Identity area
Type of entity
Person
Authorized form of name
Fairhurst, Eunice "Kelly"
Parallel form(s) of name
- Fairhurst, Eunice
- Fairhurst, Kelly
- Forster, Eunice
- Forster, Kelly
Standardized form(s) of name according to other rules
Other form(s) of name
Identifiers for corporate bodies
Description area
Dates of existence
1929 - December 23, 2006
History
Eunice "Kelly" Fairhurst (nee Forster) was an early Whistler resident. Although here official given name was Eunice, she was always referred to as "Kelly". Kelly was born in 1929 in Burnaby, BC and also spent her childhood there. She had three siblings: Mary, Richi, and Vera. She later taught at an elementary school in Burnaby along with four other teachers: June Collins, Florence Petersen, Betty Atkinson, and Jacquie Pope. Kelly and Jacquie began vacationing to Alta Lake in the summer of 1953, and enjoyed their time there so much that they persuaded the group of teachers pool in and purchase a holiday cabin on Alta Lake in 1955, which they named "Witsend" after a particularly trying and rainy journey to Alta Lake. The five close friends spent much of their summers at the cabin, hiking and having fun. At Alta Lake they learned to split wood, cook on a wood-burning stove, and lime an outhouse. Kelly married a local logger and owner of Cypress Lodge on Alta Lake, Dick Fairhurst, in 1958, and they expanded Cypress Lodge together, which catered to fishing tourists, highway construction workers, and skiers in the winter months. Dick and Kelly had two children, David (1960) and Carol (1962), who grew up at Alta Lake, attending the Alta Lake School. Cypress Lodge became a gathering place for the small Alta Lake community through the 1950s, 60s, and 70s. The wharf was the base for the Alta Lake Sailing Club’s Dominion Day Derby on July 1 and the annual Regretta (named for the regret at the season ending) on Labour Day, where events such as pie eating contests and a fish fry took place alongside boat races. In the winter, Dick and Kelly also opened the lodge for New Year’s Eve parties. The Fairhursts continued to operate Cypress Lodge, renting cabins out to Whistler Mountain employees and highway crews, until 1972, when they sold the property to the Canadian Youth Hostels Association. In 1973, they moved into their new home built by Andy Petersen on Drifter Way in the Alpine Meadows neighbourhood of Whistler, where they stayed until both David and Carol had graduated from high school in Pemberton. In 1980, Dick and Kelly retired and moved into a house Dick had built for them in Parksville on Vancouver Island, where Kelly joined the quilters' guild. Dick passed away in 1983, and Kelly married her second husband, Lew Eilers, in 1990. They subsequently moved to Penticton, BC. In her later years, Kelly was diagnosed with multiple system atrophy and moved to Nanaimo Seniors Village in Nanaimo, BC in 2001. She passed away on December 23, 2006.
Places
Burnaby, BC
Alta Lake
Whistler
Alpine Meadows
Parksville, BC
Penticton, BC
Nanaimo, BC
Legal status
Functions, occupations and activities
Teacher
Mandates/sources of authority
Internal structures/genealogy
General context
Relationships area
Related entity
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Type of relationship
Dates of relationship
Description of relationship
Related entity
Identifier of related entity
Category of relationship
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Dates of relationship
Description of relationship
Related entity
Identifier of related entity
Category of relationship
Type of relationship
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Description of relationship
Access points area
Subject access points
Place access points
Occupations
Control area
Authority record identifier
Institution identifier
Rules and/or conventions used
RAD, July 2008 version. Canadian Council of Archives.
Status
Level of detail
Dates of creation, revision and deletion
Catalogued April 2022.
Language(s)
Script(s)
Sources
1) Archival material
2) https://www.piquenewsmagazine.com/whistler-news/saying-goodbye-to-a-whistler-original-2474913
3) https://blog.whistlermuseum.org/2020/04/28/dick-fairhurst-of-cypress-lodge/
4) https://blog.whistlermuseum.org/2020/05/05/dick-fairhurst-of-cypress-lodge-part-two/
5) https://www.pqbnews.com/obituaries/eunice-fairhurst-eileers/
5) https://blog.whistlermuseum.org/tag/kelly-fairhurst/page/2/