OCTOBER 7, 2021 ISSUE 28.40
WWW.PIQUENEWSMAGAZINE.COM
FREE BASTING
Gobble up all the gog gles a n d g e a r yo u need at t h i s we e ke n d ’s Thanksgivin g sales
14
GOING UP?
A petition aims to make
COVID-19 vaccines mandatory on gondolas
18
RAPID RESPONSE
Flurry of police
calls mark unusual week in Sea to Sky
60
WRITE OFF
The Whistler Writers
Festival celebrates 20 years
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THIS WEEK IN PIQUE
52 60
46 Uninhabitable As parts of the world become uninhabitable due to rising heat, a group of refugee lawyers say Canada could become an important oasis. - By Stefan Labbé
14
VACCINE VERIFICATION
Neither the
38
SCHOOL SUPPORT
Pemberton’s future
province nor Whistler Blackcomb currently requires proof of vaccination to
French-speaking school École la Vallée takes one more step towards
ride a gondola—a petition is trying to change that.
breaking ground.
18 RAPID RESPONSE
52
In a span of five days,
RECORD SMASHED
Oregon runner Max King
RCMP dealt with two gun scares, a potential youth fight, and a
shattered the Whistler Alpine Meadows 25K course record finishing in
weapons assault.
under two hours.
22
FEEDING FRENZY
A Whistler woman was fined
60
A CELEBRATION OF WRITING
$60,000 in a landmark case after she pled guilty to feeding black bears in
Whistler Writers Festival will celebrate its 20th anniversary, with 13
2018 from her Kadenwood home.
reading events and 16 workshops.
The
COVER Am I the only one who buys a pair of goggles every second year and ruins them on the first wet pow day? Goggle, goggle, goggle! - By Jon Parris 4 OCTOBER 7, 2021
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THIS WEEK IN PIQUE
Opinion & Columns 08 OPENING REMARKS This week is National Newspaper Week, a chance for media to remind
#202 -1390 ALPHA LAKE RD., FUNCTION JUNCTION, WHISTLER, B.C. V8E 0H9. PH: (604) 938-0202 FAX: (604) 938-0201 www.piquenewsmagazine.com
readers of the value of trusted news sources.
Founding Publishers KATHY & BOB BARNETT
10 LETTERS TO THE EDITOR Letter writers this week are again calling out Vail Resorts for not
Publisher SARAH STROTHER - sstrother@wplpmedia.com
requiring those using the Whistler Blackcomb gondolas to be double vaccinated.
Editor CLARE OGILVIE - edit@piquenewsmagazine.com Assistant Editor BRADEN DUPUIS - bdupuis@piquenewsmagazine.com Sales Manager SUSAN HUTCHINSON - shutchinson@wplpmedia.com Production Manager AMIR SHAHRESTANI - ashahrestani@wplpmedia.com Art Director JON PARRIS - jparris@wplpmedia.com Advertising Representatives
13 PIQUE’N YER INTEREST Be aware where the information you consume comes from, and actively seek to broaden your sources, writes guest columnist Tim Shoults.
82 MAXED OUT The inbox is overflowing, so this week Max answers some of your burning questions on the political landscape, turkey or ham, and truth.
TESSA SWEENEY - tsweeney@wplpmedia.com GEORGIA BUTLER - gbutler@wplpmedia.com Digital/Sales Coordinator AMELA DIZDARIC - traffic@wplpmedia.com Production production@piquenewsmagazine.com
Environment & Adventure
Arts & Entertainment/Features Editor BRANDON BARRETT - bbarrett@piquenewsmagazine.com
44 RANGE ROVER As the snowline creeps down the mountain, it’s time to curl up and watch some
Social Media Editor MEGAN LALONDE - mlalonde@piquenewsmagazine.com
inspiring ski and ride movies, writes Leslie Anthony.
Reporters BRADEN DUPUIS - bdupuis@piquenewsmagazine.com BRANDON BARRETT - bbarrett@piquenewsmagazine.com MEGAN LALONDE - mlalonde@piquenewsmagazine.com ALYSSA NOEL arts@piquenewsmagazine.com HARRISON BROOKS - sports@piquenewsmagazine.com
Lifestyle & Arts
58 FORK IN THE ROAD As we head into the Thanksgiving long weekend let’s spread our gratitude
Classifieds and Reception mail@piquenewsmagazine.com
out to everyone in our community.
Office and Accounts Manager HEIDI RODE - hrode@wplpmedia.com Contributors G.D. MAXWELL, GLENDA BARTOSH, FEET BANKS, LESLIE ANTHONY, ANDREW MITCHELL, ALISON TAYLOR, VINCE SHULEY, LISA RICHARDSON
64 MUSEUM MUSINGS Have you ever wondered how Tourism Whistler got its start? Read this week’s column to find out all about its precursor.
President, Whistler Publishing LP SARAH STROTHER - sstrother@wplpmedia.com Pique Newsmagazine (a publication of Whistler Publishing Limited Partnership, a division of Glacier Media) distributed to over 130 locations in Whistler and to over 200 locations from Vancouver to D’Arcy. The entire contents of Pique Newsmagazine are copyright 2021 by Pique Newsmagazine (a publication of WPLP, a division of Glacier Media). No portion may be reproduced in whole or in part by any means, including electronic retrieval systems, without the express written permission of the Publisher. In no event shall unsolicited material subject this publication to any claim or fees. Copyright in letters and other (unsolicited) materials submitted and accepted for publication remains with the author but the publisher and its licensees may freely reproduce them in print, electronic or other forms. Letters to the Editor must contain the author’s name, address and daytime telephone number. Maximum length is 250 words. We reserve the right to edit, condense or reject any contribution. Letters reflect the opinion of the writer and not that of Pique Newsmagazine. Pique Newsmagazine is a member of the National Newsmedia Council, which is an independent organization established to deal with acceptable journalistic practices and ethical behaviour. If you have concerns about editorial content, please contact (edit@ piquenewsmagazine.com). If you are not satisfied with the response and wish to file a formal complaint, visit the web site at mediacouncil. ca or call toll-free 1-844-877-1163 for additional information. This organization replaces the BC Press council (and any mention of it).
ISSN #1206-2022 Subscriptions: $76.70/yr. within Canada, $136.60/yr. courier within Canada. $605.80/ yr. courier to USA. GST included. GST Reg. #R139517908. Canadian Publications Mail Product Sales Agreement #40016549. We acknowledge the support of the Government of Canada
58
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OPENING REMARKS
Truth matters THIS IS AN IMPORTANT WEEK. It is National Newspaper Week, and it is a time when I usually think deeply about one of the things that matters most to me in the world—bringing my community of readers relevant, meaningful, useful, informative and trustworthy news. It is not news that over the last several years social media has radically altered
BY CLARE OGILVIE edit@piquenewsmagazine.com
how and where we consume news and information, and there are inherent dangers in this. All too often readers accept what they find on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and even Snapchat as gospel when it is not. And this has really threatened the news industry. This past year, while we may no longer
texts, phone calls and even the occasional letter calling us out for information or opinion in an article. We do our best to listen and engage professionally with those who take the time to reach us, even when they are hostile. And I hope that most of them come to understand that we rely ourselves on trusted sources of news, and that this is always the basis of what we report. I would argue that only by the news media providing you the reader with informed information can you think critically about what is happening around you and form opinions. A colleague, Gordon Cameron, the managing editor for Metroland’s Hamilton Community News, the Sachem and the Glanbrook Gazette said this in his editorial for National Newspaper Week: “Too often, debates move from what should be a free exchange of ideas into a no-holds-barred, zero sum game clash for the ages. “It’s bad because with that winningis-everything mentality, the lines between
“It’s bad because with that winning-iseverything mentality, the lines between truth and ‘truth’ get blurred.” - GORDON CAMERON
have a U.S. president that made us all think the proverbial court jester was in charge, the pandemic has brought out just about every crazy person on social media. Add a federal election in there, and well, you get the picture. You won’t be surprised to read that every reporter and columnist at Pique gets a healthy number of emails, comments,
truth and ‘truth’ get blurred. Inconvenient facts get ignored, projections are presented as certainties and counter arguments are dismissed with only the flimsiest of pretexts. Not only that, the tone can range from haughty and superior to ridicule and outright bullying. “And that’s no way to come to a decision in a functioning democracy. It’s
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supposed to be the rule of the people, not the rule of the loudest.” I echo this sentiment. Consider the fact that according to a 2019 international public opinion poll conducted by Ipsos Public Affairs, a whopping nine in 10 Canadians say they have fallen for fake news. Tragic. But the truth can’t be faked. The truth does not have an opinion, it doesn’t care if it agrees with your opinions or not, and Pique’s job is to bring you the truth so that you can have an informed opinion. Local newspapers have a complicated and symbiotic relationship with their readers and social media followers. We need each other. That is one of the reasons it is so frightening to consider the news deserts that are appearing across Canada as the community news industry faces an almost extinction-level event struggling with the impacts of revenue losses due to COVID19 and the rise of social media platforms. About 30 community newspapers have closed across our country in the last year, while 182 media outlets have reported layoffs or job losses. A total of 17 companies with multiple media holdings also reported layoffs or job losses. More than 1,200 employees (journalists and other workers) were laid off during the pandemic, according to data collected by the COVID-19 Media Impact Map for Canada, a joint project by online publication J-Source, the Canadian Association of Journalists and the Local News Research Project at Ryerson University’s journalism school. We hope we are inspiring you, informing you and connecting you. We hope, like those here at Pique, that you will champion the truth, and we hope that readers understand the link between a strong media, democracy and the media’s role in keeping a watchful eye on powerful institutions on behalf of the public. n
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WHISTLER, BC
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LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Enclosed skilift gondolas are no place for the unvaccinated (This letter was addressed to health minister Adrian Dix and Public Health Officer Dr. Bonnie Herny and shared with Pique.) Whistler Blackcomb (WB) has recently published its operating procedures for the upcoming 2021/22 ski season. It seems that WB intends to load gondola ski lifts to capacity without any requirement for proof of vaccination. This implies to me that if I choose to ski at WB [this] season, I risk sharing a very enclosed space with one or more unvaccinated people, multiple times a day. I think it is fair to say that most people tend to ski in groups of like-minded friends. Hence, sharing a gondola with one unvaccinated person may likely mean sharing it with two, three or four unvaccinated people. I am a cancer patient receiving regular chemo treatments. I have had two COVID-19 jabs, and am looking forward to receiving a booster shot but God knows the state of my immune system and the level of immunity I enjoy. Certainly my blood test results are far from normal. If unvaccinated people are allowed unrestricted access to ski lifts, then I expect many unvaccinated visitors from Alberta and Saskatchewan, as well as from points
throughout B.C., will choose to ski at WB. I am a life-long skier who has skied regularly at WB for more than 40 years. I have purchased a ski pass for this upcoming season with the hope of sharing one more season with my grandchildren. However, if the proposed operating conditions prevail, I will significantly curtail my participation. I feel the risk is too great. The B.C. government has required proof of vaccination for most “optional” activities in indoor settings. I strongly believe that gondola ski lifts have been an oversight. I strongly urge [the health minster and the public health officer] to add enclosed gondolas to the list of settings where proof of vaccination is required. Irrespective of my medical condition, I
would feel this way, and I know many other healthy skiers who are equally apprehensive. L H Brown // Delta
Son will be working in the Alps this season, not Whistler I feel for all the small-business owners in Whistler. My 18-year-old son learned to ski at the Whistler Blackcomb ski school and has grown up skiing in Whistler. He and two of his friends wanted to come to Whistler to work and ski this winter season. He has joint Irish and British nationality, and his friends are British. They applied for the International Experience Canada (IEC) working holiday visa. Canadian Immigration
has informed him that it will take them 41 weeks to process his application! What’s more, for the IEC, one applies into a “pool” from which certain applicants are then invited to apply for the actual visa. The quota for Irish passport holders is 10,150; there are 8,537 spots still available, and only 2,677 applicants in the pool. Despite this, he has been advised by the Canadian government website that the chances of him receiving an invitation are “very low.” First, why does processing this visa take so long? The equivalent visa in Ireland is processed within four weeks, and in the U.K. in three weeks. I cannot imagine that many young people would have applied for the IEC program 41 weeks before the ski season starts, i.e. in mid-summer this year, when the Canadian border was still closed and there was no suggestion it would re-open. Secondly, why are his prospects of receiving an invitation so low, when there is a quota that is more than three times the number of applicants? If this is an undisclosed COVID-19risk limitation measure by the Canadian government, and there is a weighting based upon perceived risk by country, the criteria should be place of residence, not passport. My son is resident in Hong Kong, which has had no local COVID-19 cases for more than 40 days. Apologies, Whistler business owners—he wanted to come and help this winter, but it looks as though he will have to go to the Alps instead. Oonagh Toner // Hong Kong
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LETTERS TO THE EDITOR Commit to humanity Thank you to everyone at The Squamish Lil’wat Cultural Centre (SLCC) for a beautifully curated National Day for Truth and Reconciliation. It was a perfect balance of celebration of the beautiful culture and the painful stories that need to be heard. I am truly appreciative for everyone’s time. The SLCC is such a Whistler treasure and by encouraging all visitors to make this part of their itineraries perhaps we can light a spark in people from all over the world to also work towards honouring and respecting their own Indigenous histories. Let’s continue to support/advocate/speak/ act for #truthandreconciliation and in the words of Chief Gelpcal, “commit to humanity.” Ace MacKay-Smith // Whistler
Driving down to Squamish it’s heartbreaking to look at the Tantalus range from the lookout. Jim Kennedy // Whistler
A big thank you from the Pemberton Canoe Association The Pemberton Canoe Association would like to send out a big thank you to the Pemberton Valley Utilities and Service Committee, the Squamish-Lillooet Regional District and the Village of Pemberton for their generous contribution to the club through the Pemberton and District Initiative Fund Program. We are very grateful for their continued support for our programs at One Mile Lake. We would also like to acknowledge the
“[I] feel that guests should have to show vaccination proof when they pickup their lift tickets.” - AMANDA WILSON
COVID-19 vaccine needed to ride gondola I am displeased to hear that Whistler Blackcomb will not be requiring vaccination proof in order to get in a gondola. COVID-19 hit our town hard and destroyed businesses, and I feel that guests should have to show vaccination proof when they pickup their lift tickets. It is not acceptable to shut down our town again because [Whistler Blackcomb owner] Vail Resorts might have to refund some season pass sales. Amanda Wilson // Whistler
We love books! The Friends of the Pemberton Library would like to report that people still read and love books! The [recent] book sale downtown was busy with every age group. I’m happy to report we broke a record for donations that day. Thank you to Blue Shore Financial for hosting us in front of your bank and giving us a jumpstart in donations for the day, and providing a gift basket to give away. Thank You to Hugh and Jan Naylor, Annette, Georgina and Rich for book and table transport, and to Valarie, Monique and Christine for working the day. Julie Kelly // Chair—Friends of the Pemberton Library
Glacier melt easily visible You don’t have to hike into the backcountry to see significant glacier loss. Looking up from the valley you wonder how many years before Whistler Bowl is ice-free.
