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Ghosts of Christmases Past

Long-time Whistlerites remember
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Twinkling lights, roast pheasant, Christmas carols...blackouts? Whether you spent your Whistler Christmases in the 1960s and 1970s knee-deep in fresh powder or up to your elbows in dirty dishes, there was never a dull moment in those early days...

Gina Monahan remembers Christmas in the fledgling years of the resort's history.

"We used to go up on Boxing Day but there were some years we spent actual Christmas Day in Whistler," she recalls.

Upon arrival at their Creekside condo, her father (Whistler Mountain founder Franz Wilhelmsen) put up blue Christmas lights on the balcony railing and would hoist the flag up the pole.

"Dad always insisted on the flag being up," Monahan remembers. "He wanted people to know when he was in residence.

"We would have pheasant for dinner that Dad shot a few weeks prior in Pitt Meadows with a couple of friends," Monahan continues. "Then the bird would have a few weeks to hang and would be ready for Christmas dinner. We would eat lingonberries with it, which is a Scandinavian specialty, like a really deluxe cranberry sauce. Mum would make oyster stew to start the meal and would make a delicious gravy for the bird. She never gave me the recipe but it called for Norwegian goat cheese."

 

Ornulf Johnsen arrived in Whistler in 1965 and was at the resort for its very first Christmas. "It was a bit lonely," he recalls. "At that time there wasn't an established community so there was no one organizing big Christmas events or parties. We were lost people. Everyone was on their own."

There weren't many places to go either.

"There was the Cheakamus Inn, the Highland Lodge and the cafeteria at the bottom of Whistler Creek," says Johnsen.

Considering Whistler Mountain didn't officially open until February 1966 it is not surprising that many people on Christmas Day in 1965 were at loose ends. The mountain, already operating, was not even open for skiing.

"It was traditional for mountain resorts to be closed on Christmas Day," Johnsen recalls, although the mountain did open for Christmas Day in later years. Furthermore, most of the skiers were Vancouver people who wanted to open their presents in their city homes and drive up to Whistler on Boxing Day or the 27 th . Dec. 27 is still typically the busiest day of the season for the resort, 44 years later.

It wasn't all bad in the old days. Johnsen does remember "lots of sauna" on Christmas Day 1965, followed by making snow angels outside in sauna gear. There was no shortage of snow that year.

"Day-trippers were snowed in," Johnsen says. "They had to stay in Whistler for the next few days. I have never seen the snow at the sides of the road so high. We had to dig out cars. It was a mess."

Regardless of the chaos, Johnsen recalls that everyone in Whistler that first winter was "very proud and excited to be there."

One seasonal tradition that started in 1965 was the Whistler Mountain torch parade. Johnsen, of course, was part of it. "We attached road flares to the ends of our ski poles and skied from the top of the old T-bar down. We had to wear rainproof clothing because the flares would drip onto our clothes. That was the highlight of the season for me," Johnsen remembers.

 

Colin Pitt-Taylor arrived in Whistler in 1971 and got a job as the sous-chef at the Cheakamus Inn. Pitt-Taylor, like any resort worker, learned quickly that "Christmas Day is never a day off. It's a day in."

Christmas season at "The Moose," as the Cheakamus Inn was known, was a very busy time. The 20-room hotel was fully booked. Guests were served what was called "American Plan" - breakfast, a packed lunch for the ski hill and dinner.

"It was a set menu," Pitt-Taylor recalls. "Christmas dinner was a traditional turkey feast with all the trimmings."

Staff parties were held well before Christmas. Rarely was there any time off on the holiday itself - just enough for a phone call home to the family. In later years Whistler Mountain was open to skiers on Christmas Day and Pitt-Taylor, along with other staff, loved heading up the mountain after breakfast was over and the guests had left. A big perk of the job, Pitt-Taylor says, was the fact that "we got to go skiing every day after the morning duties were done."

Pitt-Taylor fondly remembers another Christmas activity - jumping off the Cheakamus Inn's back balcony. "We did back flips off the edge into the snow. It was only five or six feet but the snow was so deep. There wasn't much else for entertainment, you had to make your own fun. The only TV you could get was CBC North. Unless you wanted to learn how to kill and skin a seal, you didn't really want to watch TV."

 

Ian Beardmore's father Eric built the Cheakamus Inn in the mid-sixties. Ian recalls Christmas week at the Inn as a time when head chef and manager Frank Menendez (recruited from his parents' many ski trips to Alta, Utah) staged elaborate Shakespearean-themed dinners where "everyone had to dress up."

The food was known as "the finest in the valley," he says. Not surprisingly, "everyone congregated at the Cheakamus."

After Whistler's first season, Ornulf Johnsen left the resort to operate Grouse Mountain's ski school in North Vancouver for the next 20-plus years. But he always came back to Whistler for Christmas to ski on Christmas Day. "It was always phenomenally quiet. You had the mountain to yourself while everyone else was opening presents."

 

Gina Monahan also remembers her father Franz going skiing on Christmas Day. "He would greet all the staff - he was very jovial. I remember he commanded a great deal of respect from the staff. Of course it was a much smaller staff than it is now and people knew each other better. Dad always got us up and out of the house early, even on Christmas Day. Mum slept in - she wasn't really a skier - but we were at the cafeteria at the bottom of the hill by 7:30 in the morning. After breakfast there we headed up on the gondola. Then after a long day of skiing - I was the last off the hill - we

went home and opened presents."

 

Long time local Dave Steers arrived in Whistler in the late '70s to work on the mountain. As is the case today, Steers was one of the many young people in Whistler who were away from home for the first time.

