Fairmont

Fairmont

The community now known as Fairmont Hot Springs is a short distance south of Radium. God,

it's really a beautiful place to be. It is like the Okanagan. There was a lot of work along the

lakeshore there.

The Fairmont Hot Springs resort property owned by a British family—apparently part of the

nobility—came up for sale. Two loggers, brothers named Lloyd and Earl Wilder, had a little

money set aside. They bought Fairmont Hot Springs, including some three thousand acres—a big

tract of land. The area had excellent water, not as clear as at Radium Hot Springs, but still nice

with a large and sustainable flow.

Anyway, these chaps bought the property and guess what? I was the only surveyor working in

the area. So, naturally, I got the job of advising what to do, building right from a piece of land

that had next to nothing on it, except a crummy swimming pool. There was no accommodation

or anything. I had to figure out what to do.

And boy, did I ever have fun doing everything. We subdivided some lots so that some other

people could get into the area. The brothers decided to build accommodation for guests. I had the

job of locating the building and even making sure that the building did not destroy any of the

nicer trees. This lodge had to fit into the landscape. The swimming pool had to be designed so

there was a diving pool and everything.

The main highway was rebuilt through the area. A subdivision was permitted, and a couple of

commercial sites were created off the old highway, which was about two hundred feet back from

the new main highway. I can remember doing the subdivision on the old highway. I have a

particularly fond memory of leaving a prestigious big tree in the middle of the roadway initially.

Eventually, we had to cut it down because it was kind of dangerous. You do not normally have a

big tree in the middle of the road.

But as they created the subdivision, the owners had the idea to build a ski hill on the property.

One of them got into a small plane with a pilot and others, looking for a place to put a ski hill on

the mountainside. They flew the plane in too close and crashed into the mountainside.

Fortunately, they were going slowly, and it was not a major high impact crash. They all got out,

but one of the guys did not feel good and later he passed away.

After viewing the mountain, the owners decided to develop the ski hill. And I got the job of

deciding where to put it. They built it according to my design. Lo and behold, it worked well

enough that they decided to build a lodge there and rebuild the road. I had done a control survey,

indicating the elevation of all the points. I still remember engineering a two- or three-mile piece

of road from basic information or the information that I had managed to get by a long-distance

laser machine off the top of the Bugaboo mountains. I even hired another survey outfit with

special equipment to make the measurements so that I could do the design.

I still remember figuring out where to put the road in Lakewood. I can remember showing them

where they had to build this road to make it no steeper than eight percent grade so that people

would be able to get up to the ski hill site all year long.

But when they built the lodge at the ski hill, we had a few problems. We had installed a tow

initially that was not appropriate for the larger facility. We had to change the position of the

handlebar. We designed it and put the bar in a new place where it worked out really well. We

just had to turn the tow a little bit, but we were able to leave it in the same place. I thought that

was pretty smart and it was real simple to do. It took a pile of money, though, and everything

worked out. But that area is considered an arid zone. It does not get much snow. But they kept

the hill groomed so smooth that you could ski on four or five inches of snow.

I sponsored a BC Land Surveyors convention in that building. Some of the visitors thought I was

a part owner of the place. And I said, no, I had just designed virtually everything that was done

there. I'm so proud of the accomplishment and how successful it was. It was a family

enterprise—not a big corporation. As a matter of fact, the two brothers split up. The one brother

had a good feeling for the business and did everything that I suggested. The other fellow did not

agree with a lot of it, so he was bought out. He took his share and bought tractor or bulldozer

equipment. He tried to be a contractor, and I think he went broke with his sons doing that.

But the project overall worked well. We even laid out an airport runway down in the area where

the land was not good for development. I still remember once having one of my friends, a one-

eyed pilot (with full government licensing!) fly me up there. When we flew into the airport, there

were cattle grazing on the runway, and we could not land there. We had to land up in Invermere

and then get somebody to come and pick us up and take us down so that I could attend the

planning meeting at the Fairmont lodge.