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generous grants that the club received from the Canada Summer Employment grant, the Community Gaming Grant, the BC Summer Games Sport Partner Fund, and the Jumpstart Sport Relief Fund. This funding has allowed the club to have a great restart to programming this season. As well, we would once again like to thank the Pemberton Valley Supermarket for allowing us to take part in the grocery card fundraiser. We would also like to thank our head coach, Kristina Schrage, and the rest of our coaching staff and program leaders: Brenna Nott, Cameron McLagan, Kiana Clutesi, Anna Prohaska, Kieran Nott, Hana Ronayne, Landon Drain, and Quinn Phare. You guys did a great job running the wide range of programs we were able to offer this year and brought a wide variety of skills and strengths to the club. On top of having almost sold-out summer camps, we also added 20 new paddlers to our sprint program, which is a credit to all your hard work. Congratulations our competitive youth sprint paddlers. Landon Drain and Brenna Nott both qualified for and went to Nationals in Ottawa in August. Our under 14 Women’s Crew, which consisted of Maxine Charron, Adelaide Kluftinger, Naomi Robert, and Grace Cleland placed 2nd overall in their age category at the Pacific Cup Regatta, with Maxine placing 1st in the U14 200-metre single-kayak event. Just recently Brenna, Landon and Maxine competed with sprint paddlers from various clubs at the Concord Pacific Dragon Boat Festival, where the crew picked up a 5th place finish in the Adult Mixed A Final and a 2nd place finish in the Open Final. A huge congratulations to all the Pemberton
Write to us! Letters to the editor must contain the writer’s name, address and a daytime telephone number. Maximum length is 450 words. Pique Newsmagazine reserves the right to edit, condense or refrain from publishing any contribution. Letters reflect the opinion of the writer and not that of Pique Newsmagazine.
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OCTOBER 7, 2021
11
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR TIMING IS EVERYTHING! If you’ve been considering selling your property, now is an excellent time! Let me share with you my nearly 30 years of experience to maximize your selling price in the shortest time possible. Call or email me anytime!
Laura Wetaski • Engel & Völkers Whistler
Phone: 604-938-3798 Email: laura@wetaski.com #36 4314 Main Street, Whistler
Nick Davies, Whistler local and experienced family lawyer practising across BC andYukon.
Call at 604-602-9000 or visit www.macleanlaw.ca Maclean Law is headquartered in Vancouver with offices across British Columbia.
paddlers for a successful racing season. Look out for the return of dragon boat programming next spring! We hope to see lots of you out on the water in the big boats! Karen Tomlinson // On behalf of the board of the Pemberton Canoe Association
Boogie-ing out of COVID-19 On Sept. 18, the mountain weather didn’t put off runners, walkers, supporters and volunteers for one of the first fun runs allowed since COVID-19 rules came into place. With over 100 registrations and 71 participants we had a great morning. The Rotary Club of Whistler Millennium and the Brandywine Boogie Committee would love to recognize and thank the magic sauce that keeps events like these happening and fun—our volunteers! A few special mentions—without you, the event would not have been as smooth: John Leslie—for his enthusiasm to warm up the crowd with stretches and star jumps and being photographer on trail; Lorraine Volmer and Sally Warner for saying “yes” to anything, early morning starts and setting up tents, cutting oranges, bananas and cake; Lizi McLoughlin and Chris Wilkinson from Zero Ceiling; Cathy Jewett for on-course First Aid and sweep and for safety plan governance; Boyd McTavish for finish-line first aid; and Chris Quinlan, our wonderful MC (Thanks for stepping up at the 11th hour and doing a stellar job behind the mic. That gab is truly a gift!). Glen from Cutting Edge Designs helped us navigate the trail and the campgrounds with his wonderful signs, kindly donated each year. A wonderful volunteer and friend-ofRotary, Ned from Surrey, and local Jack Carlson also deserve a shout-out. Ned has come up for all six years, laid and cleared the trail in sun, wind and rain. Both gents are our go-tos for when you need a hammer, drill, truck, knife or a cup of hot chocolate. Thanks to Tracy and her team at Helly Hansen. Your support over the last six years has been amazing. Back in Action, Lululemon, generous prizes from the Listel, Fairmont Golf, Whistler Creekside Athletic Club, Blackcomb Liquor, Lululemon, Whistler Sailing Club and Crabapple Restaurant are also appreciated. We raised almost $5,000 this year and your ongoing support for this fundraiser goes to Zero Ceiling, WORCA and Rotary Youth Exchange. Shannon Kirkwood Rotary Club of Whistler Millennium / Brandywine Boogie Committee
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Stephen L. Milstein, Ph.D., R. Psych. BC #765 -604.938.3511 Dawna Dixx Milstein, OT. COTBC # AA0201 - 604.938.3523 Whistler: #107 - 4368 Main St, Whistler, B.C. V0N 1B4 Squamish: 38077 2nd Ave, Squamish, B.C. // 604.848.9273
Serving sea to sky for 18 years
12 OCTOBER 7, 2021
The origins of discrepancies in strata building plans that are all too common, not just in Whistler, but in many communities of the province, has its roots in the failure to recognize and embrace strata development as a number of discrete real estate entities in the form of strata lots each with individual owners in combination with common or shared property collectively owned by the owners of all strata lots on a unit entitlement, fractional basis (Pique, “ ‘Blocked by history’: Discrepancy in strata building plans frustrating RMOW, homeowners,” Sept 23). The ingrained tendency has been to view strata development in the familiar paradigm of
a single freehold land estate owned by a strata corporation with a number of collective owners, and with development in the form of buildings containing suites. This distorted view is evident in the subject article where the solution to development beyond the legal surveyed boundaries of strata lots is seen in increasing the allowable density that can be developed on the subject land. This ignores not only the legal boundaries of the strata lots documented in the surveyed strata plan registered in the land titles office, but also the legal area of the strata lots and the unit entitlement that determines the contribution of fees to be paid by owners of strata lot to maintain their portion of the common assets and common property of the strata corporation. Altering the area of a strata lot requires amendment and reregistration of the strata plan in the land titles office. In the cited example of Northern Lights, development has occurred that has expanded the legal strata lot areas and boundaries of the affected strata lots potentially into common property; property which the registered owner of the strata lot does not own. In situations where there is sufficient allowable density on the land the strata development is situated on or where an owner of a strata lot obtains permission from the strata corporation to alter the common property on the exterior of their strata lot, local governments often issue permits in the name of the owner of the strata lot instead of in the name of the strata corporation with the owner of the associated strata lot as an authorized agent. Where an alteration involves a strata lot and common property two permits are required; one issued to the owner of the strata lot, the other issued to the strata corporation. Before a local government can issue a permit to the owner of a strata lot to enlarge the boundaries of their strata lot into common property the strata corporation must sell the owner the affected portion of land then revise and reregister the strata plan. The applicant should be required to submit a copy of the revised strata with a permit application as proof of the registered owner of the property. A prerequisite to the process for permit applications to alter strata lots should be an audit of strata plan surveys pertaining to the legal boundaries and floor areas in conjunction with a review of the applicable regulations contained in the Strata Property Act. Permits should cite the strata lot area from the strata plan as the legal surveyed area and indicate that calculated building permit and code areas are approximate, may be based on different criteria and do not necessarily represent the actual legal and/or liveable area of the strata lot. Real estate transactions should provide these details since building permit and strata plan areas are typically larger than the actual net liveable floor area. As acknowledged in the subject article, strata issues are complicated. But the problems that are now manifesting have their roots in the failure of the zoning bylaws of local governments to recognize the real estate structure of strata development and address the underlying issues with regulations that preserve the status of strata lots as discrete legal real estate entities. David MacPhail // Maple Ridge n
PIQUE N’ YER INTEREST
Seek the second source UNITED
STATES Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan famously wrote in the Washington Post in 1983: “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.” Moynihan died in 2003—the year before the launch of a little company called Facebook.
BY TIM SHOULTS I try not to read too much into that, but there are days when it’s hard not to. People may not be entitled to their own facts, but thanks to the rise of the interconnected worlds of online search and social media, they certainly have access to their own facts more than ever before. The algorithms that power search, and especially social media, reinforce our preconceived notions and opinions by showing us content similar to that which we already consume and by connecting us to more people who think the same way. Ironically, that ability to connect people of similar interests is what makes social media such a powerful force for good. But that sense of belonging to a group of likeminded people makes it easier to become
FIT TO PRINT October 3 to 9 marks National Newspaper Week in Canada. attached to our views and the sources that underpin them—and makes it harder for us to change our minds when presented with new information. Then, when we do encounter people of different viewpoints, they can sound either hopelessly ignorant or actively trying
IMAGE COURTESY OF NEWSMEDIA CANADA
to subvert the truth for some malevolent reason—and guess what? You sound the same to them. All that makes civil discourse far more challenging than ever before. Arguing whether two and two make four doesn’t sound hard, but try doing it with someone
who doesn’t seem to admit to the concept of addition, let alone the existence of the number two, and thinks you’re trying to foist an evil numerist agenda on them. So what’s the solution? There isn’t one—not a big overarching one that can be imposed from outside. Rather, there are millions of small solutions—one for each of us. It starts with being aware where the information we consume comes from, and actively seeking to broaden our sources. That doesn’t mean switching off social media. It’s here to stay—even for community news sources online like the ones I work with, more than a quarter of our audience online comes from social sources. Rather, a simple solution to start is: when you find a piece of information that triggers a strong emotion—anger, surprise, fear—look for a second source. Putting a few search terms into Google might just show you a different perspective on the same issue. Is that more work? Absolutely. But it’s worth it. Tim Shoults is Operations Manager of Aberdeen Publishing, and serves as director and Past President of the BC and Yukon Community NewsMedia Association and an industry director of the National NewsMedia Council of Canada. ■
OCTOBER 7, 2021
13
NEWS WHISTLER
BC Vaccine Card not required to access gondolas, province says WHISTLER LOCAL LAUNCHES PETITION ADVOCATING FOR VAIL RESORTS TO IMPLEMENT RESORT-WIDE VACCINE MANDATE
BY MEGAN LALONDE JOHN KONIG IS already looking forward to another winter of skiing at Whistler Blackcomb. What he’s not as excited about is the possibility of sharing an enclosed gondola with a fellow guest who doesn’t share his COVID-19 vaccination status. The Whistler local recently launched a change.org petition imploring Whistler Blackcomb (WB) and its parent company Vail Resorts to require all guests be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 to access the mountains. Vail Resorts on Sept. 21 released its company-wide operations plan for the 2021/22 winter season, outlining a slate of health and safety protocols that include requiring proof of immunization for anyone 12 or older to access on-mountain dining facilities, and mandatory vaccines for all WB staff. In accordance with B.C.’s current provincial health order, skiers and riders will have to wear face coverings indoors and while riding gondolas, which WB confirmed will be loaded at normal capacity this winter. What guests don’t need to do is show a BC Vaccine Card before boarding a gondola or chairlift. Konig’s petition, created late last month, is titled “Whistler Blackcomb put public safety first, require a vaccine certificate to ski and ride.” It’s addressed
UP IN THE AIR Under the resort’s plan, Whistler Blackcomb guests won’t need to be vaccinated to load a gondola this winter. PHOTO BY STOCKSTUDIOX / GETTY IMAGES
14 OCTOBER 7, 2021
to Vail Resorts chairman and CEO Rob Katz, Whistler Blackcomb COO Geoff Buchheister, B.C. minister of health Adrian Dix and provincial health officer Dr. Bonnie Henry, and had earned upwards of 4,500 signatures as of Wednesday morning. “Our goal is not to try to prevent people from skiing but to encourage everyone to get the vaccine so we can all enjoy skiing and riding more safely,” Konig said. In addition to concerns about public safety now that the Delta variant has taken hold—particularly for seniors, those who are
on-mountain checking for restaurants.” If WB isn’t willing to change course, “there’s going to be people showing up and saying, ‘Look, I’m not [riding a gondola] with a group, I’m going up with only my own party,’” Konig continued. “I think there’s going to be that kind of response which also could cause confrontations on a powder morning.” Asked for comment in response to the petition, a spokesperson for Whistler Blackcomb replied via an emailed statement. “The safety of our guests,
“Our goal is not to try to prevent people from skiing but to encourage everyone to get the vaccine so we can all enjoy skiing and riding more safely.” - JOHN KONIG
immune-compromised and children who aren’t yet eligible to be vaccinated—Konig also raised the issue of avoiding yet another mid-season shutdown and questioned the logistics of having WB staff checking IDs at multiple mountaintop lodge entrances. “I’m all for a vaccine mandate to access the mountain, because to me that’s a simple policy,” he said. “It’s easy to administer at point-of-sale, and for season passholders, you know they’re registered as vaccinated, so you eliminate
employees and community is always our top priority. We are in touch with our provincial and local government officials, and will continue to monitor and follow all local and provincial public health orders as the pandemic evolves,” it read. A statement from B.C.’s Ministry of Health also confirmed that the BC Vaccine Card is not required to access gondolas at this time, adding, “It is important in many settings, including enclosed areas such as gondolas, to continue wearing masks
to protect ourselves and those around us from COVID-19.” Henry expanded on her reasoning for this decision during a media briefing on Friday, Oct. 1. “If you want to go to a bar or a pub or a restaurant or the restaurant on the hill then you need to have your vaccine card—I would encourage all the resorts to look at all of those settings where it might be prudent to ensure that only vaccinated people are there,” she said. “The risk is less when you’re outside; we know that, in smaller groups and when you’re wearing masks and goggles, etc. For a short period of time in a gondola, the risk is probably not the same as if you’re sitting down inside without a mask on having a drink with a group of people.” But Konig countered, “Dr. Bonnie Henry is probably not a skier.” A gondola trip from the village to Whistler’s Roundhouse takes about 25 minutes, he explained, with that trip often taking even longer in windy or stormy conditions. “We’re not talking about a couple of minutes in a gondola, we’re talking about a long time,” Konig said. “Our provincial health authority must be overburdened and stressed out, and I don’t think they have the time to examine the safety of every situation. I think they don’t understand this one, for sure.” WB’s current policies are in line with those of other B.C. lift operators such as the Sea to Sky Gondola and Grouse Mountain, though some other resorts like Kicking Horse, Big White and Revelstoke are waiting to determine how vaccine cards will fit into their winter operations. The Sea to Sky
NEWS WHISTLER
Two major RMOW projects completed COUNCIL BRIEFS: NEW F&B ESTABLISHMENT PLANNED FOR WHISTLER VILLAGE; COUNCIL APPROVES CHURCH TAX EXEMPTION
BY BRADEN DUPUIS TWO MAJOR municipal capital projects—the Alta Lake sewer extension and Millar Creek to Function Junction Valley Trail segment—are now completed. The Alta Lake sewer project is done ahead of schedule, and its completion means all of Whistler’s neighbourhoods are now connected to the municipal sanitary sewer system. The work included about one kilometre of sanitary sewer main, manholes and connections to 33 property parcels, and homeowners will be connecting to the new sewer main over the next 18 months. The cost for design and installation was about $1.3 million, shared 50/50 between the Resort Municipality of Whistler (RMOW) and affected parcel owners after a formal petition process from residents in 2019. Find more info at whistler.ca/ AltaLakeSewerUpgrade. Meanwhile, the RMOW is also celebrating the completion of the Millar Creek to Function Junction Valley Trail extension, which is now open to the public. “We are pleased to see after delays due to COVID in 2020, this important project is now complete and ready for use by the public,” said Mayor Jack Crompton in a release. “These new trail upgrades will allow visitors and locals to safely access
trails, neighbourhoods and businesses at the south end of Whistler and help us all work towards our Big Move Goal of 50 per cent of all trips within Whistler by active transportation by 2030.” The total project budget was about $1.7 million, with $1.2 million coming from the provincial Resort Municipality Initiative. Along with asphalt paving, the budget included installation of LED light poles, raised manholes, culvert upgrades and the installation of “beaver deceivers” to reduce the likelihood of flooding events. Read more at whistler.ca/valleytrail.
