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Celebrating 100 years of dreaming

Without the pioneering spirit of Alex and Myrtle Philip, who landed on the shores of Alta Lake a century ago, Whistler would not be what it is today
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It is said that youth is to be envied, but a conversation with Isobel MacLaurin will make you want to be eighty. The first artist to arrive in Whistler in 1961, Isobel still skips like a girl when she shows off her family's treasures like her husband Don's red, vintage convertible MG.

"I married Don 53 years ago for two reasons - his MG... and he's a fabulous dancer," she says with a cheeky grin. "He's retained both, so that's why I keep him."

A walking, laughing history book of Whistler culture, it could be said that Isobel and Don MacLaurin have set a precedent that'll remain etched in these mountains long after they're gone.

In a way, their 50 years in Whistler contain stories none too different from those experienced by youth today. The MacLaurins and their crew regularly dressed up in costume for parties (both on and off the hill, so those who think they've done something original by skiing in clown suits have just reinvented the wheel); they knew how to score free lift tickets, where to après, and which dance hall was the best on any given night. The only difference was their Whistler wasn't yet the Whistler we now know - it was still a burgeoning, far flung settlement for skiers and adventurers at the end of a long gravel road.

Just imagine then what it was like fifty years before that in the summer of 1911 when Alex and Myrtle Philip arrived and changed the course of Whistler's history. This week the Whistler Museum is celebrating that 100-year-old arrival with a series of community events designed to embrace all that Whistler was and has become.

 

The first arrivals

 

MacLaurin's friendship with the pioneering Myrtle Philip - the iconic and unlikely founder of the outdoor tourism industry in Whistler - was immediate and easy. Philip arrived fifty years prior to MacLaurin and established Rainbow Lake Lodge, the region's first and most successful fishing outfit. MacLaurin remembers her well, and fondly, despite the age difference. Among all the moments they shared, she laughs the hardest at the time she almost lost control of an aging Philip's wheelchair on the sloping trail to the lake beside her house.

"She kept saying 'I've got it, I've got it,' but she didn't have it," she says. "She still thought she could do anything, even in her later years.

"The kids loved her, oh she was a marvelous lady. She could spin a yarn. She was a better hunter and a better fisherwoman than the men and they loved it, too."

Myrtle, who first arrived in Whistler with her husband Alex upon the invitation from trapper and prospector John Millar in 1911, could be nothing but tenacious to pull off the life she led. After purchasing 100 acres on Rainbow Lake for $700 in 1913, the young schoolteacher set out to build Rainbow Lodge while her husband returned to Vancouver to earn money at their restaurant. Enlisting the help of her American family, the Tapleys, Myrtle completed the lodge and started charging $6 for fishing excursions. The Philips were soon running the most popular fishing destination this side of the Rockies.

"The $6 would get you your train ticket up to the lodge when the train was finally brought in, in 1914,' says Bridget Barker, a well-spoken19-year-old university student from Pemberton who conducts 40 minute historical walking tours of the village for the Whistler Museum. "You still had to take the steamship from Vancouver to Squamish, but once there you'd take the train from Squamish to Alta Lake, saving you about two days.

"Myrtle did everything - she was a great rider of horses, she fished, she loved all sorts of animals. She was the first teacher in the area and sat on the board of trustees for 40 years. She was the post mistress, she ran the general store, she delivered babies and set broken bones, it was quite something."

It must have been quite a thing, travelling some 115 kilometres north through the coastal wilds to get to Whistler from Vancouver in the early 20th Century. When Myrtle and Alex did it for the first time, it took them three days, a steamship and tough trail horses to get here. And nerve. Lots of nerve.

 

Those who came after

 

In MacLaurin lives the remnants of a Whistler that is slowly receding into the annals of history, but don't expect melancholic reminiscing. Isobel tells her stories with fierce enthusiasm - it's the same energy with which she views the modern Whistler, changed as it is from the early days.

"A lot of people my age left, they wanted it the old way," she says. "I don't want it the old way - I look out of my bedroom window upstairs and see the groomers at three in the morning, and you know what I say? 'Bless you my children, bless you.' Because I can't do double diamonds anymore but I ski as often as I can."

