A hundred years ago, I was fortunate enough to get a glimpse into one of Zube Aylward’s most famous creations – his Mushroom House in Emerald Estates.

It was a personal tour, together with photographer John Bartosik (no, we are not related, but we both have Polish blood), plus a conversation with Zube and his modest wife Pat. All this was for an article in Whistler Magazinetriggered by Zube’s legendary, if selectively constructed character and the expression of this in the houses he built in a style so eclectic and confident that one of his friends coined the term “Zubest architecture” to describe it.

Here, dear reader, please note: I do not use the term “iconic” lightly. Or overuse it, as I have been doing lately. But this amazing structure, a personal creative statement that goes far beyond a mere “home,” has become a symbol of the best that defines at least some of Whistler. Ironically, both building forms – the house and the village – began to spring up like giant mushrooms in 1980. And both are still with us, albeit changed, like all things we humans touch.

Now, as Whistler grows and transforms into something else, Mushroom House feels more symbolic than ever, perhaps even a little nostalgic, especially since Zube was murdered in a horrific, mysterious case in 2018 while living in the last house he and Pat built on a remote plot of land on Anderson Lake. More on that in a moment, but back to my tour with the man himself…

Zube, who definitely had his own way of doing things, including feigning amnesia when asked his age, explained that for him a house was like a sculpture. “It arises directly from the roots of the rocks. You take the elements that are directly present in the environment and build from them,” he said.

It should feel like an adventure and refreshing – “like a bit of sleep or meditation.” Or like nature. (I don’t know about you, but I personally love the idea of ​​rocks having roots. And houses looking like mushrooms.)

As Zube was planning the Mushroom House, he was also thinking about the little secret hideouts most of us had as children: under fragrant lilac bushes in June, in hastily erected tents made of wool blankets, or behind curtains in a room full of people much taller than 4 feet 2 inches. Cozy, innocent interludes that I think hippies and dropouts often try and still try to emulate.

Zube and Pat tongue-in-cheek called it “The Hovel,” their nickname for the hut they lived in before Mushroom House was ready to live in. It took six long years to complete.

You have to admit, “The Hovel” is quite a nickname for such a magnificent structure that references nature in so many ways: the curved forms of wood, metal and stone – all anchored by the 15-ton granite boulder that serves as a heat reservoir for the computer-controlled self-heating/cooling system. Remember, planning began in the late 1970s. Who had heard of computerization back then, especially in your own home?

A wavy roof; beautiful stained glass (all by Yves Trudeau, the Lower Mainland glass artist, not the Quebec serial killer/biker); walnut panels from an old Scottish castle; twisted parquet floors in the kitchen; marble lily pads in the bathroom; carefully stamped copper pennies so the dates are legible, used as washers for the bronze nails in the mahogany floor. Even spiderwebs of copper cables woven into tree trunk railings like human limbs line the stairs to one of the 11 different floors.

Watching over it all from the elegant living room is a giant quartz-eyed dragon perched on the mantel of the enormous stone fireplace built by Bernard Thor, another multi-talented Renaissance man who built his own off-grid home on Anderson Lake and stayed behind to (successfully) protect it from last summer’s devastating Casper Creek wildfire.

Before Mushroom House, the Aylwards put their energy into another house just up the road they called The Willing Mind – all before their final Zubest creation at Anderson Lake. It was there that Zube was brutally murdered in a case that was never solved. I’m still waiting for someone to make a great podcast about it.

All this occurred to me when I read Liz McDonald’s recent article in Piqueabout the renewed sale of the Aylwards’ former house and property at Anderson Lake, complete with huge garden and wilderness surroundings. At the same time, a copy of Euell Gibbons’ On the hunt for wild asparagus was lying open on my desk. Euell and Zube: Both are memories of the wild and wonderful 70s. Both died far too young. Both remained steadfastly true to themselves even after a few missteps. And both are known in their respective communities for their love and appreciation of nature.

If you haven’t come across Euell Gibbons yet, let’s just say his iconic (ahem) book On the hunt for wild asparagus about foraging for wild foods is a hippie classic that is currently enjoying a renaissance with the next wave of wonderful, young neo-hipsters. And for good reason.

“We live in an incredibly complex society that has been able to provide us with a variety of material things, and that is a good thing, but people are beginning to suspect that we have paid a high spiritual price for our abundance,” wrote Gibbons.

Although his book and ideas did not receive widespread attention until the late 1960s, Gibbons wrote this sentence, which could have been written by Zube himself, in 1962, when Garibaldi Lifts was just beginning to develop Whistler as a ski resort and Whistler Mountain was still called London Mountain. (The name did not change until 1965, when construction of the Roundhouse began.)

If you like foraging wild food, stay tuned for my next post. In the meantime, check out the Whistler Public Library – they have loads of books on the subject. Not Gibbon’s masterpiece, unfortunately, but a birdie told me that if you ask for it online here, the librarians might add it to the collection.

Glenda Bartosh is an award-winning journalist who loves that the Whistler Museum has old copies of Whistler Magazine in its collection, including the Summer 1983 edition with the article about Zube reproduced above.