VILLAGE RENO SEEKS TO ADD NEW F&B ESTABLISHMENT Whistler’s mayor and council approved a development permit for a renovation of the Blackcomb Lodge building in Whistler Village at its Oct. 5 meeting. The permit proposes renovations to the ground floor of the building located at 4222 Village Square, which currently contains Araxi, Bar Oso and three vacant retail units, all owned by the Aquilini Group. The application seeks to “combine Units 120, 130, 140 and 150 to create one consolidated tenant space for a minor expansion of the existing Bar Oso and introduction of a new food and beverage concept to be called
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GONDOLA POLICY FROM PAGE 14 Gondola does, however, require visitors to ride only with their own groups. While Banff Sunshine Village will similarly require all staff to be vaccinated, the resort will also require guests to submit either proof of vaccination, proof of a privately paid negative rapid test result taken within 72 hours, or proof of valid medical exemption in accordance with Alberta’s Restrictions Exemption Program for businesses. Canada West Ski Areas Association president and CEO Christopher Nicholson said all of B.C. and Western Canada’s resort operators are implementing health and safety protocols that meet, or in some cases go “above and beyond” provincial guidelines. Nicholson said no gondolas in B.C. are currently requiring vaccine verification to his knowledge, but underscored that the ski industry is continuing to work closely with public health officials when developing protocols. “Our guidance comes from the health authorities and the health authorities are following the science,” he said. With that in mind, it was just six weeks ago that B.C. announced plans for a vaccine card initiative for some non-essential services, while seven weeks now remain until
WB’s opening day. Before lifts start spinning, the situation remains fluid, said Nicholson. “People are looking for absolutes, and unfortunately the pandemic doesn’t care about absolutes, and it’s quickly evolving so the [ski] industry is responding very quickly to that,” he said. “There’s a lot of effort that is being put in on a daily basis. I know people are looking for quick and speedy answers for what will be in two months, and that’s just not possible right now as industry and health authorities work through all the protocols.” As of Tuesday, Oct. 5, a total of 88.3 per cent of eligible British Columbians 12 and older in have received their first dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, while 81.7 per cent have received two doses. Proof of vaccination is also required for any travellers entering Canada. Though vaccinated individuals are capable of catching and spreading the virus, studies from the U.S. Center for Disease Control indicate that for vaccinated people, the risk is about one in 5,000 for breakthrough infections. In areas with a low transmission rate, it’s about one in 10,000 and they are 25 times less likely to experience hospitalization or death. n
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OCTOBER 7, 2021
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NEWS WHISTLER << FROM PAGE 15 Provisions,” said planning analyst Clancy Sloan in a report to council. The combined space will create two separate venues sharing back-of-house, kitchen and washroom facilities. As part of the renovation, the existing entrances to the currently vacant spaces will be removed with a new entrance being created for Provisions (working title). “The proposed expansion of Bar Oso is intended preserve the small-venue charm while offering a few more seats for patrons … [Provisions] is proposed to provide predominantly quick-service food and will also feature displays for grab-and-go type food items,” Sloan said.
COUNCIL APPROVES TAX EXEMPTION FOR NEW CHURCH Council also gave first three readings to a permissive tax exemption bylaw related to the new Whistler Community Church building in White Gold on Oct. 5. The church has owned the land at 7226 Fitzsimmons Rd. North since January 2003, and began construction of its new building (which held its grand opening Oct. 3—see related story on page 34) last year. The church—a member of the BC Conference of Mennonite Brethren Churches—wrote to the municipality to request the exemption under the Community
Charter. RMOW staff recommended granting a five-year tax exemption for the church, as the approach is consistent with the exemption granted to the Our Lady of the Mountains Catholic Church in Whistler Cay. Organizations that currently receive exemptions include the Whistler Waldorf School Society ($15,292 in 2022); the Whistler 2010 Sport Legacies Society (four properties totaling $137,129); Zero Ceiling ($3,540); the Whistler Community Services Society ($4,117) the Whistler Mountain Ski Club ($7,645) the Emerald Dreams Conservation Co and Decigon Development Corp ($2,716—related to the Emerald Forest); the Audain Art Museum ($257,812); the Spo7ez Cultural Centre and Community Society ($71,009); Our Lady of the Mountains Catholic Church ($20,494); the Whistler Community Church ($1,594) and the Dandelion Day Care Society ($2,304). The Howe Sound Women’s Centre also recently inquired about an exemption for a newly purchased townhouse in Whistler (to be used to provide affordable housing for families fleeing domestic violence), though a staff report noted “it is not the practice of the RMOW to grant permissive tax exemptions for affordable housing, and to do so would mark a meaningful change in approach with potentially broad implications on the property tax requisition.” Staff suggested there are better ways to support the HSWC’s request while still ensuring equal treatment for all housing providers, such as the Community Enrichment Program.
RMOW WANTS FEEDBACK ON WILDFIRE MITIGATION COMMUNICATION The Resort Municipality of Whistler is seeking feedback on its Wildfire Mitigation Program. A new online survey—which takes about five minutes to complete—is live at whistler.ca/wildfire. The survey closes at 12 p.m. on Oct. 18. Feedback from the survey will help shape the RMOW’s communications strategies related to the three pillars of its wildfire mitigation efforts: fuel thinning, FireSmart and public education, and ultimately the updated Community Wildfire Resiliency Plan. “As we see our summers become increasingly hotter, longer and drier, our risk of large-scale wildfire intensifies,” said Mayor Jack Crompton in a release. “Wildfire mitigation is a collective responsibility that requires the joint efforts of the municipality, residents, businesses and our guests. This survey will help us improve our communications efforts so the importance of the Wildfire Mitigation Program is widely understood, and the public will understand their role in reducing our risk to wildfire.” Meanwhile, a fuel management project carried out on Whistler Blackcomb’s tenure by the provincial Mountain Resort Branch is wrapping up this month, and residents can expect to see smoke as forest debris is burned.
The burning will start Oct. 6 and be completed throughout the month of October, according to a provincial release. “The material will be piled in piles no larger than two metres tall and three metres wide and will be burned only if conditions permit. All pile burning will follow the Ministry of Environment’s Open Smoke regulation to reduce smoke impacts,” the release said. “The project is being carried out in the general location of the Peak 2 Peak towers, the Crystal Ridge and Excelerator chairlift bases, and an area adjacent to parking lot P6.” The debris burning marks the last step in the project started last fall, which included understory thinning, pruning and removal of surface fuels. “Crews also removed heavy undergrowth and lower branches on trees and remove immature young trees to widen spacing between the trees within a 50-metre radius of the tower. Older mature trees were retained to provide shade to the ground and inhibit regrowth of the understory,” the release said, adding that the area is recognized as a high wildfire risk area. “Removing excess fuel will reduce wildfire occurrence, severity and spread, prevent wildfire spreading into the tops of trees, and permit better access for crews responding to wildfires in this area. The treatment will reduce the risk of wildfire to the community and provide a safer evacuation for the public if needed and will mitigate the risk to the area from wildfires.” n
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NEWS WHISTLER
Flurry of major police calls mark unusual week in Sea to Sky corridor IN SPAN OF FIVE DAYS, RCMP DEALT WITH TWO GUN SCARES, THREATENED YOUTH FIGHT, AND A WEAPON ASSAULT
BY BRANDON BARRETT IT STARTED WITH a hitchhiker firing what was initially believed to be a handgun on the side of the road in Whistler, and ended with assault charges for a man who had barricaded himself into his Pemberton home. It was a tense and unusually busy few days for police across the Sea to Sky, who responded to three major calls last week on top of issuing a warning to parents of a potential fight between groups of local youth and from the Lower Mainland. The first incident involved a Squamish hitchhiker who was reported firing what was thought to be a handgun into the air and at road signs near the entrance to Function Junction on Tuesday afternoon, Sept. 28. Mounties responded in kind, and a video shot by a passer-by and posted to social media appeared to show an officer with his firearm drawn as the suspect laid facedown on the side of Highway 99. As it turned out, the weapon was a replica Airsoft gun. “I think of the three [major calls], that
REPLICA GUN A replica Airsoft gun that was seized from a Squamish man Tuesday, Sept. 28 after he was reportedly seen firing shots into the air and at signs near Function Junction. PHOTO COURTESY OF THE WHISTLER RCMP
one was probably pretty scary as well, just because when the members came up on the person … the understanding was that he had a gun and he had fired it into the air,” Sea to Sky RCMP Officer-in-Charge Insp. Robert Dykstra told Pique.
Remarkably, it wasn’t the only weaponsrelated incident for police in the corridor that day. As first reported by The Squamish Chief, a man was arrested in Squamish after he was seen chasing a young boy with what was first reported as an AR-15 rifle in the
area of Diamond Head Road, which was closed off for much of the afternoon. Law enforcement had the situation contained by the evening, with the man surrounded in a home, as residents of the area were told to stay indoors. Again, the weapon turned out to be a replica; this time, an Airsoft rifle, noted Dykstra. The tense call and subsequent arrest drew on resources from Whistler, with local officers rushing to the neighbouring community to assist. “Hopefully we don’t see a lot of those incidents going forward in the future, but we are definitely thinking about them. It’s something that we’ve talked about,” Dykstra said. “I know from my members’ perspective, we are further educating and re-educating ourselves in our critical response.” Then, on Friday, Oct. 1, Whistler RCMP warned of a potential fight— and threatened stabbing—planned for sometime over the weekend at an undisclosed location— between groups of youth from the Lower Mainland and
SEE PAGE 20
Truth be told. Our communities are powered by local newspapers. Celebrate how trusted journalism sparks important conversations at nationalnewspaperweek.ca. This artwork was created by Canadian artist Ola Volo in celebration of National Newspaper Week from October 3-9, 2021.
