Last month we shared a story about Whistler residents encountering each other while travelling when, in 1984, Inge and Jens Nielsen discovered Chuck Blaylock was piloting their flight back from Europe. It’s also not uncommon for visitors or residents to come across someone in Whistler who they know from outside the valley, often long before they moved to the area. In the 1990s, this phenomenon happened to Karen Vagelatos when she dropped her kids off at ski school.
Karen grew up in the Vancouver area and first visited Alta Lake as a teenager in the summer of 1963 when she, her cousin Bob Calladine, and their racing coach Lorne O’Connor were part of a group that climbed up Whistler Mountain and were filmed skiing Whistler Bowl. Karen learned to ski at the age of three (not surprising as her father had a popular ski shop in downtown Vancouver for many years) and was a member of the Canada National Ski Team from 1964 to 1968, competing in two Olympic Winter Games.
After retiring from racing, Karen coached for the Whistler Mountain Ski Club and the Toni Sailer Summer Ski Camp and even when living in Vancouver continued to visit the area regularly, first staying with friends and then buying a cabin. Her family moved up full-time in 1995.
By 1995, Karen and her family had moved over to Blackcomb Mountain and were members of the Blackcomb Ski Club. When asked why she made the switch after such a long history on Whistler, Karen explained it was not as much about the terrain as it was the chairlifts; Whistler was still running double chairs while Blackcomb had triple, which meant she and her husband could each take two of their four young kids instead of sending them up with other skiers.
This switch meant her children attended Blackcomb’s Kids Kamp and when taking them in one day she came across none other than Florence Petersen at reception. Karen happened to be with someone she went to high school with, who pointed out Florence as “Flossie,” their P.E. teacher in Burnaby for Grades 11 and 12.
It might seem strange to some to call a teacher by a nickname, but Florence was known to quite a few of her early students as Flossie. Florence attended Burnaby North Secondary School before doing her teacher training at the Vancouver Normal School. At the time, most new teachers would spend a few years teaching at a one-room school after completing their training before they applied for positions in the larger city schools. However, there was a shortage of trained P.E. teachers in the late 1940s. Florence was one of only a few in her year who completed the extra course to be qualified, meaning she went straight into teaching at city secondary schools.
Florence’s first position was as a P.E. teacher at a school in Coquitlam, where she was only a year older than some of her oldest students. After two years, she moved to Burnaby North, her alma mater, where she taught for the next 15 years. When she first arrived back at Burnaby North, she found herself teaching former schoolmates who had been young students when she graduated. Looking back in 2007, she recalled, “I have to thank them all for being very respectful,” and calling her Ms. Strachan in class and Flossie outside of school.
Florence later transitioned into counselling and went first to Moscrop Junior High and then Burnaby South Secondary School before retiring in 1983 after 36 years as a teacher.
In 1955, while teaching at Burnaby North, Florence and fellow teachers and friends Betty Gray (Shore), June Tidball (Collins), Kelly Forster (Fairhurst) and Jacquie Pope purchased Witsend, a cottage on Alta Lake they would visit regularly until it was destroyed by a fire in 1965. Florence moved up permanently when she retired, joining her husband Andy who had already been living in their Whistler property full-time.
As well as becoming Whistler’s first marriage commissioner and a founding force behind the Whistler Museum, Florence could sometimes be found working in places such as the Kids Kamp building, where Karen Vagelatos came across her. Though Karen had not known about Florence’s connection to Alta Lake, after this first meeting she would regularly see her around Whistler. Looking back, she recalled Florence as a great but demanding P.E. teacher with high expectations of her students.
