Museum Musings

T he Whistler Question , published from 1976 to the beginning of 2018, was Whistler's first official newspaper. The municipality only came into being in September 1975 and Pique wouldn't begin publishing until 1994.

If you've ever taken a look at the Whistler Museum's YouTube channel you might have seen a short film from the Petersen Film Collection that features the drive to Whistler in 1958.

Whistler has a history of re-using buildings. You may remember from a previous column that before today's museum buildings were the museum they were the post office, and then the library.

With Whistler Village now firmly established at the base of Whistler Mountain it's hard to imagine the town centre anywhere else.

You wouldn't expect a pulp mill, a pop-rock band and 20th-century settlers to have a lot in common, but in the Sea to Sky corridor, you can find the unlikeliest of connections.

Throughout B.C. we are blessed with an abundance of mighty rivers from which we get almost 90 per cent of our electricity. Here in Whistler we're surrounded by hydro-generating stations of all sizes, notably the IPP on Fitzsimmons Creek.

For most of the year floatplanes overhead are a common sight (and sound) above Whistler. Today, these planes land and take off from Green Lake—an everyday occurance. But in the 1920s floatplanes were an adventurous way to arrive at Alta Lake.

In Alta Lake's early days, there were no grocery stores or farmers' markets. Shipping fresh food up from Vancouver was expensive and unreliable, so Alta Lake residents procured as much food locally as possible.

Historically, in the month of March, Whistler would be hosting a World Cup Downhill event. Up to 500 weasel workers would be working 12-hour days preparing the racecourse, installing safety nets and removing and moving snow throughout the course.

In September 1988 an article written by Joanna MacDonald about a performance by the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra (VSO) appeared in The Vancouver Sun .