners were responsible for disposing of their own waste, which often meant burning anything that could be burned. Recycling as we think of it today was yet to be introduced to the valley, though anything that could be reused often was.
This illustration accompanied Bill Bailiff’s article on black bears in the Community Weekly Sunset in July, 1958.
At the time, the relation between garbage and bears becoming aggressive had already been recognized. Bill Bailiff, president of the Alta Lake Community Club, wrote a series of articles for their newsletter on the local wildlife and had this to say about bears:
When encouraged it loses its fear of man and comes in close to buildings. If [a bear] scents anything edible it will use its powerful claws to rip and tear into anything and screening on a meat safe goes like so much tissue paper, so don’t encourage them around if you don’t want trouble.
The Whistler valley did not have a central dumping location until the 1960s. The Alta Lake Ratepayers Association (ALRA) applied to lease acreage at the base of Whistler Mountain where the Village stands today. Equipment and labour to dig ditches and cover said ditches once full were donated by the Valleau Logging Company (the same company that moved the train wreck to where it now lies) and families living at Alta Lake were each assigned a week to keep the area tidy, mostly by raking garbage that had been removed by bears back into the ditches. Clearly, the bears were regular visitors.
Bears at the original dump site, now Whistler Village.
The growth of skiing at Whistler brought large numbers of visitors to the area who often left the garbage they produced lying at the train stations when they departed. The ALRA placed oil drums at the stations in an attempt to contain the mess. The oil drums were purchased and painted green using left over tip money from Rainbow Saturday nights and so the barrels were given the label ALSOTS (Alta Lake Sons of Tipplers Society) to celebrate their origins.
Despite the efforts of the ALRA, the garbage dump did not always run smoothly. In a notice to the community, the ALRA noted that garbage was being found around instead of in the trenches and in the fire prevention water barrels, the signs that read “Dump in Trench Only” were quickly disappearing and, despite the dump being a “No Shooting” area, bullet holes rendered the water barrels useless in case of fire. More disturbingly, some people seemed to be going to the dump to shot the bears that frequented the area as trophies.
From the Whistler Question, 1982: Fantastic Voyage take a trip into their own special world of choreography at Stumps. Stumps, the nightclub located in the Delta Mountain Inn, was named for some of the natural debris found when excavating the old landfill site in preparation of village construction.
When construction of Whistler Village began in 1977 the garbage dump was moved to Cheakamus. In 2005, this landfill closed and Whistler’s waste management moved to its current location in the Callaghan Valley when construction began on the Olympic athletes’ village. Carney’s now operates two recycling centre in Whistler and a compost facility in the Callaghan. To learn about how Whistler tries to reduce human-bear conflict and keep our garbage away from bears, visit the Get Bear Smart Society.
As Beck recalls, though he had a lot of support and leeway in crafting an initial design true to his personal vision, getting it built was a different story.
Probably the biggest [challenge] was that the various designers with their projects, the architects, were used to doing stand-alone buildings… The requirement that they subordinate their individuality to the totality of the Village was really hard for many to comprehend. We’d set it up, and that’s why we required models. We wanted to see how the models would fit together. We’d get one model, stick it by another, you’d see it didn’t match. We’d talk with them and say, “Can’t you make your roof form fit, can’t you make this happen?” We lost all of those battles.
My first reaction when they were built was to walk around I got probably 40 or 50 slides of mistakes. So I took pictures of all these things that didn’t quite fit. A couple of years later I did the same thing and said, “Well those are really pretty nice.” It was almost the mistakes of not fitting that became human. It was more real and more human because of the imperfections rather than controlled perfection. It was interesting. I had to flip my mind around and say, “Oh, that’s kind of neat.” That really looks like [several] people did it instead of being totally controlled. But that was the big one. Their understanding that they were subordinate to the Village totality was hard for most designers to comprehend.
And so in his typically philosophical manner, Beck learned that relinquishing some control could actually enhance his vision.
However, not all the unplanned changes pleased him. One notable concern he continues to raise is the impact of some of the larger buildings in the village:
I have not been consulted on any of those. I’ve been consulted on most new things in the Village, revisions within the Village… The problem with the big buildings, when they become vertical, they lose the relationship with the pedestrian level.
Independent-minded builders and excess verticality weren’t the only unforeseen challenges to attaining Beck’s vision. In late 1981, as the village was mid-construction, a massive recession brought much of the work in progress to a halt. Though the provincial government bailed out the village construction, the building environment changed substantially. As Beck recalls,
It is interesting ‘cause it was almost the opposite to the question on over-planning… The controls were eased thinking that by golly if someone can come in and build something, go right ahead. Don’t worry so much about the regulations. So as dearly as I love Al [Raine] and Nancy [Greene], I think that the roof form on their building [Nancy Greene Lodge] was absolutely wrong. And I think it was at that point the Carleton Lodge was built. And I think that violated one of the early premises that that was the town living room. In early plans it was a two-story building, low in profile, so that when you came up the street you could see the mountains. Instead it became a big old block at the end of the street. So the whole west side of Village Stroll I thought was pretty badly compromised by that period of time.
Still, Beck is very satisfied with the final outcome. We’ll conclude with some of Beck’s favourite aspects of the village, as recounted two decades after its initial construction:
Probably the thing that’s most consistent actually is the spatial framework, the pedestrian framework of the Village has really survived. It was organized around views, so as walk at the end of the place, you see a mountain. So the structure of the Village really grew out of that view. That has remained and I think that’s been the thing that’s made it really work very well.
I think Village Square is superb. The scale is right, the life is right, it really works. From there going back, Skier’s Approach to Village Commons, I think that’s probably one of the nicest sections in terms of scale… So I keep pointing back to that one section, saying that’s really what the objective was. I think Village Square is a magical place, it really works well.