Unlike many tales of yore, which grow stale as cultural appreciation evolves from one norm to the next, MacLaurin's have not lost any colour and give a visceral shape to the Whistler that once was. She can spend hours laughing about the drunken road worker who blew up the family outhouse, or what it was like to ski fresh powder with friends off a small rope tow while seven months pregnant before any other chairs were established on the mountain. There were parties and babies and dancing and wine (she and Don still hit the dance floor at the Fairmont on Fridays). No one was rich, houses were modest, the Roundhouse still round and there weren't any cops around to tell them to turn down the music.

"I was the first artist here and we never had any money to ski and we were six people so I used to do all the paintings for the Roundhouse and the ski hill and that's how we got our ski passes," she says, tapping an old photo on her coffee table. It shows a pile of familiar looking signs bearing the name of Whistler's ski runs. "For years and years I did that."

Not unlike their predecessors the Philips earlier in the 20 th Century, Isobel and Don knew they had found a place to summer after visiting Alta Lake in 1961. They befriended a handful of locals living in the area, family names with deep-roots that resonate today - Philip, Vogler, Murray, Peterson and Pope.

"We loved them so much that we decided this is where we would build our cabin," she says. "We had four kids, two wirehaired terriers, and a Volkswagen van and you can picture us coming up for the summer. The kids would head out on the lake with the Murray kids and the Vogler kids and we wouldn't see them till supper. Parents can't think that way nowadays."

 

Changes over the years

 

Like the MacLaurins, the Philips too grew golden in Whistler.

They operated their ever-expanding lodge until 1948 and stayed on in the area until their deaths. Myrtle passed away in 1986 at the age of 95 and each year she spent her birthdays with local schoolchildren, feeding them cake and stories to celebrate the day. Even a century after their arrival, the name Philip is an integral part of the community - the elementary school bears Myrtle's name - and the whimsy of Alex - an amateur novelist and reputed ladies' man - is behind the naming of the Bridge of Sighs and the River of Golden Dreams.

By the time of her death, Philip had witnessed major changes in Whistler. The mountain, which was originally named London Mountain by five British surveyors, was renamed Whistler in honour of the local alpine marmot that whistles to communicate. Neighbouring Blackcomb earned its moniker thanks to the black lichen that clings to its rooster comb-shaped granite face. In the sixties the mountain's first ski area at Creekside would get so crowded that a time-card system was utilized to save folks from having to wait for hours in line - you'd just get your card and know what time to show up for the lift.

By the '70s, the garbage dump (that for years provided nightly entertainment for locals, who would head out after dinner to watch the bears rummage for food) was paved over and redesigned as Whistler village (rumour has it there's still a VW van buried underneath). While considered a gorgeous triumph of city planning, the man who designed the village sketched it out on a bus and handed the crumpled masterpiece to the newly formed municipality. This designer, Eldon Beck, had already proven his skills through the design of Vail, Colorado and Whistler officials liked his unorthodox vision.

"He was really inspired by rivers, so you notice that the areas of the (Village) Stroll kind of meander and wind around like a river," continues Barker. "They took one look at it and said 'you're hired.'"

Under the capable hands of Norwegian businessman and ski fanatic Franz Wilhelmsen, Whistler inched forward by using futile Olympic bids to attract attention to the resort.

"A bid for the '68 Olympics helped get Creekside built, but there were a few problems so the bid failed," continues Barker. "There was no power, no electricity, no running water, there was no highway up here - it was all gravel - and there were no lifts, so they failed. It was apparently not supposed to be taken as a serious bid, it was supposed to draw attention to the area."

Isobel MacLaurin clearly remembers Wilhelmsen's efforts.

"Across the lake there was this big, beautiful sign that said 'Future development of the Garibaldi Lift Company,' and we were so excited because we used to go to Mount Baker from our place," she said. "Our favourite line is 'the mountain came to Mohammed.'"

As Whistler found its footing, Blackcomb was also making strides thanks to the efforts of a handful of businessmen with a healthy appetite for competition. When it opened in 1980, Blackcomb featured five triple chairs and an additional 1,240 vertical metres of runs. In response, Whistler upped the ante by developing a new area on its northern flank. By the time the two were amalgamated by Intrawest in 1998, the competition had propelled each of the hills into worthy ski destinations.

Despite the extensive changes that have taken place in Whistler since the Philips first arrived, what happened to them still happens today. Travellers arrive tired after a long journey. They blink blearily at the evergreen-laced mountains and lakes of the Whistler valley and know they'll do whatever it takes to stay.

 

 



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