| The Squamish Odyssey |
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 Every place has a story to tell. One just has to make the time to listen. Every place has a lesson to teach if one is willing to learn. Like communities, stories are in flux under the constant pressure of time and change. Like all history, Squamish's story is linked through its humanity. By sharing this story outdoor recreationalists, loggers, retailers, city commuters and visitors alike connect with those inhabitants who walked this small patch of earth before them. To understand Squamish's story, reflect back beyond the current era of logging and adventure tourism, past the human definition of time to events that occurred thousands or millions of years ago, sometimes kilometres above and below us. The Squamish landscape is defined by our region's dynamic balance of eruption, erosion, fire and ice. This coastline is engaged in a battle. Small Pacific plates are sliding under the continental margin and forcing rock skywards, while the gravity driven agents of running water and flowing ice have continuously etched and carved their own patterns into the land. About 10,000 years ago, Howe Sound was being scourged by the recession of the last ice age and given its geological identity. With the withdrawal of the ice, Mount Garibaldi, a volcanic cone formation, collapsed onto itself and created the craggy, constantly eroding peak, Diamond Head, which one sees today. Ice eroded weaker rock and the Stawamus Chief was revealed. The Chief is the old magma chamber of an ancient volcano and is now the world's second largest granite monolith. Looking closely one can still see the volcanic and glacial evidence in Squamishís surroundings: lava flows, basalt, glacier polished rock, such as that found at the south end of the Stawamus Chief parking lot, and the Cheekeye debris fan. Not long after the recession of ice the human touch left its print on the Squamish story. Descendants of the aboriginal people who made the epic journey from Asia across the Bering Strait and down the Alaskan panhandle to Howe Sound, possibly as early as 8,000 years ago, still live in the area today. For millennia, the Sko-mish, or Squamish people hunted, trapped, fished and raised their families in the valley.  Their adventure joins a European one on a rainy day in June, 1792, when British explorer, Captain George Vancouver, and his crew sailed the ship Discovery into Howe Sound's Darrel Bay, just south of Squamish. The Sko-mish people called the historic meeting place Whul-Whul-LAY-Ton or White Man Place. Vancouver said it was "...a most uninhabitable place." His view of Squamish would prove to be shortsighted, perhaps blurred by the "torrents of rain" he wrote about in his log. Traders, gold seekers and adventurers followed George Vancouver during the next century, but it was not until 1889 that non-natives found a permanent home in Squamish, when Mr. and Mrs. Alec Robertson of Manitoba pre-empted land at the head of Howe Sound to farm and settle. The Robertsons so loved their new home that later the same year, their daughter Catherine, and her husband Allan Rae, arrived to make Squamish their home as well. A month after the Rae's arrival in the area, they had the first non-native child born in the valley, a son, Edgar. A year later Harry Judd and his wife Annie arrived from London, Ontario. Judd pre-empted land and built a dairy farm in Brackendale. With two daughters and eight sons, and eight daughters and two sons born to the Raes and Judds respectively, their role in the Squamish story and in the development of the now 16,000 strong community was forever etched. Soon after the railway from Prince George was completed, just prior to World War I, forestry quickly surpassed farming as the primary economy of Squamish. The valley was a busy and prosperous place, connected to the growing city of Vancouver only by 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 two 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 world-wide media attention to the valley. The influx of outdoor revelers grew when Whistler first took baby steps in the late `60s. The Squamish story continues to unfold. Changes in the viability and longevity of British Columbia's forest industry, and the increase in outdoor recreation and tourism-related economies, are ringing in more dramatic change. An all-season mountain resort development is proposed for the Brohm Ridge area of Garibaldi Mountain. The town has been awarded the opportunity to be the locale of a private university. Squamish is attracting small high-tech companies and city bound commuters. Urbanites are seeking Squamish's relaxing, small-town lifestyle. And the valley is slowly being discovered as North America's premier outdoor Mecca, with unparalleled quality and quantity of outdoor activities to be explored. The Squamish story continues to unfold -only the landscape is constant - at least with respect to our human definition of time and change. |
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