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UP TO
the Sea to Sky. Police issued a release advising the community of increased patrols and urging parents to have an open conversation with their children to “ensure they stay safe this weekend.” Fortunately, the fight didn’t come to pass. According to Dykstra, the threats allegedly stemmed from an earlier altercation at a Vancouver mall, and local detachments communicated with parents of individuals “who could be involved or targeted, just to let them know what was going on,” he said. Pique heard from several local parents who were distressed by the warning—which originated with a tweet before Whistler RCMP issued a press release early Friday evening—and specifically the lack of information included. According to Dykstra, investigators were working with limited information themselves, and wanted to ensure families were aware of the developing situation. “Because it was so close to when these things were supposed to take place, we felt it was absolutely essential to get the information out there so parents could be aware,” he said, noting that police continue to investigate. “I can definitely see how seeing that would be distressing, but the other part of that would be parents seeing that and being aware that it could be distressing, [motivating them] to have
conversations with their own children.” Then, on Saturday, Oct. 2, a Pemberton man was arrested on a number of charges, including assault and assault with a weapon, following what police called “a family dispute” at an Underhill Lane home. That morning, Pemberton RCMP was called to the home and, upon arriving at the scene, located a victim outside. Officers also spoke with the suspect, who was on the roof of the home, and experiencing “a
have to continue to educate ourselves about and have to be prepared to manage.”
THREE PEOPLE ESCORTED FROM MPSC FOR FAILING TO SHOW VACCINE CARD Three people were escorted by police from the Meadow Park Sports Centre (MPSC) this week for refusing to show proof of vaccine, according to the Whistler RCMP.
“Hopefully we don’t see a lot of those incidents going forward in the future, but we are definitely thinking about them.” - ROBERT DYKSTRA
degree of what we believe to be a mentalhealth issue,” Dykstra said, before the man climbed back into the residence. At around 1:30 p.m., police said the man was safely taken into custody, shortly after a fire had broken out in the residence that was ultimately extinguished by the local fire department. “This is one of the issues when we talk about mental health: you never know where people are at,” noted Dykstra. “So mental health continues to be a big issue that we
In the first instance, on Oct. 3, two individuals had entered the MPSC’s ice rink without a mask, and when approached by a staff member, refused to show proof of vaccine and subsequently refused to leave the arena. Police were then called in to escort the pair. On what Dykstra believed to be the following day, but was unable to confirm by press time, a man had entered the Meadow Park pool without showing proof of vaccination, and also refused to leave
when approached by a staff member. Police attended and escorted the man from the facility. “The staff aren’t trained to deal with somebody who refuses, so they are obviously there to try and encourage and share information and say this is why they need to show their vaccination, and if you’re not vaccinated, you’re not entitled to come in. But these people came in and did their own thing,” Dykstra said. “So our job is to enter and do it from a public safety perspective and make sure that nothing happens, and in cases, we will issue tickets as well. Our first job is to educate but if we have to, we will issue tickets as well.” Dykstra said there has been some confusion around the public health orders, as proof of vaccination is not required in standalone swimming pools or ice rinks (not including events or adult sports hosted in these venues), but given the shared common areas at the MPSC, he said the requirements still apply. “One of the challenges people don’t recognize about the community centre is that it’s a shared entrance, shared bathrooms, shared locker rooms; there is nothing that isn’t shared once you get into that building,” he noted. “So from that perspective, one could see, if there is a requirement to show proof of vaccination, why that might be a concern. Obviously this is something that the RMOW and the community centre have to work out from their public and policies perspective." n
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Whistler woman fined $60K for feeding bears believed she was helping animals ZUZANA STEVIKOVA HAD BEEN FEEDING BLACK BEARS IN KADENWOOD THROUGHOUT SUMMER OF 2018 at a time. They also overheard Stevikova calling the bears by name. “Some people started fearing for their safety, and found themselves unexpectedly and uncomfortably close to the bears,” Provincial Court Judge Lyndsay Smith said in relaying her sentence. According to the court proceedings, Stevikova noticed the bears “looked skinny” and, by feeding them, believed she was preventing the public from calling the COS, which she thought would ultimately lead to their deaths. “We’ve got a situation where … Stevikova chooses, rather than to contact British Columbia conservation officers or the phone numbers with regard to protection of wildlife in the Whistler area, she chooses to not do that because she doesn’t think she’s going to get the answers she wants, so she talks to her own unnamed expert,” said Smith in a May 26 hearing. The COS has been contending for years with a general reluctance among some in the community to report wildlife incidents, while critics and conservationists have argued the Crown agency is overly reliant on lethal force.
Sept. 18, 2018, two conservation officers spoke with Stevikova’s spouse and co-accused, Oliver Dugan, who told them the bears “used the property to travel through” and that he thought they felt “protected from the construction in the area.” (Charges against Dugan were eventually stayed.) On that day, officers observed two yearlings on the property, two cubs in a nearby tree, and a sow. Dugan reportedly opened the property’s metal gate, and officers watched as the adult bear approached him. Subsequent attempts to haze the sow were unsuccessful. The bears had also caused damage to the garage and a cedar fence, as well as the home on several occasions. Local grocery clerks interviewed by the COS said Stevikova purchased up to 10 cases of apples, 50 pounds of carrots and 15 dozen eggs on a weekly basis to feed the bears. The adventure schoolteacher had reportedly been leaving the attractants out over a period of roughly three months. Witnesses, most of whom worked in the area, reported to investigators seeing apples or carrots “strewn about” on different parts of the property, with often up to five bears observed onsite
BY BRANDON BARRETT IN A LANDMARK case, a Whistler woman received a combined $60,000 fine last week for feeding bears from the backyard of her Kadenwood home in the summer of 2018, which she believed was ultimately helping the animals. Last Wednesday, Sept. 29, North Vancouver Provincial Court handed down what the Conservation Office Service (COS) said was the highest overall penalty ever imposed under B.C.’s Wildlife Act. The majority of the penalty will go to the Habitat Conservation Trust Foundation. The investigation was launched in July 2018 after the COS received an anonymous complaint claiming that residents of the Kadenwood neighbourhood had been deliberately feeding bears. A sow and two cubs that were fed in Kadenwood were killed by the Crown agency in September 2018 after displaying “very troubling” behaviour on the scene, conservation officers said at the time. In a visit to the Kadenwood home on
“Bears are tolerated by the community, much more than in other locations,” Smith said on Sept. 29. In a statement posted online Friday, Oct. 1, COS Sgt. Simon Gravel expressed hope that the penalty will “deter others from similar activity.” “The primary concern of the COS is public safety. Illegally feeding or placing attractants to lure dangerous wildlife, such as bears, is an extremely dangerous activity,” he wrote in the post. “Once bears learn to associate humans with food, it creates a public safety risk.” In a relatively rare joint submission, the Crown and defence counsel had earlier asked for a smaller $10,000 fine to be imposed, which took into consideration, among other factors, Stevikova’s early guilty plea, her high moral culpability and the number of days the offences took place. Ultimately, Smith found the amount didn’t satisfy the public interest. Stevikova and Dugan reportedly split their time between Whistler and Switzerland. A condensed version of this story originally appeared online on Friday, Oct. 1. n
NORTH SHORE | VANCOUVER
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What to do about our immense food waste? STUDY FINDS UP TO 9,400 TONNES OF FOOD IS WASTED IN THE SEA TO SKY EACH YEAR
BY BRADEN DUPUIS A NEW REPORT highlights the immense amount of food waste in the Sea to Sky, while aiming to make it easier for communities to feed those who need it most. At its Oct. 5 meeting, Whistler’s mayor and council heard a presentation on the Sea to Sky Food Recovery Strategy Action Plan, a collaboration between a wide range of organizations in the corridor and funded by a grant from the Union of BC Municipalities. The Resort Municipality of Whistler (RMOW) received $77,120 from the grant, part of which was used to form a task force consisting of more than a dozen representatives from social services groups, restaurants, grocery stores, food banks, First Nations, the Sea to Sky School District and the municipalities of Whistler, Squamish and Pemberton. The work began prior to the COVID19 pandemic, said Cheeying Ho, executive director of the Whistler Centre for Sustainability, in a presentation to council. The task force met four times, and conducted interviews with all of the food distribution organizations in the corridor as well as doing a survey for hotels, grocers and restaurants, Ho said.
“One of the things [the task force] identified, especially as COVID came on, was the need to support improved food recovery and food distribution efforts in the corridor,” she said. The project sought to understand how to maximize the recovery and distribution of surplus food, and to minimize food waste in the Sea to Sky, she added. Through its research, the task force found that while up to 530 tonnes of edible food waste is provided to food banks and other programs each year, a significantly larger amount—between 6,000 and 9,400 tonnes— is wasted, at a cost of up to $43 million. With its large visitor base, most of the food is wasted in Whistler, which recovers up to 275 tonnes each year with the potential to recover between 3,130 and 4,880 tonnes. Through its research, the task force also found that “about five per cent [of people] report [being] food insecure, seven per cent go to bed hungry on a regular basis, and youth in particular indicate that sometimes or always they go to bed hungry, and sometimes they don’t have enough food at home to eat for breakfast,” Ho said. “Twenty-two per cent of First Nations people [off reserve] are reported to be food insecure.” The action plan itself includes key
strategies to cut down on waste and better redistribute food in the corridor, each with its own set of recommendations. To secure more donations and meet food bank needs, the plan recommends:
“[A]bout five per cent [of people] report [being] food insecure...” - CHEEYING HO
more frequent and flexible pick-up systems and schedules from food donors to better distribute perishable food; establishing storage or warehouse capacity for dry and cold food storage; working with large food suppliers to have them donate more efficiently and offer special pricing to food distribution organizations (FDO); and increased commercial kitchen space. To remove barriers for those accessing food programs, it recommends regularly engaging clients; learning more about those who can’t access programs; exploring low-cost or by-donation
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programs to make food more affordable for more community members; and home deliveries where possible. The plan also recommends working with remote communities, which face their own unique challenges around delivery of and access to food, to identify potential programs or redistribution locations; encouraging a “take-home” culture at restaurants; upcycling produce into sellable products like soups, smoothies or juice; and using food waste that can’t be donated as feed for farm animals or pets. In terms of building capacity, it recommends offering better education and training through community kitchens, restaurants and in schools; offering fee-forservice funding to FDOs to help achieve zero-waste goals; advocating for ongoing operational funds; and hiring someone to coordinate and monitor implementation of the plan itself. “This is so important in that it lifts all three pillars of sustainability in terms of economics, the waste management costs are reduced, obviously socially it puts food on many people in need’s tables, and it lowers greenhouse gases,” said Councillor Arthur De Jong. “It’s very powerful.” Find more info at www.whistlercentre. ca/project/squamish-lillooet-food-project. n
10/7 - 10/11
NEWS WHISTLER
RMOW’s Q2 finances ‘challenged’ by COVID-19 LACK OF UNCERTAINTY REMAINS A CONCERN HEADING INTO FINAL MONTHS OF 2021
BY BRADEN DUPUIS WHILE THE FIRST months of 2021 showed signs of a financial rebound at the Resort Municipality of Whistler (RMOW), the momentum didn’t carry through the second three months of the year, according to the RMOW’s Q2 financial update. “Overall operating revenues remain challenged by the COVID-19 environment,” said director of finance Carlee Price in a presentation at the Sept. 21 council meeting. “We had begun to see a recovery in the first quarter, and that recovery was sidelined to some extent in the second quarter of this fiscal year—part of the reason for that is of course the early closure of Whistler Blackcomb (WB).” Day-skier parking revenues in Q1 were actually ahead of 2019 levels, but WB’s province-mandated closure on March 29 put the brakes on the momentum, and Q2 parking revenues were down 65 per cent from 2019. Overall, first-half parking revenues were down 25 per cent from 2019. “Revenue from transit, parking and [Municipal and Regional District Tax] all declined sharply in the mid quarter, this again
26 OCTOBER 7, 2021
is due to the mountain closure as well as some new provincial health orders,” Price said. “Building permits, planning revenue and works and services, by contrast, were all strong, and that carried on right through the second quarter.” Overall operating revenues were at 76 per cent and divisional operating expenditures 47 per cent of annual budgeted amounts as of June 30, compared to 86 per cent and 48 per cent, respectively, in the prior fiscal year. Expenditures so far this year reflect changes in the RMOW’s pandemic service delivery, Price noted, pointing to lower spends on events and animation (down 36 per cent from 2020) in the first two quarters of 2021. That decrease was offset by higher spending in planning (up 22 per cent) and environmental stewardship (up 16 per cent), Price added, due to a growing volume of development and planning work in the community and council’s commitment to focus on climate action, respectively. “In the CAO office, higher spending was evident in 2021 as compared to 2020 (up 16 per cent), due primarily to communications and economic development,” Price said. “Both of these departments have of course weighty responsibilities in pandemic recovery.”
Spending on IT was up 25 per cent over 2020 (from $1.87 million to $2.05 million), while Meadow Park Sports Centre expenditures also rose 11 per cent (from $3.4 million to $3.9 million) due to increased staffing levels during pandemic operations. There were 98 projects that recorded “some amount of activity” in the first half of the year, and seven that were at more than 50 per cent of their budgeted spend at the end of June, Price said. “We did have very low expenditures in the first quarter that accelerated in the second quarter, so total spending at the end of the second quarter was at about 19 per cent of full-year budgeted amounts—this is in line with the last five years’ average,” she said. The RMOW has amended the budget twice so far in fiscal 2021, with one project added, three amended, and three grantsupported works added, “and then of course we did amend the operating budget slightly in 2021, related to the summer experience, to planning department changes, and for 2022 staff resourcing,” Price said. “We are at a largest-ever volume in dollars of project-led work at the RMOW, $50.7 million—this excludes a $10-million dollar loan that was made to [the Whistler 2020 Development Corp for resident housing in Cheakamus Crossing].”
