Pemberton, Whistler and Squamish Area Info

Pemberton

The area was developed at the turn of the century as a result of forestry and agriculture. The Pemberton Valley lies northwest of the Village and is famous for its seed potatoes. Pemberton and district offers world-class activities and recreation including snowmobiling, horseback riding, skiing, golfing, hiking, rafting, jet boating and gliding. The district also provides a variety of shopping, dining, accommodations and a thriving service and light industrial sector.

The Pemberton district abounds with natural beauty surrounded by three of the most beautiful Provincial Parks in BC. There is ample opportunity for camping at Birkenhead Lake, Garibaldi, Joffre Lakes and Nairn Falls parks.

Pemberton is easy to reach by road and air. Highway 99 is a well maintained major provincial highway. The Village’s airport provides access for fixed wing and helicopter traffic.

Information from Pemberton and District Chamber of Commerce

Whistler

Nestled in the Coast Mountains, only 40 kms inland from the Pacific Ocean, and 120 kms from one of Canada’s largest urban centres, Whistler Resort provides a Canadian west coast mountain experience with snowy winters and moderate temperatures.

Whistler and Blackcomb Mountains offer the highest lift-serviced vertical and the largest terrain of any ski area in North America, with large alpine bowls and forested glades, expert grooming and ski runs that last forever.

And there are plenty of other activities year round to entice the visitor, including hiking, biking, fishing, swimming, canoeing, kayaking, white water rafting, mountain biking, golf, tennis, in-line skating and sailing in summer to snowmobiling, snowshoeing, cross country skiing, skating, hockey and, of course, skiing and snowboarding in the winter, along with fine dining and shopping in award-winning Whistler Village. Whistler’s range of accommodation and conference facilities make it an ideal choice for meeting planners spring through fall.

Many visitors are surprised to find that Whistler is a lively mountain community of 9,800 permanent residents. The sense of community is very strong here in Whistler, with a passionate commitment to protecting the natural mountain environment surrounding us and moving to become a sustainable resort community.

In addition to permanent residents, Whistler is a part-time home to approximately 9,100 second-home owners from around the world, and 4,500 seasonal residents. With overnight and day visitors, our per day population averages 31,351 in winter and peaks (usually around New Year’s) at approximately 45,000.

Information from Resort Municipality of Whistler

Squamish

To fully understand the Squamish Story, one needs to look back beyond the eras of logging and adventure tourism, past the human definition of time to capture events that happened thousands or millions of years ago, and sometimes kilometers above and below us. The Squamish landscape was, and is, under a constant battle of building itself up as small Pacific plates slide under the continental margin and under gravity driven agents of running water and flowing ice. The dynamic balance is eruption and erosion; fire and ice.

About 10,000 years ago, Howe Sound was being scourged by the recession of the last ice age and received its unique geologic character. Mount Garibaldi (one of many volcanic centres in the Cascadia Mountain Range which includes Mount Cayley, 33 kilometers north of Squamish, Mount Meager northwest of Pemberton, Mount St Helens, Mount Baker and Mount Rainier in Washington) erupted forming a volcanic cone over the glaciation ice. When the ice receded the cone collapsed creating the craggy, and constantly eroding Garibaldi one sees today. The Stawamus Chief, an old magma chamber of an ancient volcano and the world’s second largest granite monolith, was revealed as ice eroded the weaker rock. If one looks closely, one can still see volcanic and glacial evidence in Squamish’s dynamic surroundings. There are lava flows, basalt deposits, glacial-polished rock forms like the one at the south end of the Stawamus Chief parking lot, and the notorious Cheekye debris fan.

It wasn’t long after the recession of ice that the human touch left its print on the Squamish story. Descendants of the aboriginal people who made the epic journey from Asia across a frozen Bering Strait and down the Alaskan Panhandle to Howe Sound, possibly as long as 5,000 years ago, still live in the area today. For millennia, the Sko-mish or Squamish people hunted, trapped, fished and raised their families in this lush Valley.

Their adventure joins a European one on a rainy day in June, 1792 when British Explorer Captain George Vancouver and his crew sailed their ship "Discovery" into Howe Sound’s Darrell Bay, just south of Squamish. The Sko-mish people called the historic meeting place Whul-Whul-LAY-Ton or White Man Place. Capt. Vancouver said this was "a most uninhabitable place".

Traders, gold seekers and adventurers followed during the next century, but it wasn’t until Mr. and Mrs. Alec Robertson of Manitoba pre-empted land in 1889, then farmed and settled at the head of Howe Sound, that non-natives found a permanent home in Squamish. The Robertsons so loved their new home that their daughter Catherine and her husband Allan Rae settled in Squamish later that same year. A month after the Rae’s arrival in the area they had the first non-native baby born in the valley: a son Edgar.

A year later Harry Judd and his wife Annie arrived from London Ontario. Judd cleared his land in Brackendale and built a dairy farm. With their two sons and eight daughters and the eight sons and two daughters born to the Raes, their role in the Squamish story, and in the development of the now 16,000 strong community, was forever etched.

Forestry quickly surpassed farming as the foundation for the economy in Squamish. The Valley was a busy and prosperous place, connected with the growing city of Vancouver only by the sea.

The next harbinger of change for Squamish was the completion of the railway from Squamish to Vancouver in 1956 and the Sea-to-Sky Highway a few years later. Strangers drove up the highway penetrating Squamish’s familiar and insular world. Adventurers like Jim Baldwin and Ed Cooper, who spent six weeks in 1961 scaling the Grand Wall of the Chief, brought worldwide media attention to the Valley. The influx of outdoor revelers grew when the resort of Whistler, formerly Alta Lake, first took baby steps in the late 60s.

Today, the Squamish story continues to unfold. Changes in the viability and longevity of the province’s forest industry and the increase in outdoor recreation and tourism related economies are ringing in even more dramatic change. An all-season mountain resort development is proposed for the Brohm Ridge area of Mount Garibaldi. Small high-tech companies are coming to the area, as are commuting urbanites seeking Squamish’s relaxing lifestyle. And this beautiful Valley is slowly being discovered as North America’s premiere outdoor Mecca with unparalleled quality and quantity of outdoor activities to be explored.

Information from District of Squamish