When I was a kid, our much-anticipated first stop would be at the copper mining community of Britannia Beach, in the 1930s the biggest in the British Empire. It was shut down in 1974, and we loved watching the dilapidated wooden complex gradually decay down the hillside when we would stop at the Britannia Tea House in a 1905 historic house at the base of the mine. These days it's a national historic site and the mine has been rebuilt into the excellent BC Museum of Mining ("X Files" viewers might recognize it as an oft-used location), with trips down the shafts in rail cars and guides starting up ear-splitting drills to give a real sense of mining life. That old copper fountain teahouse has taken on a new life as well, as the Galileo Coffee Co., which roasts its own brew and serves home-baked goodies.
A few miles farther, mossy trees drip onto the short rain forest trail from the highway toward Shannon Falls as I walk to the base of the great thundering chute plummeting 1,000 feet; in winter it crystallizes into an ice dc contactor fountain that is a magnet for climbers. This is one of the starting points for a favorite hike, winding up to the sheer granite cliff top of the Stawamus Chief overlooking Howe Sound and the jagged glacier-draped Tantalus Range beyond. Lying down and peering over the edge, I can see climbers working their way up.
At the Chief's feet is the community of Squamish. It was once just a pit stop signaling the halfway point to Whistler. The no-frills town streets still reflect their logging past, but Squamish has morphed into an outdoor lover's epicenter, with perfect terrain for kayakers and river rafters, mountain shredder bikers and kite boarders. After the workout of your choice, the Howe Sound Brewing Co. is the place to unwind, put up your feet and sip a pint from a lineup of microbrews.
Squamish and the region north toward Lillooet is home to a thriving First Nation's population that has helped put the whole area on the map as Canada's second-most artistic small community, according to a national 2001 census.
A group of artists in Squamish got together to create the Upstares Gallery on Cleveland Street, a warren of display rooms and workshops. Just a few miles up the binding machine road is the Brackendale Art Gallery, a sprawling log-cabin-ish structure that is an art gallery/theater/teahouse/restaurant, with a multifaith chapel thrown in for good measure. It's been run for decades by its creator, an eccentric Dane named Thor Froslev, famed for offering eclectic evenings such as classical piano performances with Hungarian goulash and a display of kinetic sculptures.
From November through February, the focus at the gallery and in Brackendale in general turns to bald eagles, thousands of them, that arrive to gorge themselves on huge Chum salmon struggling up the Squamish River to their spawning grounds. The raptors perch like giant Christmas ornaments in the cottonwood trees lining the river, the largest congregation of its binoculars kind on earth. Brackendale residents celebrate with an informal wintertime Eagle Festival that includes volunteers counting the birds - in January they spotted 956, but some years as many as 3,400 have shown up for the waterborne buffet.
Whistler Village in winter is the hub of skiing, snowshoeing, heli-glacier tours, tubing and snowcatting. In summer it hosts a barrage of diverse festivals and competitions like Kokanee Crankworx, one of the world's premier mountain bike gatherings, and the Canadian Cheese Rolling Championships, a telescope deceptively dangerous sport that has competitors chasing an 11-pound cheese wheel downhill.
But there is also a new showplace for the culture of the Squamish and Lil'wat First Nations peoples who live along the Sea-to-Sky corridor. The Lil'wat Cultural Centre opens each morning with traditional drumming. Friendly guides unobtrusively help give meaning to the art and artifacts throughout the spacious and classy venue, and in the cafe, a menu inspired by First Nations ingredients offers goodies like venison chili and bison salami.