The 99er Trail: Looking for My Father in Squamish

GRIFTER’S TALES · BY COLIN LEE MACLEOD

I went back thinking about eggs Benedict. What came with that thought was my dad, a diner, and a bear under the porch.

Opening banner: an illustration from our Sea-to-Sky guide, not an archival photograph.

It started with breakfast

When I headed back through Squamish on my Sea-to-Sky trip, I was hoping to go to the 99er restaurant for eggs Benedict or something like that. That was the thought: go back, have breakfast, see what was there.

But the 99er was already part of my life long before this trip. My father was James Joseph MacLeod—Jimmy to the people who knew him—and the diner brings back memories of him and of being a kid.

The bear under the porch

I remember there being a bear problem in Squamish. Dad had a bear trap under the porch, and one day he caught a bear. I was probably about six years old.

Curiosity got the best of me.

I can’t give you every detail of what happened next. It’s a childhood memory, not a report written that afternoon. What stays with me is the surprise of the bear being there, and the feeling of those days. When I think back, I remember it as fun. The good old days.

It was the eighties. A diner was a diner. And this one was the fucking 99er.

A name that still opens a conversation

Coming back as an adult, I went looking for traces of Dad’s connection to the place. In Squamish, a barber remembered him. That conversation gave me another lead: the Cliffside Pub.

There’s something about going somewhere with a name from your own life and finding that somebody else remembers it. You bring your memories. They have theirs. A conversation gives you another place to look.

That is where this part of the trail takes me: breakfast on my mind, a childhood memory of a bear, and people who still remember Jimmy MacLeod. I don’t have every piece of the story. But I’ve got a reason to keep asking.