While Q3 revenue opportunity looks promising, “we’re sort of approaching the edge of the woods on the pandemic, but not quite there yet,” Price added. “Revenues will remain challenged through the end of this year, and we’re just beginning the process of looking out to 2022 and what might go on there.” Whistlerites won’t get a sense of what 2022’s tax increases will be until the budget open house in November, but residents can expect increases above the 1.08 per cent requisition seen in 2021. While the RMOW was saved from having to “dip into the rainy day fund” last year thanks to a large grant from the federal and provincial governments, “no such cavalry can fairly be expected to arrive this year,” Price said. “So depending on how the remainder of the year goes, we may dip into the operating reserve to some extent— it could be up to $2 million—but until those final numbers for the year are in we can’t say with certainty.” Asked by Mayor Jack Crompton if there’s anything that concerns her, Price pointed to the shape of the pandemic recovery. “The visibility we used to have ... is to some extent impaired, so not knowing what 2022 will hold, or even what the fourth quarter will hold, is concerning,” she said. n
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Evo to take over Callaghan Country Wilderness Adventures SUMMER OPERATIONS MIGHT BE IN THE FUTURE
BY HARRISON BROOKS CALLAGHAN COUNTRY Wilderness Adventures (CCWA) and Whistler’s long-time backcountry adventure haven, Journeyman Lodge, have new owners. Bryce Phillips, owner of the Seattlebased but Whistler-founded outdoor sport and recreation store evo sealed the deal last week with CCWA founder Brad Sills and his shareholders. They have been in talks about purchasing the backcountry adventure business for a few years and the time was finally right to pull the trigger. “It’s just an extraordinary place. It’s really so unique, its location, the terrain, so it’s just a really unique opportunity to take the baton from Brad [Sills] and his team and carry it forward,” said Phillips. Callaghan Country Wilderness Adventures was first founded in 1979 by Sills to provide people with opportunities to explore the expansive terrain of the upper Callaghan Valley. After 41 years in the business, the time was right for Sills to finally move on. But he wasn’t getting out for the sake of it. He wanted the new owners to be the right fit and to be able to continue what he and his shareholders had built and continue the traditions of CCWA. Cue Phillips and evo. “It’s time that I move over and allow new energy to come in and continue on in the vision of promoting self-propelled recreation and we feel that evo will be great stewards of the land and continue to push all forms of Nordic and ski touring recreation,” explained Sills of why evo was the perfect fit as new owners. “They’re a young company and they fund a variety of different community initiatives including access for underprivileged kids to the mountain. “They’ve demonstrated their commitment to stewardship and support of environment groups through funds, and grants and the fact that they love authentic adventure.” Phillips first moved to Whistler in 1997 and spent seven years building friendships and “chasing winters.” And although he has since moved back to the U.S., he returns to Whistler often to either visit one of the five evo-operated businesses in the village (Whistler Village Sports, Excess Backcountry, Excess Ski+Sport, Mountain Riders and Sportstop) or to spend time with his family at their cabin on Alta Lake. And it’s that same connection that he feels to the town that Phillips said really drove his desire to expand his business in the area with the purchase of CCWA. “I would definitely say connection to the community and love for the region is what it’s all rooted in. I mean if you rewind
24 years when I first moved (to Whistler) I was drawn there because I wanted to ski, that was it,” said Phillips. “But now, it’s a new chapter in life to be there with family and be there in the outdoors. And that’s where the whole business came from in the first place is the passion for the outdoors, but now to really build a place that can have an impact on the community and just be a celebration of our love for the outdoors, really the Journeyman Lodge is just an extension of that.” Most of the current CCWA team will be staying on to continue operations of the organization, including Sills himself. He will continue as the general manager for one more year while he shows Phillips and the new incoming GM Christian Begin the ropes. “I am just looking forward to creating an amazing experience for people, something they will never forget,” said Begin. “I’m very excited and also very excited to work with an amazing team. “I feel that it’s an amazing opportunity for me and I know for evo to be part of something that has been created and has such a history with the place. I feel very honoured to be part of this new chapter of the Callaghan Country.” And while Phillips and Begin have some big goals for Callaghan Country in the future, don’t expect much to change in the next little while, as their main goal right now is just to keep operations going smoothly. “[We have] no plans to change the names,” said Phillips. “We just see our brands fitting alongside each other and we are just honouring what Brad built and the history and legacy there coupled with this new chapter. We see the evo and Journeyman Lodge combination as a really nice balance.” While the branding will stay steady, operations might get a shake up in the future as evo considers making the lodge a year-round operation. “We’re excited about going through the process of turning it into a year-round operation, but at this point right now it’s just a winter operation,” said Phillips. “We are taking our time, nothing is changing out of the gate.” For Sills, who has put more than four decades of hard work and passion into creating what Callaghan Country Wilderness Adventures is today, this process has been an “emotional rollercoaster,” but in the end, he said he would be happy to watch it change and grow under Phillips and Begin. “I think that everybody just felt that they had given everything that they can to bring it to this level. We built it from scratch to what it is now,” said Sills. “So seeing a younger crew come in really makes us happy that we are seeing a transition to younger ownership and people that have had the ability to generate the enthusiasm that’s required to keep the organization running.” n
NEWS WHISTLER
Whistler’s International Day of the Girl tackles gender equality in sports HOSTED BY WHISTLER SECONDARY’S LEADERSHIP CLUB, OCT. 13 EVENT WELCOMES FOUR PANELLISTS
BY BRANDON BARRETT AT WHISTLER’S LAST International Day of the Girl event in 2019, an 11-yearold stepped up to the mic to ask a simple question that seemed to stump the panellists: “’When I turn on the TV, I always can find boys playing soccer, but where can I see the girls?’” recalled event founder Dee Raffo. “It’s a huge issue, and we know it, but we don’t really know how to fix it, so when we were thinking of topics for this year, we thought we’d try to dive in and answer this girl’s question because it’s an important one that I think has repercussions throughout [the push] for gender equality—and not just in sports.” Hosted and organized with the help of Whistler Secondary School’s (WSS) studentled Leadership Team, the Oct. 13 event will feature four panellists from across the Canadian sporting world: Jacie deHoop, co-founder of The GIST, a sports media start-up made by women that looks to make athletics more accessible and inclusive to all sports fans; Natasha Cyrille, marketing and communications coordinator for
Canadian Women & Sport, an organization founded in 1981 to advocate for progressive change within Canada’s sport system; Dr. Katie Lebel, assistant professor at Ryerson University, whose research focuses on gender equity in sport, with a particular emphasis on branding and consumer behaviour; and Laura Stacey, former hockey player who won gold at the 2012 IIHF U18 Women’s World Championships, before suiting up for the silver medal-winning team at the 2017 IIHF Women’s World Championships. The event comes on the heels of the Tokyo Olympics, which, despite being touted as the most gender-equal Games of all time, were marked by controversy after women athletes in gymnastics and beach volleyball drew attention to the double standard that exists in some sports, in which women are required to wear skimpy outfits the men aren’t. In a year when women’s basketball players at the March Madness tournament called out the NCAA for its woefully inadequate training facilities compared to the men, when the U.S. women’s soccer team fought for—and won—equal pay to their male counterparts, when women’s gymnasts continue to speak
out about years of systematic sexual abuse at the hands of the U.S. national team doctor, and, in just the last few days, the third National Women’s Soccer League coach since August was fired over allegations of sexual misconduct, it’s clear that, despite the progress that has been made, women athletes still have to face a culture of sexism— or worse—that is pervasive. “I think that creating a safe, abuse-free space is hugely important in sports,” Raffo said. “You would be surprised what women are still battling. It seems crazy and almost ridiculous to me that they’re forced to wear bikini bottoms in beach volleyball. The mind boggles. Even when some of the sports federations make rules, I’m not aware of anybody that’s policing them very well.” Even in Whistler, known for its progressive mindset, there remains a largely male-dominated sports scene that can create barriers to entry for girls and women, said Lauren Hamm, Grade 11 WSS student who helped in organizing and marketing the event. “If you get invited to go on a bike ride and you’re with a bunch of these guys who have been biking a long time, you’re always
insecure about your ability because it is so male-dominated. That is always on you all the time and you’re thinking, ‘How will they see me? I’m not as good as them,’” she said. That strikes home the importance of having guys included in the conversation, said Grade 12 student and organizer Hugo Steiner. “It can’t just be a women’s issue because it’s everyone’s issue,” he noted. “It should be predominantly women, but you need to have guys standing up for them as well and joining in.” Grade 11 student and organizer Maya Serdinands said the event is especially targeted at young girls, like the 11-yearold that wondered why she couldn’t find women’s soccer on the TV dial. “For young girls, they may have seen the inequality in sport but they don’t know that they can make a change,” she said. The event is scheduled from 5 to 7 p.m. at the Maury Young Arts Centre, and tickets are $10, available at myzonetickets.com/ whistleridg2021. There’s also a livestream ticket option, by donation. Featuring a silent auction with a $500 prize pack, all proceeds go directly to the Howe Sound Women’s Centre and The Shoe Project. n
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31
NEWS WHISTLER
Local Rotary clubs make lemonade out of lemons EVEN AS COVID-19 PAUSED IN-PERSON FUNDRAISERS, CLUBS EXCEEDED THEIR ANNUAL TARGETS
BY BRANDON BARRETT YOU COULD SAY that Rotary clubs are inherently social organizations, and that is especially true for the Sea to Sky, where the four respective clubs—two in Whistler, along with ones in Pemberton and Squamish—regularly meet face to face and organize events to support their local communities and beyond. Like so many things over the past 19 months, COVID-19 put a pause to that. “We’re people people and we like to do things in-person and do projects together in-person, and we haven’t been able to do that,” said David Stein, president of the Rotary Club of Whistler Millennium, one of two resort clubs, along with the Rotary Club of Whistler. Without the ability to meet under one roof until recently, the corridor’s clubs made the switch to online, which, in fitting with the transient nature of this part of the world, actually increased their accessibility. “[In Whistler], they really have two types of membership, where one comes for the snow season and the other one goes away, and so it’s quite complementary,” said Lorne Calder, governor of Rotary International’s 5040 district, who was recently in town visiting the local clubs. “I
did a Zoom presentation … with the Whistler Millennium Club, and of the 14 people that were in attendance, only two were actually physically in Whistler. The other 12 were either in Europe, back east or back on the island. It was amazing, the resilience.” That resilience was necessary in a year of limited in-person events, a crucial fundraising stream for the clubs. The Rotary Club of Whistler, for instance, was unable to host its usual pancake breakfast fundraisers or its signature jazz night at Dusty’s, which typically brings in more than $15,000, said president Gill Forester. “We just started to think about what we could do to keep our members interested and keep them active, so we had a series of Zoom parties,” she added. In spite of the challenges, both Whistler clubs, as well as Pemberton, will be receiving Rotary citations this year, which requires them to achieve more than 13 stated goals that can range from hitting fundraising targets to youth support and volunteerism. All the local clubs have several notable projects on the go, and their reach spans the community, corridor and the globe. The Rotary Club of Whistler raised $10,000 for a refrigerated truck that will aid the local food bank, and another $10,000—and counting— for a marshland viewing platform that is
COMING TO WHISTLER IN SPRING 2022
IN DA CLUB Rotary International district 5040 governor Lorne Calder, left,with Rotary Club of Whistler Millennium president David Stein. PHOTO SUBMITTED
expected to be built this spring near Function Junction, to list a few. The Pemberton club just held its annual golf tournament and is contributing around $30,000 for a new fieldhouse at Den Duyf Park. The Rotary Club of Whistler Millennium, meanwhile, continues to raise funds for local organizations such as the Whistler Community Services Society and the Whistler Health Care Foundation, and, through Rotary International, recently helped fund a watersanitation project in Uganda. “Being Rotary, our reach is worldwide,”
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Stein said. “We’re pretty broad with who we can fund and we can assist and the kind of progress we’ll do, whether it’s local, it’s somewhere else in the province, or all around the world. That’s what got me interested.” Between the four Sea to Sky clubs, more than $126,000 was raised for a variety of initiatives last year. “They may be small in size, but they get a lot done. And I really do think that they would like to have more help,” Calder noted. Recruitment had been a challenge locally even prior to the pandemic, and the organizations are hopeful to add an injection of youth to the membership. “They are finding it harder to get the younger demographic because they’re in their lifecycle stages where they are raising families and they’re combining work and balancing life issues,” Calder said. “It’s been really hard to get our project ideas and what we’re doing on the ground out into the public eye. We need more media attention, social media attention. We need to spend more time bragging about ourselves.” To learn more about joining a club in your community, visit whistler-rotary.org for the Rotary Club of Whistler; rotarywhistler2000. com for the Rotary Club of Whistler Millennium; and rotarypemberton.ca for the Rotary Club of Pemberton. n
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HOMECOMING Steve Bigeault sings at the official commisioning service for the new Whistler Community Church on Sunday, Oct. 3. PHOTO BY TIN WONG
Whistler Community Church opens new home MORE THAN 20 YEARS IN THE MAKING, $4.2M CHURCH HELD ITS FIRST OFFICIAL SERVICE IN WHITE GOLD ON OCT. 3 PEMBERTON’S PREMIER NEIGHBOURHOOD!
