A ceremony Thursday, May 26 at Eva Lake Park unveiled a new interpretive panel highlighting the many contributions late Whistler developer, community builder, and war hero Walter Zebrowksi made to the resort community.
But you can be sure the sign could never contain all of the accomplishments and qualities of one of modern Whistler’s earliest boosters and visionaries.
“It's such a pleasure to be here with all of you celebrating someone who left a deep and important mark on this place. I'd say left many marks on this place,” said Mayor Jack Crompton during the ceremony.
Born in Poland in 1913, Wladyslaw “Walter” Zebrowski became a major in the Polish Army under British command, and was in Italy in 1944 during the Second World War when his brigade helped capture Monte Cassinno. He survived being a prisoner of war on three separate occasions, “never knowing how much more time he had to live,” recalled daughter Ewa, for whom Eva Lake is named after.
“If you read his military history, you’d know nothing was going to stop him,” said Garry Watson, Freedom of the Municipality holder and longtime friend and business partner of Zebrowski’s.
“Walter was the most determined son of a bitch.”
After the war, Zebrowski moved to Canada, a country that represented “freedom and a new beginning,” Ewa said, before landing in Whistler in 1963. A Whistler, it should be noted, that had no running water, no electricity, and no ski lifts at the time.
A stubborn, hard-working man who wouldn’t take no for an answer, Zebrowski had his hand in virtually every aspect of the growing resort town over the 30-plus years he spent here before his death in 1997. He started the Whistler Volunteer Fire Department, the Whistler Rotary Club, helped found the Whistler Chamber of Commerce, and was instrumental in bringing the first free television signal to the valley.
“Boy, that was a job,” Watson recalled. “He started by climbing every mountain, I think, to find [a signal] and he had a little television receiver, three inches square, and he’d check for signals everywhere he went and bothered the hell out of everybody.”
An avid fisherman, Zebrowski ensured there was a place for young anglers in the community to throw out a line when he had a marshy area on his Creekside property dammed and dedicated in perpetuity as Eva Lake, which was later stocked with trout. Testament to his unrelenting commitment to the cause, Zebrowski did much of the painstaking work of preparing the site himself, removing large boulders and bringing in timbers to begin building the dam.
One day, he felt some pain in his chest and had to lie down in the grass for a while before deciding he better go get himself checked out at the clinic in Pemberton, literally crawling to his vehicle.
“The pharmacist was terrified at the sight of him and wanted to put him in a helicopter to the hospital. Walter got back in his car, drove here, then he drove to the hospital in North Vancouver,” Watson said. “Diagnosis? Severe heart attack. Severe. We almost lost him. But he recovered and came back to carry on.”
Now, a panel sits at the very same site, in the park that bears his daughter’s name, ensuring the legacy of one of Whistler’s most tireless advocates will live on in memory for generations to come.
“I'm proud to be here today to celebrate and remember, not only his achievement, but his spirit. That continuity and history are important. Our connections matter. Our life's work is a reflection of us. Our legacy and values are intrinsic. And what we do and why we do it is what truly matters,” said Ewa to close out the ceremony. “Eva Lake, like Whistler itself, was his dream come true. Dare to wonder. Dare to rediscover. Dare to create. Dare to build. Dare to dream.”
The Walter Zebrowski panel is one of approximately 130 outdoor interpretive panels throughout Whistler designed to create awareness and understanding of the area’s natural history and heritage.
Play the video below to watch John Rae, manager of cultural planning and development at the Resort Municipality of Whistler, and Ewa Zebrowski, daughter of Whistler pioneer Walter Zebrowski, unveil an interpretive panel dedicated to Walter at Eva Lake Park on May 26.
