The pastor of Our Lady of the Mountains parish in Whistler, Father Andrew L’Heureux, dreams of a future when a flock of pilgrims, backpacks loaded and spirits high, assemble outside of Holy Rosary Cathedral in downtown Vancouver. The pilgrims take one last, respectful look at the cathedral’s evocative Homeless Jesus statue—the Catholics among them making the sign of the cross—and then they turn to start a multi-day hike to Whistler.

Whistler’s awe-inspiring scenery will surely draw such trekkers, Father L’Heureux said in an interview. But a more powerful pull may emanate from a beautiful new church the parish is planning. “People who come looking for an earthly paradise could find themselves discovering a heavenly one as well,” he said.

Father Andrew L’Heureux celebrating an outdoor Mass in Alberta.

The prospect of a Vancouver-to-Whistler pilgrimage trail is one of several opportunities that Father L’Heureux sees as arising from the “New Church Project.” 

A proper, new church—replacing the parish’s church hall that is currently in use—“has the potential to put Whistler on the worldwide map as a spiritual destination for pilgrimages, retreats, Catholic weddings and conferences,” he said in newsletter describing the project. “The word has spread, and we already have interest from a few retreat masters.”

Although closely associated with Vancouver, Our Lady of the Mountains (OLM) parish is actually part of the Kamloops diocese. It has already raised $3.3 million towards the church project and is counting on major donations, likely from well-heeled Vancouverites who have second homes at Whistler, to help it reach its $5-million goal.

Philanthropist Andy Szocs heads the OLM fundraising team. “We’re not trying to siphon off from the Vancouver archdiocese,” he said in an interview. “but we’re looking for people who could give to both.”

When the Whistler resort opened in the mid-1960s, Catholics services were held in the non-denomination 60-seat Skiers’ Chapel, a tiny A-frame building built in 1968. Our Lady of the Mountains Parish was officially established in 1993, and construction of the multi-purpose church hall began a year later.

Although the parish has fewer than 100 families, it must also serve the needs of the 2.5-million skiers, hikers, bicyclists, and other vacationers who, in pre-pandemic times, travelled annually to the all-seasons resort community.

Father L’Heureux, who has been pastor of the Whistler parish for less than two years, admits to being astonished at the speed at which the new-church project is coming to life. “The whole thing is ridiculous to me,” he said with a laugh. “But I believe this is what God wants us to do.” 

The new church will seat 200, but will adjoin the existing hall, which will be reengineered so it can open to the new church to provide an additional 300 seats during busy seasons such as Easter and Christmas.

“We’re in the third round of design and once that’s finished, we can start with the permitting process, which should take about nine months,” Father L’Heureux said. If all goes well, ground-breaking will take place in the spring of 2023.

The primary purpose of the new church is to provide parishioners with a truly sacred space. “For we Catholics, there’s such a necessity for the sacraments and that’s the opportunity to spend intimate time with God,” Father L’Heureux said. “And right now, because our church is a multi-purpose centre, it doesn’t really have that. It’s never fully set aside for the worship of God, to show the importance of why we worship as Christians and how essential it is to have a space set aside solely for the worship of God.”

Furthermore, a proper church is the physical representation of the kingdom of God, he said. “It represents heaven when you enter a church. We believe it’s heaven because God is there. So our church buildings are actually meant to represent something other than just a functionality. They  are meant to represent the kingdom of God, our eternal foundation.”

While incorporating natural-wood structures and finishes that have come to be associated with Whistler, the new church will also be traditional in design. The church architects are Oberto Oberti and Glenn Ledingham of Oberto Oberti Architecture and Urban Design Inc. of Vancouver. 

“Older churches always had this idea that the whole church had this amazing upward thrust to it,” Father L’Heureux said. “The roof pointed straight up.  You’ll often notice there’s a point to the windows, the doors, everything.  Everything in the church is reminding you, ‘go upwards, friend, go upwards.’  And so when we build this church, we want to   incorporate some of this amazing symbolism, to remind people how amazing and important and how special it is to worship God.”