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4369 Main Street #418 Alpenglow Lodge, Whistler Village Studio - 1 Bathroom $444,786
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LOCAL EXPERTS WITH GLOBAL CONNECTIONS Your Real Estate Matchmakers in the “Sea to Sky Corridor”
34 OCTOBER 7, 2021
IT’S HARD TO PUT into words what the opening of the Whistler Community Church’s new, dedicated space in White Gold must mean to the faithful congregation that has, since 2000, had to meet every Sunday in a local elementary school. But Pauline Wiebe, parishioner since 1981, offers two: “Endless possibilities.” This past Sunday, Oct. 3 marked the official commissioning service for the 820-square-metre church located at 7226 Fitzsimmons Drive, a collective effort that was decades in the making. The church has existed since 1979, when worshippers met in the Skiers’ Chapel, a cozy Creekside A-frame that was home to many a christening, wedding and community event over the years. Since 2000, however, parishioners have met every week in the Myrtle Philip Community School, which was expected to be a temporary home. “It is pretty surreal because this was a very long time coming,” said lead Pastor Jon Pasiuk. “When the Skiers’ Chapel was decommissioned in the late ‘90s, the church moved into the school and they thought, ‘OK, this is maybe four years tops.’ To finally be in the building is such an amazing blessing.” A local family donated the land for the project in 1999, but actually getting a facility built proved a long road. Financed through private donations, the $4.2-million building includes an auditorium with capacity for 250 people, a fellowship hall and kitchen with seating for 120, as well as four smaller rooms that will be used for Sunday school, youth ministry, a nursery, and office space. The building will also be available to rent, and already hosts a range of
programming such as kids sports camps, academic tutoring, and piano lessons. “Part of the deal with the municipality to do this is they wanted us to use this as a resource for the community, and of course that fit with our mission as well,” noted Pasiuk. The community was also welcomed on Saturday, Oct. 2 for a block party and open house, which included a barbecue, bouncy castle, dunk tank (“I’m going in the dunk tank,” Pasiuk said) and art auction, courtesy of late congregant, curator and artist Helga Ruiterman, who donated her remaining works as a fundraiser for the church. For the congregation of about 80 locals—although weekly attendance tended to average around 130 pre-pandemic, Pasiuk said—the church represents a permanent home base that will ideally help increase membership. “Obviously our hope is to grow from here,” Pasiuk said. “We definitely feel like we’re much better able to make our presence in the community known and that we’re here. Our capacity to serve people has increased so much.” The Whistler Community Church, a BC Mennonite Brethren member, has long had something of an itinerate membership, even dating back to its days in the Skiers’ Chapel, with seasonal workers and weekenders sprinkled in among a core group of locals. The pandemic only further fractured attendance, with congregants mostly meeting outdoors since Easter and others tuning in virtually. But, as Wiebe can attest, a church is so much more than the four walls it’s housed in. “Church is really not a building; it’s people,” she said. Service is held every Sunday at 10 a.m. To learn more, visit whistlerchurch.ca. n
ON NOW
NEWS WHISTLER
Naturespeak: Whistler naturalist Bob Brett reviews Mushrooms of British Columbia BY BOB BRETT AUTUMN IN WHISTLER is mushroom time and therefore an ideal time to welcome Andy MacKinnon and Kem Luther’s new book, Mushrooms of British Columbia (available at Whistler’s Armchair Books). Both authors are long-time Fungus Among Us festival gurus whose enthusiast ability to impart fungal knowledge infuses every page of their new book. Given my long association with the authors, I’m not an unbiased reviewer of their work—coastal B.C.’s fungal community is so interconnected (insert mycorrhizal pun here) that complete objectivity is hard to find. I’m thus relieved that the merits of this book stand on their own. Mushrooms of British Columbia is a great reference both for keen beginners and afficionados like me whose ignorance about fungi still far outshines their knowledge. Mushrooms of British Columbia includes 498 handsome, glossy pages packed with fungal facts and excellent photographs. The writing is informative and engaging, especially in the occasional
essays that expand on such topics as how to dye with mushrooms, how not to die from mushrooms, psychoactive fungi and, of course, butt rots. The book starts with a clear, accessible introduction, then presents a key that divides mushrooms by obvious characteristics, for example, veined, gilled, boletes, etc. Almost half the book describes the vast variety of gilled mushrooms and is organized by spore colour, an important and often critical diagnostic feature. Even though the authors encourage readers to take spore prints (with instructions how), they also provide many other identification clues for the spore-resistant. For example, the section that includes pine mushrooms also describes many look-a-likes that could fool you. Given the incredible diversity of fungal forms in the book (350 main entries, 850 species in all), the keys that guide readers to the appropriate pages are lifelines. The usability of future editions would nonetheless be improved if those keys were duplicated on the inside covers or other more accessible location. In the meantime, I’m making do with bookmarking 27 subsections (which I’d probably do anyway, even if there were keys on the inside covers).
FUN-GUY Mushrooms of British Columbia co-author Andy MacKinnon enjoys an amanita mushroom at a previous Fungus Among Us festival.
potential identifications. It also helps that, unlike in most guides, the overwhelming majority of species occur in Whistler, which means you won’t misidentify your mushroom as something that only grows in, for example, California. And I especially enjoy the comments at the bottom of each page. They’re fascinating, often fun, and (for me) another way to help imprint all the information into my resistant memory. If you’ve got more than a passing passion for fungi, Mushrooms of British Columbia is a must. Befitting its enormous topic, it’s more a reference book than easy bedside reading. That won’t stop many readers from reading it all in one go and coming back time and again. Join Kem and Andy for their Zoom presentation as part of this year’s Fungus Among Us event on Oct. 15 at 7 p.m. The Festival takes place Oct. 15 and 16 with virtual and in-person events. Go here for more information: whistlernaturalists. ca/fungus-among-us-mushroom-festival.
PHOTO BY JOERN ROHDE / COURTESY OF WHISTLER NATURALISTS
There are a lot of reasons why this new book is my new favourite. The photos are not only beautiful, they also help guide you to the right group of mushrooms to speed
Naturespeak is prepared by the Whistler Naturalists. To learn more about Whistler’s natural world and the upcoming Fungus Among Us Festival, go to whistlernaturalists.ca. n
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Notice
PERMISSIVE EXEMPTION AMENDMENT BYLAW Notice is hereby given of proposed Bylaw No. 2333 which will give the properties listed below exemption from Municipal Property Tax for the period listed beginning in 2022 pursuant to Section 224 of the Community Charter. Estimated Municipal Tax
Get noticed!
Folio
Address
Proposed Exemption
Statuatory Authority
Term
2022
2023
2024
006161.500
Portion of 7328 Kirpatrick Way
Whistler Waldorf School Society
Sec. 224(2)(a)
1 Year
15,292
-
-
008073.022
1080 Legacy Way
Whistler 2010 Sport Legacies Society
Sec. 224(2)(a)
1 Year
45,728
-
-
008073.024
1315 Cloudburst Drive
Whistler 2010 Sport Legacies Society
Sec. 224(2)(a)
1 Year
7,660
-
-
008073.023
1345 Cloudburst Drive
Whistler 2010 Sport Legacies Society
Sec. 224(2)(a)
1 Year
4,291
-
-
007924.007
1519 Spring Creek Drive
Zero Ceiling
Sec. 224(2)(a)
1 Year
3,540
-
-
• Social • Google • Websites • Programmatic • SEO/SEM • Sponsored content
005160.003
8000 Nesters Road
Whistler Community Services Society
Sec. 224(2)(a)
1 Year
4,117
-
-
005316.102
2028 Rob Boyd Way
Whistler Mountain Ski Club
Sec. 224(2)(a)
1 Year
7,645
-
-
006162.002
Emerald Forest
Emerald Dreams Conservation Co Ltd.
Sec. 224(2)(a)
1 Year
1,109
-
-
006548.000
Emerald Forest
Decigon Development Corp
Sec. 224(2)(a)
1 Year
1,607
-
-
006166.090
Glacier Media Digital experts help businesses succeed online.
006548.310 006547.925 006546.935
006641.000
4910 Glacier Lane
Whistler 2010 Sport Legacies Society
Sec. 224(2)(a)
1 Year
79,450
-
-
006571.101
4350 Blackcomb Way
Audain Art Museum
Sec. 224(2)(a)
2 Years
257,812
262,968
-
4584 Blackcomb Way
Spo7ez Cultural Centre and Community Society
Sec. 224(2)(a)
4 Years
71,009
72,429
73,878
6299 Lorimer Road
Our Lady of the Mountains Catholic Church
Sec. 224(2)(f)
1 Year
20,494
-
-
7226 Fitzsimmons Road North
Whistler Community Church
Sec. 224(2)(f)
5 Years
1,594
1,626
1,659
7146 Nesters Road
Dandelion Day Care Society
Sec. 224(2)(j)
1 Year
2,304
-
-
Contact your Sales representative at Pique Newsmagazine today for a free digital audit
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Resort Municipality of Whistler whistler.ca
OCTOBER 7, 2021
37
NEWS PEMBERTON & THE VALLEY
École la Vallée continues to inch closer to approval PEMBERTON COUNCIL AGREES TO AMEND BYLAW THAT HAS BEEN HOLDING UP DEVELOPMENT OF NEW FRENCH SCHOOL
BY HARRISON BROOKS PEMBERTON’S
FUTURE Frenchspeaking school École la Vallée took one more step towards breaking ground after more discussion was had at the Village of Pemberton (VOP) council meeting on Oct. 5. The main issue holding up the project was the obligation of Conseil scolaire francophone de la Colombie-Britannique (CSF) and School District No. 93 to deliver a public bridge over Pemberton Creek as part of the development. In a Sept. 7 letter to the VOP, CSF informed council members that it was not able to secure funding for the Pemberton Creek Crossing and thus were unable to complete all requirements outlined by the VOP on June 3. The letter went on to say that the CSF will continue to seek government funding for the bridge, but asked council to continue working collaboratively with the CSF to develop a plan for the Pemberton Creek crossing that “meets the financial limits of both the Village and the CSF including the willingness to seek alternate funding sources.”
FRENCH SCHOOL This map, released in a June 1 council meeting, shows where École la Vallée will be located in Pemberton once construction gets underway. PHOTO COURTESY OF THE VILLAGE OF PEMBERTON
38 OCTOBER 7, 2021
This development project for a new French-speaking school has earned overwhelming support from both council and community members, as demonstrated at a public hearing on Sept. 21. Of 27 total written and voice submissions for the public hearing on the
“As part of the community, we are happy to find a permanent home in Pemberton. It’s more than time that we have a chance to have full school services and to be part of the community.” In response to CSF’s request to work together to seek alternate funding
“That bridge was an obligation of the developer ... and I just don’t want that to be forgotten. I don’t want the obligation now transferred to moms in Pemberton because that’s not the way we should be operating” - AMICA ANTONELLI
topic of the new school, 26 were in support of the bylaws, and only one opposed. “I just want to tell you how happy we are and how proud we are to have the chance today to speak to the council and to see that you are working to make our community and the community of Pemberton, have a second language [school],” said Michel St-Amant, superintendent of School District No. 93.
sources, a report was submitted to council from Pemberton’s manager of development services Lisa Pedrini. It proposed officially amending Bylaw No. 903 to remove the requirement on CSF to build the bridge and replace it with a more collaborative approach between VOP staff, adjacent landowners and the provincial government to deliver the
Pemberton Creek crossing. Council ultimately approved the amendment, but not before Coun. Amica Antonelli raised concerns about the potential for the project to now fall on community fundraisers. “At the public hearing I heard a lot of parents saying, ‘We’ll fundraise for the bridge, we want our school,’ and I really understand that. I want to support the school, and I do through this. But I just wanted to say that I don’t think it’s the responsibility of the parents to fundraise for that bridge,” she said. “That bridge was an obligation of the developer, the adjacent landowner, and I just don’t want that to be forgotten. I don’t want the obligation now transferred to moms in Pemberton, because that’s not the way we should be operating. “From my perspective, it is really important to get those kids off the railway bridge and off the highway bridge. So, I’m satisfied with the wording, ‘continue to collaborate with these parties,’ so I’ll support it because I understand how much the community wants the school, but I am really disappointed how this bridge may or may not be coming for now.” Coun. Antonelli’s concerns were seconded by Coun. Ted Craddock, who added that he supports the school going ahead but wants to see, “the adjacent land owner be more responsible for the costs” as it was stated in the original proposal. n
Public No�ce
No�ce to Amend Council Procedure Bylaw No. 788, 2015 �ues�ons� We’re Listening.
604.894.6135
admin@ pemberton.ca
pemberton.ca
In accordance with sec�on 123 (3) of the Community Charter no�ce is hereby given that the Council of the Village of Pemberton intends to amend Council Procedure Bylaw No. 778, 2015 at the Regular Council Mee�ng to be held on Tuesday, October 19, 2021 at 9am. Sec�on 10 Electronic Parrciparon at Meerngs will be amended to permit members of Council to a�end a Regular Council Mee�ng, Special Council Mee�ng, or Council Commi�ee mee�ng from a remote loca�on by electronic means, and to allow a mee�ng to be held en�rely by electronic means with all par�cipants a�ending from a remote loca�on, subject to sec�ons 128 to 128.3 of the Community Charter and to the condi�ons speci�ed in the bylaw. A copy of the proposed Council Procedure Amendment (Electronic Mee�ngs) Bylaw No. 909, 2021 is available at pemberton.ca. Ques�ons and comments may be directed to Sheena Fraser, Manager of Corporate & Legisla�ve Services, at 604-894-6135 ext 228 or sfraser@pemberton.ca. Sheena Fraser, Corporate Officer
VillageofPemberton
pemberton.ca
Public Notice Watermain Flushing Watermain flushing will be taking place Tuesday, October 12 to Monday, October 25 throughout the Village of Pemberton. Some discoulouration of water may result. Residents are advised to run water until clear before drinking. Flushing involves isolating a section of the water distribution system and opening hydrants to release water at a high flow rate. This removes material that has built up over time and improves drinking water quality. Questions? Email admin@pemberton.ca.
