"Live dangerously!"
- Socrates
It truly is fantastic how just one encounter can totally change your life. Know what I mean? For most of us who became connected to Whistler, one encounter was usually all it took. One person. One meeting. One totally magical experience...
In my case, it was simply a matter of following my dad's advice. "When you get to Whistler," he'd told his teenage son, "make sure you say hello to my old friend Jim McConkey." I was to bring him greetings from Quebec, my father had instructed. Let him know that his old snoweater friends were all alive and well back east.
So that's what I did. Sure I was nervous. The guy was bigger than life. I mean, he was Diamond Jim - the global ski star they'd recruited to boost the young resort's profile. But I was 19 and full of piss and vinegar. So I just walked up to the white-haired old guy, stuck out my hand and introduced myself. Little did I realize at the time just how momentous that meeting would become in my life arc.
Meaning? Two days later I was standing at the ski school bell at Creekside next to the Finn and Fuji and Guy and Trudy and Bob Dufour and...
Didn't matter that I hadn't planned on moving to Whistler full time. Or that I hadn't even graduated from university yet. I was now a bona fide Whistler Mountain ski instructor. I even had the new, sexy red jacket - French-made and totally inappropriate for Wet Coast conditions - to prove my heightened status. As for my new mentor, the legendary Diamond Jim himself, he would initiate me to the sorcery of big mountain skiing with all the verve and passion that he was renowned for.
Geez, that was nearly 40 years ago. How time flies...
But that's just one story. Whistler is full of them. Still, it's the original "Myrtle and Alex" tale that really fascinates me. And given the 100th anniversary of the Philips' first visit here, I can't help but reflect on the circumstances that would convince a young American woman to exchange the relative comforts of Vancouver's booming downtown eastside for the unremitting wildness of a remote mountain lake lost in B.C.'s rainy backcountry.
Can you even imagine what Whistler looked like 100 years ago? Before the train tracks were built, before the highway was pushed through. Before the miners had driven their shafts deep into the hills' fabric. Before the loggers had come in and stripped the valley of its majestic old growth forests. Before developers had moved in and erected their version of the West Edmonton mall along the meadows of this rugged Coast Mountain pass.
It must have been utterly magnificent. Wild, for sure. And definitely hard to get to. But the payoff must have been extraordinary.
Still, you had to get here to appreciate its mountain magic. And that was an adventure in itself. Three days at least, it took. By ferry and pack-train and humping over nasty windfalls and wading through raging torrents. It wasn't for the meek at heart.
One thing's for sure though - John Millar must have been one hell of a storyteller. You see, Alex and Myrtle Philip were originally from Maine. A jovial, easygoing man, Alex had opened a restaurant in Vancouver in 1905, and when things started looking good four years later, he had sent for his young fiancée, Myrtle Tapley. They married in 1910.
The Philips' Horseshoe Grill catered mostly to loggers and was a popular place with hardworking single men. But even there, the squashed-nosed, bandy-legged coot who showed up one night for dinner dressed in fringed buckskins and wide-brimmed hat was something of a standout. Lonely for company, and slightly addled with booze, Mahogany John Millar was soon entertaining Alex with stories about a magical spot up in the mountains where he'd built himself a cabin. The fish were so abundant in the high lakes around his homestead, he said, that you almost had to beat them off with a stick!
It turned out that Millar had pre-empted some waterfront land just off the Pemberton Trail, on what was then called Summit Lake. It was the most beautiful property in the world, Millar said. An ideal place for a fishing lodge. Only he wasn't much interested in that. He was much more into trapping and mineral exploration.
Alex was entranced by the old guy's stories. Before he knew it, he'd invited Mahogany John home to meet his young bride. Either Millar was a great salesman, or Alex and Myrtle were both keen for a major life change. For the very next day they set off with him on a two-week fishing expedition to Summit Lake.
At that time, there was no road or railway to the north of Vancouver. To reach the foot of the Pemberton Trail, the Philips had first to board a ferry-the Bowena - for the one-day sail up Howe Sound to Squamish (then just a tiny village called Newport). From there, it was another two days on horseback before they'd even get the chance to see the lake.
"The trail was just a track, barely two feet wide," Myrtle would often recount to the local kids. "It ran roughly where the road is today, but it was covered with boulders and we had to pick our way over fallen logs and deep gullies. It was a very difficult ride."
But the destination was well worth the effort. "Remember - there'd been no logging yet in this area," she'd explain. "The mountains above the lake were still all covered in old-growth forests. Huge cedars and giant firs. Snow still lay on the upper slopes. It was utterly beautiful."
And the fishing wasn't bad either. A neophyte before the Summit Lake trip, Myrtle was encouraged by her husband to try her hand at it. She was skeptical at first. But Millar's fishing tales had not been exaggerated. On her first cast, she caught a big, fat rainbow trout. "I never had so much fun," she'd say. "The water was so clear in those days you could see the fish coming for your bait."
Alex and Myrtle were hooked. They returned to Vancouver and set about saving every penny they could. It took until 1913 for the young couple to raise the money they needed - $700 - to buy 10 acres of waterfront land on Summit Lake (now renamed Alta Lake). But they finally managed it. "It was a beautiful piece of property," she'd explain. "I knew it was worth every penny we invested in it."
On May 9, 1914, Alex, Myrtle, and her father and two brothers began construction on what would eventually become the most popular summer destination west of the Rocky Mountains: Alta Lake's Rainbow Lodge. And what a place it was. The original lodge featured a big, airy dining room with a large kitchen in the corner. On either side of the main floor were bedrooms. Two more bedrooms and a dormitory were added on the second floor. Why the name Rainbow Lodge? "It was a dream we'd been chasing. It was our pot of gold," Myrtle would say. "But it was the rainbow trout that brought us here."
Meanwhile, progress was slowly working its way up the valley. Less than a year after the completion of Rainbow Lodge, the Pacific Great Eastern Railway line finally crested the pass at Alta Lake. In one summer, everything changed. What had hitherto been an isolated, hard-to-get-to mountain gem suddenly became far more accessible to Vancouver's burgeoning tourist trade.
Myrtle and Alex sold Rainbow Lodge in 1948 for $100,000. The couple was getting older, and they weren't sure they had the energy to keep the old place going anymore. Besides, conditions had changed. Logging was a much bigger player now - and the visual scars on the mountains were a real turnoff to visitors. Rainbow just didn't have the draw it once had. Still, Myrtle was heartbroken. "I never wanted to sell," she admitted. "And for a long time I was like a fish out of water, without a place to swim."
Alex passed away in 1968, but Myrtle would hang in there for another 18 years. Watching her at civic gatherings - being fussed over by mayors and prime ministers, ski stars and celebrities - I often tried to imagine what she was really thinking behind her placid public mask. Was she really happy about the valley's transformation from quiet backwater to busy mountain resort? Or did she pine for the good old days when the local homesteaders climbed "Whistle" Mountain to pick berries on its south-facing slopes?
She never said. By the time she died in 1986 (at the age of 95) Myrtle Phillip had become a Whistler legend. The woman who had first set eyes on this place walking alongside a packhorse - and had survived long enough to soar over it in a helicopter - had left an indelible mark on the valley she so dearly loved. And that's the way it should be.
In order to properly mark the hundredth anniversary of the Philips' first foray here in 1911, the Whistler Museum is organizing a special five-day celebration next week (Aug. 3-7). They're calling it 100 Years Of Dreams and it promises to be quite the party. Given Alex's and Myrtle's relentlessly positive outlooks, it might also be a good time for all of us to park our all-too-many complaints for a while and count our Whistler blessings instead. I know that's what Myrtle would want us to do...