He pointed out that, unlike the current church hall, which boasts a large window behind the altar, the new church will be designed to keep churchgoers’ focus inside. “That’s because our purpose in coming to church is not to look out at nature, but to focus to bring our heart back into the presence of God,” Father L’Heureux said. “It’s almost like it will be an opportunity to close down the senses, so you can experience that one sense of being with God, alone.”

An important part of his vision for the future of the parish is to expand its mission to make Whistler “a place of Catholic destination,” where Catholic organizations, such as the Napa Institute in California, can hold satellite events. “Whistler is a beautiful place,” Father L’Heureux said. “It’s a natural destination. So we also want to make it into a supernatural destination.”

The final part of the vision is the pilgrimage trail. There’s no continuous trail at present, but Father L’Heureux said he thinks it is inevitable that a full trail will eventually be completed, which would then allow for a Vancouver-to-Whistler pilgrimage to take place, finishing at the new OLM church.

He notes that on famous pilgrimage trails like the Camino de Santiago in Spain, perhaps only five percent of hikers actually have religious intentions in mind when they begin, but “100 percent of the people have a spiritual experience while being on the trail.”

He envisions pilgrims carrying a grain of incense with them. “When they get to the shrine here, the church could have a ceremony, where they burn the incense and watch the smoke to up to heaven, like their prayers,” he said.  In addition, statues of saints and Our Lady could also provide a final touchstone for pilgrims.

The old Whistler Skiers’ Chapel, built in 1968, the predecessor of Our Lady of the Mountains. (Whistler Museum and Archives Society)

Parishioner Sarah Neilson is excited by the prospect. Neilson, who with her husband, Adam, is raising a family of six children in Whistler, notes that Canadians often travel overseas to go on pilgrimages. “Wouldn’t it be so amazing if these groups, like from Vancouver and the Sea-to-Sky region, went on pilgrimage here,” she said in an interview. “They wouldn’t have to fly to Europe or South America. They could just come up to Whistler and do it. That would be phenomenal.”

Once at Whistler, pilgrims—whether Christian or not—would undoubtedly be moved by the resort’s beauty, she said. “Wouldn’t that be an amazing thing? Being at Whistler, you can just turn a corner, summit to the top of a mountain on some kind of hike, and your breath is literally taken away by the glory of God’s creation,” she said. “So many people come here, looking for something. And wouldn’t it be something if, inadvertently, they found God.”


‘Giving while living’ philosophy
boosts new church

Andy Szocs, who is heading the team raising funds to build a new church at our Lady of the Mountains parish in Whistler, believes in “giving while living.” That’s why he has personally donated $2 million of the $3.3 million raised so far towards construction of the $5-million project.

Szocs, 82, who retired to Whistler from West Vancouver after a successful career as founder and president of Norpac Controls Ltd., also hopes to use his considerable connections in both the business world and the Catholic community to help the parish reach its fundraising goal.

“We’ve already got a total of nine $100,000 donors, and the majority of those are from the Vancouver area,” he said in an interview. “We’ve come a long ways, but this is a tough grind.”

It’s a grind that may be made smoother by Szocs’s many affiliations with Catholic institutions. He is a member of the “board of visitors” of the school of business at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C.; he is on the board of the Denver-based Augustin Institute, a private Catholic graduate school of Catholic theology; and he is a member of the Papal Foundation, based in Chester, Pennsylvania, whose mission is to support the needs of the Church and the Holy Father.

“I’ve been very successful in my business, and deeper and deeper in my Catholic faith,” Szocs said. “I’ve adopted the philosophy, just by going out and talking to people, of ‘giving while living.’ And what that means is that I’m not going to wait until the end [to support worthy causes]. I know that, while I am here, giving this way, it’s very personally rewarding to be able to say that I’m making a difference.”

He said that the Andy Szocs Foundation currently supports 36 separate charities.

Szocs said he is enthusiastic about the potential for the new Whistler church to be a magnet for Catholic conferences and retreats. He pointed to the Napa Institute in California, which brings together 700 Catholic Church and business leaders for an annual conference, as a potential visitor.

In fact, he said he has already persuaded Napa Institute founder Tim Busch to hold smaller retreats and conferences at Whistler once the new church is built, “to show them God in his glory [at Whistler]. And so that’s what we are trying to accomplish.”

If you would like to donate to the church campaign, visit whistlercatholicchurch.ca/giving.