OCTOBER 7, 2021
39
SCIENCE MATTERS
Rewilding can help heal wounds we’ve inflicted MEETING THE NEEDS of eight billion people is a serious challenge. Meeting the “wants” of those tied to political and economic systems based on endless growth, consumption and waste makes it daunting. Our growing population’s unceasing appetite for luxury living, the latest electronic devices, up-to-date fashions, meat-rich diets and private automobiles and the infrastructure to support them has left little of the world untouched. (Of course, the wealthiest nations and people are most at fault.)
8566 Ashleigh McIvor Drive | $1,999,000 Great opportunity to be in Baxter Creek and be part of an amazing group of exclusive homes. This lot offers some of the best views in the neighbourhood, with only Crown Land behind. Residents enjoy exclusive access to the Baxter Creek Resident’s Club featuring a salt water pool, hot tub and fire fit gathering area. Start planning your Whistler legacy today.
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Montebello II is Whistler’s best located townhouse neighbourhood within a few minutes walk of Whistler Village and all its offerings. This well positioned 3 bed, 3.5 bath townhome has it all; private garage, walk out patio surrounded by beautiful greenery, private hot tub, heated flooring, great floor plan, mountain views from the living room and deck, granite counter tops, natural gas fireplace, and much more! Exposed beams, vaulted ceilings, and stone & wood accents gives this home that classic Whistler feeling. Zoned for nightly rentals (Phase 1) Montebello II is a proven revenue producer.
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604.902.6106 josh@joshcrane.ca whistlerrealestatemarket.com Stilhavn Real Estate Services 208-1420 Alpha Lake Road, Whistler, BC, V8E 0R8
40 OCTOBER 7, 2021
BY DAVID SUZUKI A study in Frontiers in Forests and Global Change concluded that less than three per cent of Earth’s land base remains “intact”— much of it in remote areas of Canada, Russia and Greenland, with patches in Indonesian and Amazon rainforests and the Congo Basin. (Antarctica was not included.) According to Smithsonian Magazine, “The study takes into account three measures of ecological integrity: habitat intactness, which is how human activity has affected the land; faunal intactness, which looks at species loss; and functional intactness, which focuses on species loss among animals that contribute to the health of an ecosystem.” Even the intact areas are threatened by human activity, from mining and agriculture to climate disruption. The bright spot is that restoration efforts could push the
massive reforestation projects, with a lot in between. The Affric Highlands initiative plans to rewild about 200,000 hectares in the Scottish Highlands over 30 years by “planting trees, enhancing river corridors, restoring peat bogs and creating nature-friendly farming practices,” a Guardian article says. “The idea of doing it at scale is that you get a much bigger natural response because you’ve got room for change and dynamism in that landscape,” said Alan McDonnell, project leader and conservation manager at non-profit Trees for Life. It still faces a number of hurdles, but it’s not the first rewilding initiative in the area. Sometimes rewilding involves taking down barriers. On the Olympic Peninsula, just south of my home, removing 100-yearold dams from the Elwha River 10 years ago brought growing numbers of steelhead and salmon back, and increased bull trout numbers. That attracted birds and other animals that eat the fish, and is expected to boost forest health as animals drag nutrientrich fish into the trees. Crews also planted hundreds of thousands of native species to help restore former reservoir bottoms. The efforts are thanks in large part to the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe, who’ve fished the salmon for millennia. Jessica Plumb, whose film Return of the River documents its transformation, wrote in Orion, “The rewilding of the Elwha is a story of environmental justice, equal in scope to the scale of restoration.” The UN and 195 member nations set a target under the Global Biodiversity Framework to protect 30 per cent of the world’s land and ocean by 2030. Meanwhile,
“The reintroduction of these species can return a balance to the ecosystem.” - DANIELE BAISERO
global area “with full ecological integrity” to almost 20 per cent by re-introducing five or fewer important species in undamaged habitat where they’ve been lost. Report co-author and Key Biodiversity Areas Secretariat technical officer Daniele Baisero points to the role key species play in everything from seed dispersal to regulation of prey animals. “When these are removed, the dynamics can vary and can sometimes lead to ecosystems collapsing. The reintroduction of these species can return a balance to the ecosystem,” he told CNN. Many people are familiar with how bringing wolves back to Yellowstone National Park set off a chain of events leading to healthier, more balanced ecosystems. It’s an example of “rewilding,” as restoration and conservation aren’t always enough. Rewilding efforts can range from relatively small, localized interventions, such as re-introducing key species, to
Indigenous Peoples worldwide are leading efforts to conserve, protect and rewild their traditional territories. But it’s an uphill battle as long as human societies measure success and progress by how much we spend and consume. Rewilding projects show how quickly nature can bounce back once we set things right and get out of the way. They can also help restore justice, provide hedges against climate disruption, flooding and soil erosion, and offer benefits ranging from recreational to agricultural to economic opportunities. We can’t continue to degrade and destroy the natural systems that our health and lives depend on for the sake of illusory ideals of progress. It’s time to go wild. David Suzuki is a scientist, broadcaster, author and co-founder of the David Suzuki Foundation. Written with contributions from David Suzuki Foundation Senior Writer and Editor Ian Hanington. ■
ELIZABETH CHAPLIN
elizabeth@elizabethchaplin.com | 604 932 1311
9456 EMERALD DRIVE
3591 FALCON CRESCENT
Square Feet: 9,070
Bedrooms: 3 Bathrooms: 2.5 Square Feet:2,820
BLUEBERRY HILL
EMERALD ESTATES
Vacant Lot located in residential Emerald Estates. A level flat lot that provides an easy build at the height of the hill with panoramic views. Private treed setting. Drive by today!
Well maintained log home in Blueberry Hill. This chalet has an open living concept with views of Blackcomb and Wedge Mountain. Jacuzzi bathtub in the master ensuite. Heated floors throughout with two fireplaces. New Hot Tub and exterior deck with a heated path to the Hot Tub
Vacant Land
Chalet
$1,795,000
$5,500,000
LISA HILTON
Personal Real Estate Corporation
lisah@wrec.com | 604 902 4589
7700 PEMBERTON MEADOWS RD
1015 CEDAR GROVE LANE
#202 MOUNTAINS EDGE
Bedrooms: 4 Bathrooms: 4 Square Feet: 3,007
Lot Size: 3.94
Bedrooms: 2 Bathrooms: 1 Square Feet: 746
PEMBERTON
PEMBERTON
Acres
PEMBERTON
Imagine…. Owning your own organic farm on 17+ acres while enjoying the amazing views of the surrounding mountains and generating income from your properties on the farm. Gorgeous 4 bdrm home with a separate duplex, work shop, seed house & more.
Build your Dream home on this one of kind Pemberton property. Located in the gated community of Cedar Grove Estates this is the largest lot in the community and ready for building plans. All services, even geothermal, are installed as well as private pond & beach area.
This gorgeous two bedroom condo is an energy efficient and environmentally friendly R2000 build. Top floor end unit that enjoys lots of natural light and is south facing with a large sunny deck to enjoy the views of the majestic Mount Currie.
Detached Home
Vacant Land
Condominium
$3,250,000
$2,315,000
$525,000
SOLD
TRACEY CRUZ
tracey@wrec.com | 604 905 9552
15 - 2301 WHISTLER ROAD
3 - 3554 FALCON CRESCENT
Bedrooms: 2.5 Bathrooms: 1 Square Feet: 828
Bedrooms: 4 Bathrooms: 3.5 Square Feet: 2,174
WHISTLER HIGHLANDS
Classic meets contemporary in this quintessential townhome designed by the renowned architect Arthur Erikson. Outdoor living space leads to a bright interior with updated kitchen and living, complete with modern features throughout.
Townhouse
$999,000
BLUEBERRY ESTATES
We hope you all have some time to enjoy the changing season with your friends and families this weekend.
This immaculate home offers a spacious, open concept layout that is perfect for entertaining. The main floor features vaulted ceilings, expansive windows framing mountain views and off the dining you can walk out to a covered deck for BBQ’ing or your quiet morning coffee.
Townhouse
NEW LISTING
Lot Size: 1.34
GATES LAKE
Stunning new construction set to be completed Spring 2022. No detail in this home has been missed and the design brings together durable elements from the outside in. Interlocking pavers lead up the driveway, metal siding provides a low maintenance exterior, and Innotech tilt-and-turn windows are installed throughout. Off the open concept living area you will find a covered deck to enjoy year-round with views. Accessibility is enhanced with inclusion of an elevator. Rounding out this amazing home is a 1-bedroom suite with parking and laundry.
Chalet
$1,899,000
Acres
Situated a ten minute walk to pristine Gates Lake, this 1.34-acre lot is ready for a build with ample potential and the basics to get you started. This property offers lovely views, active electrical service, water rights to Green Brook which meanders near the top of the lot and has authorized driveway access.
Vacant Land
$310,000
selling your property, now is the time. Call me for a market evaluation.
Happy Thannksgiving
surrounded by family and friends.
JILL NOTMAN COLPITTS
very low and sales and prices are strong. If you’re considering
All the best wishes for
KAREN VAGELATOS
Timing in real estate is critical. Currently, the listing inventory is
jill@wrec.com | 604 932 1372
ARE YOU THINKING OF SELLING?
karen@wrec.com | 604 902 2520
Reserved for your property
DANIELLE MENZEL
Bedrooms: 4 Bathrooms: 3 Square Feet: 3,029
Personal Real Estate Corporation
9209 PORTAGE ROAD
PEMBERTON
danielle@wrec.com | 604 698 5128
7632 SEVEN O’CLOCK DRIVE - SUNSTONE
4 - 2500 WHISTLER ROAD WHISTLER CREEK
Bedrooms: 4 Bathrooms: 2 Square Feet:1,227 True Westcoast Contemporary gem. As part of the original Whistler, this townhome takes you back to a more simple time. These quintessential townhomes, designed by renowned architect Geoffrey Massy, rarely come available, as there are only 7 homes in this mountainside complex. Family and friends can easily come together with 4 bedrooms, open plan living with vaulted ceilings, cedar finishes and a wram and cozy cabin feel. Leave the car and walk to Creekside slopes and ski home via the “water tower” trail. Great bonus space for coming in with all your gear, laundry and sauna. A must see if you are looking for your unique Whistler haven.
Townhome
$1,299,000
JANE HEIM
jane@janeheim.ca | 604 935 0802
1757 PINEWOOD DRIVE
203/204 – 2111 WHISTLER ROAD
Bedrooms: 7 Bathrooms: 4 Square Feet: 3,348
Bedrooms: 2 Bathrooms: 2 Square Feet: 830
PEMBERTON PLATEAU
VALE INN
Beautiful and expansive four-bedroom home with privacy, stunning views, three bedroom rental suite, and double car garage. Saunter from your brand-new kitchen with Bosch appliances onto your deck with new hot tub, stunning views, and new stairs that lead down to your terraced yard. Get spoiled by the spectacular views from your huge master bedroom and en-suite bathroom. A large flex-room off the entrance could be your media room, playroom, or office.
A great condo zoned for nightly rental! This Vale Inn condo is minutes away from the Creekside Gondola, Creekside Village, bike trails, lakes and parks. This is a rare “lock-off” unit, so you can rent it as a onebedroom, a studio, or a two bedroom.
Chalet
Condominium
$1,549,000
$549,000
ALTA PLACE
Personal Real Estate Corporation
KEITH MCIVOR
keith@wrec.com | 604 935 2650
OPEN HOUSE
W H I S T LE R , B C
Saturday, October 9, 1-3pm An exclusive enclave of five estate properties within a 9.1 acre private oasis featuring stunning views of Whistler peak and vast sun exposure. www.altaplace.com
Personal Real Estate Corporation
DAN SCARRATT
dan@wrec.com | 604 938 4444
1306 EAGLE DRIVE
2220 LAKE PLACID ROAD
Bedrooms: 5 Bathrooms: 4 Square Feet:3,453 If you are looking for a clean and contemporary residence that enjoys the breathtaking views of Mt. Currie – look no further. This four bedroom/three bathroom home located in the Pemberton Benchlands is light filled into the open plan living area.
Bedrooms: 5 Bathrooms: 5.5 Square Feet:3,865 Location, Recreation, Relaxation. This amazing home and property is just a short walk to the Creekside Gondola, pubs, restaurants, and shopping, or an even shorter stroll to Alpha Lake.
PEMBERTON BENCHLANDS
Detached Home
$1,824,000
CREEKSIDE
Chalet
$4,199,000
RANGE ROVER
Ski films redux IT’S THAT TIME of year when ski movies drop from the digital heavens in which they’re conceived into theatres and social media streams across the White Planet.