Christmas morning without one's family around was bittersweet for some young Whistlerites. "One of the big things was getting that Christmas box from home," he recalls. "I remember being so keen that I drove to the Vancouver airport to pick it up to get it in time one year when the package got held up on the way out..."

 

Cheryl Morningstar arrived in Whistler in the early '80s. Like most Whistler workers, going home for Christmas was not an option. "I always worked in hotels so we were very busy at Christmas," she remembers. "We made our own fun. There wasn't the bar scene in those days that we have now. We still had a blast though. I remember going caroling in the streets with friends."

 

One Vancouverite whose family owned a condo in Whistler at Alpine Village from 1965 to 1972 remembers the best part of the holiday was "skiing on Christmas Day. Normally the mountain staff gave out coloured tickets that reserved your spot in line to get onto the gondola at a particular time," recalls John Osburn. "On Christmas Day there was no need for tickets because the day skiers usually stayed home. On other weekends it was a big crush because in those days the gondola was the only way to get up the mountain."

The condos at Whistler Alpine Village in those early days had a lot of "issues" around Christmas, he recalls. "We'd often get a call from the caretaker saying 'Don't come up' for whatever reason.' The roofs were a California design and would get backed up with snow and leak, or the toilets would be plugged. We were roughing it. Or else the road would be closed or the old bridge would wash out."

What made it all worthwhile? "A bright sunny day looking over the glaciers at the top of the mountain. Unless you got stuck on the Red Chair in the howling wind, swinging back and forth."

 

Gina Monahan's brother, Phil Wilhelmsen, remembers a major power cut that struck at the peak of the Christmas season. "I believe it was Boxing Day of 1967 or 1968 and the Rainbow sub-station (then known as the Mons Power Station) blew up because it overloaded. There was no power and it was freezing - one of the coldest winters on record. I think it was about -40 on the mountain and -22 in the valley. You could actually hear the pipes freezing. All you had to keep warm was one of those old round '60s-era yellow fireplaces. We kept that fireplace going all night. But we were freezing and starving and couldn't see anything. So in the middle of the night, Dad and I looked for something to eat in the kitchen with a flashlight. Dad found something and we thought we were eating pretzels. Turns out they were doggie biscuits!"

 

Sally Quinn was also up with her family at their condo in Whistler Alpine Village at that time. "Those acorn fireplaces weren't very efficient and our family huddled around it for two days. We also had an old Franklin stove in the other room. The pipes cracked and the water came through the walls. Eventually the Pulos brothers (who developed Whistler Alpine Village) got everything patched up, but there was definitely a sense that people hung together."

 

Phil Wilhelmsen also has fond memories of the A-frame Skiers Chapel at Christmas. "The chapel was initiated by Dad and was the only non-denominational chapel in the area, or even Western Canada at that time. The Catholics had their Sunday service there at some point in the day and the Anglicans had their service at the end of the ski day. I can remember skiing down the mountain at the end of the day, popping off my skis outside the chapel and slipping into the pew. It was a proper service with a chaplain who came from Squamish or Pemberton. I was dragged into that chapel. Those were orders."

 

Long-time Whistlerite Sidney Madden recalls spending Christmas week "visiting other units of Alpine 68, always a visit with the Wilhelmsens and often a large baked ham, and our small unit filled to the brim with friends and relatives." Madden also remembers attending the service at the Skier's Chapel, which was "packed."

 

Andrea McRobbie's family spent many Christmases in Whistler in the '70s and '80s. "Gifts on Christmas morning were what you had lost the season before," she remembers. "Hats, ski gloves, goggles. I still remember my favourite Christmas gift one year was the new pair of skis that I had been coveting forever. Mom actually wrapped them."

"Another odd tradition at Christmas was all the kids in the neighbourhood where we had our cabin would meet at this giant hill and go crazy-carpeting at night until we were blue in the face. As we got older we brought mini bottles of Bailey's with us to help keep us warm. I am so surprised there were never any broken bones."

 

What long-time Whistlerite Sara Leach remembers most about Christmas growing up in the '70s and '80s was the skiing itself. "The most obvious Christmas tradition would be skiing on Christmas Day. I remember going up one Christmas as a teenager, one of those crystal clear days. Being 14 and clueless I thought it would be sunny and warm, and wore less than usual. I hadn't checked the report, and discovered on the way up the Olive Chair that it was -15 degrees. It was a short ski day!"

 

Sally Quinn's brother Russ and his wife Barb loved the tradition of going out into the woods to chop down their own Christmas tree with their children. "We always got two trees: one for the birds outside, and one for inside the house," recalls Barb. "One of my favourite memories was rolling pine cones in peanut butter with our girls to put on the tree outside for the birds to eat."

 

There were almost as many Christmas tree traditions as there are trees in Whistler. One long-time local remembers one of the seasonal rituals in the late'70s that fit perfectly with that era. "Some staff cabins had Christmas trees decorated only with joints hanging from the branches..."

 

"Last weekend we went out as a family to cut our Christmas tree," says Sara Leach. "The big advantage to living across from the power lines is that we walked up the street, crossed Alta Lake Road, found the perfect tree in five minutes and carried it home. There's something very satisfying to picking your tree so close to home."

 

While there may no longer be ski-in Christmas Mass at the Skiers Chapel or the experience of swinging precariously on the Red Chair in the blustering wind, it's a sure bet than a new generation of Whistlerites will be unwrapping new goggles on Christmas morning before heading up the mountain. Some traditions will never change.

 

 



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