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Feature - Wedding pioneers of Whistler

With the 2003 spring wedding season upon us, we look back in time to perhaps one of the first weddings ever performed in Whistler. The date was Jan. 20, 1967.

With the 2003 spring wedding season upon us, we look back in time to perhaps one of the first weddings ever performed in Whistler.

The date was Jan. 20, 1967. A Vancouver couple entered national history as the first couple to get married at the Whistler Skiers’ Chapel – Canada’s original ecumenical chapel. Despite the treacherous driving conditions and snowstorm, nearly 50 venturesome family members and friends risked the drive along the old Sea to Sky Highway from Vancouver to Whistler, to witness the wedding of Tony Lyttle and Irene Foerster.

The couple first met when Irene hitched a ride to Whistler with a stranger named Tony. As Irene recalled, "I basically met the back of his neck and I wasn’t too impressed at that point."

Despite this initial setback, their friendship developed and they were married soon after. Tony headed the volunteer ski patrol in Whistler and had no affiliations with the local ski hills in Vancouver. Irene was working for the Aspen Ski Corporation in Colorado, but had spent a great deal of time skiing on Whistler Mountain.

There was never any doubt for either of them that the wedding would be held in Whistler. Tony and Irene were both ardent ski enthusiasts and planned the entire wedding in less than two weeks. As one can imagine, it wasn’t very common to get married in Whistler in those days. Their wedding preceded the days of getting married on exotic beaches or the top of a mountain.

"I didn’t do it because it was popular," said Irene. "We didn’t have any church affiliations and I really loved the mountains and the outdoors. It seemed natural to get married at the skiers’ chapel, and it was more of what we were at the time – skiers."

Although the paint in the newly built chapel was still drying, this didn’t stop Irene from persuading the people in charge to let her hold her wedding at the chapel.

As Whistler grew from a weekend destination to a permanent settlement, a place was needed to officiate births, deaths and marriages. This led to the building of the Whistler Skiers’ Chapel, an idea that stemmed from the childhood memories of Norwegian-born Franz Wilhelmsen, president of Garibaldi Lifts Ltd. With the support of local skiers, Franz set in motion the creation of the first interdenominational chapel in Canada. The entire chapel was built with funds collected from more than 300 interested skiers and churchgoers.

Designed by Vancouver architect Asbjorn Gathe, the simple, wooden A-frame building was located at the base of Whistler Mountain, next to the lower terminal of the original gondola. The interior of the building was designed so that there were no purely Christian symbols. The chapel’s dedication ceremony took place on Christmas 1966 and brought together Anglican, Roman Catholic and United Church clergymen. The chapel remained at the same location until 1979, when the building was moved adjacent to a small building that was the original Whistler Mountain Ski Club cabin.

In those early days there really weren’t many facilities – what is now the Whistler Village was the local garbage dump. People were just starting to buy condos and build ski cabins.

"It was a different type of skiing," said Tony. "The skiing was very rugged. You couldn’t go up and ski if you were a beginner. There were no easy runs and none of them were groomed. If you couldn’t ski, you just didn’t go up Whistler Mountain."

As a volunteer member of the ski patrol, Tony remembers the horrendous number of fractures and head injuries that occurred every weekend.

One particular Saturday morning springs to mind for Tony. The highway had been closed due to a severe snowfall and impending avalanche danger. There was no way in or out of Whistler for the entire weekend. Still, people were arriving by train, so numbers were being added to the ski area but no one was leaving. This also meant that injured skiers couldn’t get out too easily.

The ski patrol decided to put all of the injured skiers on the train that left on Sunday evening. People were being loaded on the train on every seat, on the floor and down the aisles, with all their luggage and gear. The injured were stacked on stretchers in one of the freight-type cabins.

"It was unbelievable," remembers Tony. "People were sick and we were trying to administer hypodermic needles and painkillers in the semi-darkness using flashlights. It was like a movie and when we arrived at the North Vancouver train station, all the ambulances were lined up like taxis waiting to take the injured skiers to the hospital."

Irene and Tony were wed among the glow of white flowers, candlelight and stained glass windows. Reverend Wilfred Fearn of the West Point Grey United Church was chosen not because of his religious affiliation, but because he was a friend of the bride’s mother. In fact, the florist, the organist and the photographer were also friends of Mrs. Foerster. Most of the guests expected the young bride to be wearing a full ski suit. Instead, Irene wore a white lace-adorned gown, with full-length white leather gloves and white knee-length boots, and was accompanied by her groom in a classic black tuxedo.

Despite the fairy tale scene, few of the guests were aware of what had taken place behind the scenes. Irene had driven up with her parents, and lay in the back of their car amongst all the flowers and stands for the entire drive. Reverend Fearn had driven up with Tony.

"Although he had never been to Whistler before, he was a good sport, willing to drive up in my two-seater sports car in a snow storm, with all the wedding gifts piled high on his lap," said Tony.

Among the other invited guests were the bride’s relatives from Vancouver Island and Irene’s best friend, Judy, who made the journey despite being nine months pregnant.

Instead of preparing herself in the powder room of some fine hotel, Irene was outside shovelling the pathway from the driveway to the chapel, notably for the organist who had suffered a heart attack just a few weeks earlier. To complete the pre-wedding scenario, the bride’s chaperone forgot to pick up the bride to take her to the chapel. So Irene and her bridesmaid coerced a hotel bartender to drive them in his four-wheel drive truck, upholstered with commandeered sheets. When Irene finally arrived at the chapel, she pulled up her skirt, exchanged her white after-ski boots for a pair of satin wedding slippers and made her way down the aisle.

The couple’s wedding rings were designed by a then unknown jeweller named Tony Cavelti, now arguably the best-known jeweller in Vancouver.

The groom was attended to by friends and fellow members that included Ian MacKenzie, Donald Simkin and John Hembling of the Whistler Volunteer Ski Patrol. Accompanying the bride was her bridesmaid Jacolyn Colby, who wore a soft blue dress and carried white hyacinths. Surprisingly, Jacolyn had never been to Whistler before – she wasn’t a skier.

Following the ceremony, the wedding entourage moved to the nearby Cheakamus Inn (better known today as the site of the Whistler Vale Lodge) for a reception, where Dr. N.E. Foerster of Nanaimo, the bride’s uncle, proposed a toast to the young couple. The Inn was considered quite posh for its time and boasted a "haute-cuisine" eccentric ex-chef from Aspen. Although the chef was a bit hesitant about catering a wedding, he relented and treated the guests to a fabulous three-course dinner. A ski honeymoon in Apex Ski Resort was the finishing touch to this memorable event.

Despite the locals’ keen affection for their unique chapel, the Whistler Skiers’ Chapel was dismantled three years ago. The idea of a new chapel was proposed when it was decided that the original facility was unable to meet the growing demands of Whistler’s increasing population and changing demographics.

The Maurice Young Millennium Place (or MY Place) was built and was finally opened on June 17, 2001. The Whistler Skiers’ Chapel Society now leases the building to MY Place to operate as a community spiritual and cultural centre.

The usable timber, stained glass window and pews from the original A-frame chapel have been stored for later use by the Whistler Skiers’ Chapel Society. Future plans include rebuilding the skiers’ chapel up on Whistler Mountain as soon as MY Place is paid off. It is comforting to know that a small piece of local history has been preserved and will reappear again one day.

This story is part of the Vanishing Places project, a co-operative effort between Pique Newsmagazine and the Whistler Museum and Archives Society aimed at keeping Whistler’s heritage alive. If you have memories you’d like to share e-mail the museum at: info@whistlermuseum.org



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