BY LESLIE ANTHONY As usual, never before have there been as many top-drawer, well-conceived and written, laboriously storied, fastidiously shot, gloriously drool-worthy films for your eye-grazing pleasure. There’s a few I can’t wait to see (Passage, Tatum Monod’s paean to her family ski history with CK9 Studio, and Blank Collective’s Tales from Cascadia among them), but suffice to say, given their sheer number, few if any new films will stand the test of time. That wasn’t true in the bad ol’ days of limited media, where a solid ski flick, could, over decades, legitimately influence audience and filmmakers alike. Everyone likely has their own list, but here’s a handful that got to me. Ski the Outer Limits (Summit Films Productions, 1970)—The first (and possibly only) ski film to pose the question “Why ski?” was so far ahead of its time it still knows no peer. The plodding, philosophical
MOVIE NIGHT Everyone likely has their own list of ski flick favourites, but here are some that influenced Leslie Anthony. PHOTO BY LESLIE ANTHONY
44 OCTOBER 7, 2021
narrative driving the often slow-mo blackand-white imagery can rivet the dullest (or stoned-est) viewer’s attention; even non-skiers are wowed by Tom LeRoi’s “fullgainer” (front flip) into Corbet’s Couloir in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Many have claimed (myself and Glen Plake among them) that being able to situate skiing as a scholarly subject, as Ski the Outer Limits did, changed their lives forever. Downhill Racer (Michael Ritchie, 1973)— This existential flick features a youthful Robert Redford as a maverick U.S. ski racer with the chops to beat Euro legends if he can just ditch the Yankee hubris. Despite his disruptive influence on the team, a crusty coach recognizes the racer’s potential and a classic self-realization drama ensues. Noteworthy for some of the racing footage captured on rugged early ‘70s courses— when “weather delay” wasn’t a thing—by local stuntmen like future heli-ski legend Rudi Gertsch, the home-run script by awardwinning writer James Salter helps make this Hollywood’s best ski movie ever. The Performers (Dick Barrymore, 1971)— Dick Barrymore’s classic documentary about four K2 pros crisscrossing the U.S. in a red, white, and blue motorhome was originally intended as a ski-shop film but delivered much more. Holding up a mirror to the stirrings of the original freestyle revolution, 360s, backflips, and mule kicks offset the expected cliff hucks along with over-the-head pow footage to rival today’s best segments. In Aspen, the K2 posse also judges two events—a Hot Dog contest on a
steep mogul run, and a wet T-shirt contest invented for the film. It’s the closest thing skiing has to Bruce Brown’s epic surf doc, Endless Summer. The Blizzard of Aahhhs (Greg Stump, 1988)— Sure you’ve heard of this film, but even if you and your buddies watched it a hundred times on the shitty VCR in your parents’ basement you should watch it again. Ushering in the extreme era (later recast as “freeskiing”) with a killer soundtrack and more neon than Times Square on New Year’s Eve, Blizzard offered a cure for the tired, formulaic Millerism that had infected ski movies to that point. While introducing instant legends Glen Plake, Scot Schmidt and Mike Hattrup to the world at large, Blizzard took viewers on a steep, deep, high-octane trip from Squaw Valley, California, to Chamonix, France, and the ski world never looked back. Free Radicals (Down Films, 1996)—In 1995, future Oscar-nominated Swedish film director Ruben Ostlund found himself directing a snowboard movie in the Arctic resort of Riksgränsen, Sweden. During a chairlift ride the antics of local skier Jesper Rönnbäck caught Ostlund’s eye and shifted his focus. His decision to shoot Rönbäck and his exuberant mogul and telemark buddies resulted in Free Radicals, a film whose strong skiing, bulletproof landings, and nascent New School tricks would form the foundation for a much-loved franchise. In a mind-blowing closing segment, Rönnbäck nails the Trifide 3 exit couloir in La Grave with hard-packed snow, once considered the craziest thing ever done on skis.
Degenerates (Poor Boyz Productions, 1998)—For his second film, Johnny Decesare took his borrowed cameras to the Petri dishes of the progressive freestyle movement bubbling up from the snowboard-envy of the late-nineties mogul-skiing scene. As a film it’s raw, sometimes ugly, the music terrible, the production values suspect, and the skiing often as awkward as the on-camera athlete clips. Everything is an experiment here, many of them failed. But the seeds of what was to come shine through in skiers trying aerial grabs and inverts that look as new to them as the audience who watched the film’s debut. Degenerates captures the effort—plus the inevitable bone-shattering spills—that birthed a new ski genre. All.I.Can (Sherpas Cinema, 2011)—Whistlerbased Sherpas Cinema took the Hail Mary pass of producing an annual ski movie to appease sponsors and said “no thanks.” The quality that time buys shows in this multiyear effort that also offers an environmental kick-in-the-balls to the industry, showcasing cutting-edge skiing while asking questions about its role in climate change. The movie deftly blends this green theme with white explosions of powder, an uneasy marriage in a sport attuned to a nature under siege but very dependent on fossil fuels. The message is clear that if we want to keep skiing, we all need to do what we can to reduce our climate footprint. Leslie Anthony is a Whistler-based author, editor, biologist and bon vivant who has never met a mountain he didn’t like. ■
46 OCTOBER 7, 2021
FEATURE STORY
Is it time for Canada to open its doors to climate migrants?
As huge swathes of the world become uninhabitable due to rising heat, a group of refugee lawyers say Canada could become an important oasis By Stefan Labbé
In February 2021,
Ana Hernandez stood on the south bank of the Rio Grande River cradling her two-year-old son as they waited to climb into a smuggler’s inflatable boat. North of the border, an unprecedented deep freeze gripped Texas in sub-zero temperatures. “We’d never felt such cold. Never,” she says. Together with her husband, Hernandez had spent a treacherous two months fleeing Honduras, where the land and people had turned against her. Five years of drought had forced the young mother’s father to sell half the family’s cattle. In the wet season, flash floods rose the level of the neighbouring El Cajon Reservoir, swallowing huge tracks of farmland where the family grew corn, beans and coffee. “Imagine a year where everything is dry. Then comes the water. The earth softens and the landslides come,” says Hernandez. “The earth fell with all the coffee plants.” Under a changing climate, the Hernandez family is one of hundreds of thousands of Central Americans driven from their lands under a confluence of drought, flood, poverty and violence. Many of those displaced in recent years have migrated to other provinces or neighbouring countries. For others, salvation lies to the north, through Mexico to the United States, and for a growing minority, on to Canada. By 2050, the World Bank estimates climate change will displace 213 million people within their own borders as coastal cities and island nations vanish under rising seas and drought grips wide swaths of the African Sahel and Central America. The number of people forced to move because of climate change could be driven down by up to 80 per cent if the nations cut emissions and plan for migration. At a global scale, how many seek refuge across international borders will come down to millions of individual decisions. The pressures are enormous. According to one groundbreaking study in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, climate change could lead to one of the largest migrations in the history of humanity. For thousands of years, humans have concentrated their lives in a small band of liveable temperatures. But as global emissions heat the planet, researchers predict the temperature experienced by an average human will change more in the next 50 years than it has over the past 6,000. Absent migration, one-third of humanity—most in the poorest regions of the world— will live under Sahara-like temperatures found today in less than one per cent of the planet’s surface. Migration, say several experts interviewed for this story, offers a proven safety valve for desperate populations looking to start over. “When people are allowed to move internationally, that tends to reduce their level of exposure, their level of vulnerability to climate change,” says Hélène Benveniste, a researcher and environmental fellow at the Harvard University Center for the Environment, who has modelled migration flows due to climate change across dozens of countries.
Buffered by a wealthy United States to the south, Canada sits in an outstanding geographic position to pick and choose who crosses its borders. It’s a choice some advocates now say needs to be re-examined as the global climate makes large tracts of land uninhabitable. In a forthcoming report, a group of Canadian refugee lawyers is calling on the Canadian government to open up new legal pathways for climate migrants to reach Canada. “We’re trying to proactively think of options that don’t require radical change, that can be piloted at a time when numbers are quite reasonable,” says Warda Shazadi Meighen, co-author of the upcoming report from the Canadian Association of Refugee Lawyers. Canada doesn’t recognize climate migrants under current immigration law. But Shazadi Meighen says in past natural disasters—such as the 2010 earthquake in Haiti and the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami—the Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada offered special directives to prioritize certain nationals to seek refuge in Canada. “That designates entire classes of people as individuals who can be settled in Canada under permanent residency,” says Shazadi Meighen. Which countries would qualify for the humanitarian and compassionate pool would be
A farmer in Central America’s ‘dry corridor’ shows the effects of the cycle of prolonged droughts followed by heavy rains, on his crops. PHOTO BY FRANCISCO FION / COURTESY OF WORLD FOOD PROGRAMME
OCTOBER 7, 2021
47
FEATURE STORY a bureaucratic decision left to the minister, recommends the report. A second solution, says the group of lawyers, would be to include climate migrants under the country’s private refugee resettlement program. Just like the Canadian government offered a special status to help resettle roughly 60,000 people fleeing war in Syria, it could create a special category for climate migrants desperate for a way out, the report says. “The goal is really to explore what can be done,” says the lawyer. “There’s also broader debates about changing the definition of who counts as a refugee.”
Climate sets the stage H
ernandez spent her youth in a rural corner of Comayagua in central Honduras. Some of her strongest memories from that time come in the wake of Hurricane Mitch, when the second-deadliest storm in recorded history devastated her country. In total, 15,000 people died and a million were left homeless. The resulting poverty has been linked to a rise in crime rates and sprawling migration. For a week and a half the family was left incommunicado, without food or connections to the outside world after floods wiped out nearby towns and the road to the regional capital. “At that time, I had two sisters in Canada. Thank God, they helped us a bit,” she remembers. “They helped me with money to keep studying.” The first sibling to go to university, Hernandez’s father wanted her to study medicine. But growing up in a country struggling to rebuild made her choose another path. One day, she saw a picture of San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge and imagined, “I would build things like that.” But while Hernandez left for the capital, Tegucigalpa, to study, millions of other Hondurans fled the country. Today, the town she grew up in, Las Lajas, has been gutted of young people who migrated to survive. “Many people ended up without land, sources of work dried up; it was really difficult. That’s more than 20 years ago. I still feel like this hurricane is affecting my country,” she says. For a few years, Hernandez was on the path she dreamed for herself—her civil engineering degree led her to build several structures on a U.S. Air Force base known as Soto Cano, and she was soon running her own company back home building gas stations and houses. “My father was proud,” she says. Hernandez says she was never one to collaborate with local politicians; soon, corruption got in the way. “If you have a good connection in politics, you have work. But if not?” Work dried up and so too did the fields she was now helping her father tend. “It was two extremes. Sometimes it was drought and then the next year came and it rained. It rained, it rained a lot,” she says. Hernandez took a job in a restaurant, met her husband Alex in 2017 and soon fell pregnant with their first child. Together on the land, the family did their best to survive with what they had.
They arrived by force O
ne day in 2020, an eight-month-pregnant Hernandez and Alex walked down to the banks of the reservoir to check on their cornfields. Hernandez remembers the drone of a motor, a small boat arriving at the shore. Out of nowhere, six masked men surrounded them, holding pistols to their heads. “They told us to leave, that if we didn’t leave they’d kill us because now they were the landlords,” she says through tears. “It was really hard. Really hard.” In February 2020, the whole family fled the land they had known as home for 40 years— the father to a neighbouring province, Hernandez to the nearby city with her husband and soon-to-be-born son. For months, they lived off remittances from Hernandez’s sisters in Langley, B.C. When they went to the police, the threats got worse. She says she soon learned that the “invaders”
48 OCTOBER 7, 2021
who took her family’s land were connected to a senior local politician and the notorious Mara 18, one of the most violent transnational crime groups in the region. “Imagine them telling you they’ll kill your son,” she says. After multiple death threats, they fled the city of Comayagua on New Year’s Eve. They had little more than $500 in their pocket, their Honduran passports and diaper bag of clothes and other essentials. First, the family travelled by bus to Guatemala, to a stretch of border shared with Mexico and the Pacific Ocean. Hernandez recalls the next two months travelling through Mexico as a blur of luck and folly. In some moments, locals would smuggle the family across rivers with contraband bananas; in others, the family raced motorcycles across Mexican beaches under the cover of darkness, desperately trying to reach a town before the federal police went out on patrol. Early on, the family had their money and cellphone stolen at gunpoint. But Hernandez also says they passed through the mountains and jungles of Mexico on the back of generosity—a free ride in a vegetable transport truck, another passenger stepping up to pay their fare. When the family reached the border town of Reynosa, the family was hopeful they’d soon cross into Texas; from there, they’d make their way north to the Canadian border where her sisters lived. But when they arrived in Reynosa, four people were waiting, says Hernandez. “They took us to a place where a house had burned down. There were a ton of people dressed like police. We saw a group of ‘pollos’ (migrants), some 50 people in line,” recalls Hernandez. When they learned the Hernandez family was broke and that their toddler had come down with COVID-19 symptoms, they beat Alex, and held guns to their heads. Only an intervention from one of the more sympathetic Gulf Cartel gangsters saved their life, says Hernandez. The family was left on the side of the highway near a cemetery. Hernandez says they walked until they hit the gates of a ranch, a place where the foreman “treated us like family.” For two weeks, Alex worked as a ranch hand while his wife nursed their son back to health. When they decided it was time to go, they were only 10 minutes from the river separating them from Texas.
The final push To canada T
he Hernandez family arrived on the banks of the Rio Grande just as Texas was under one of the worst cold spells in recent memory. A coyote, or people smuggler, shuttled them across on an inflatable dingy as snow fell around them. The family took no more than a few steps onto the American side of the river when the U.S. Border Patrol stepped out of the brush. Hernandez says they were taken by truck to McAllen, Texas, where they were placed in a detention centre with thousands of other undocumented migrants. After a two-month journey, Hernandez called her sister in San Antonio and the family was released. Hernandez says they waited little time before jumping on a plane and flying to Bellingham, Wash., where they caught an Uber to Peace Arch Park on the B.C.-Washington border. “We walked across the park and presented ourselves to the border guards as refugees,” says Hernandez. That was in January 2021. In the months since, Hernandez has been reunited with her sisters in Langley. Alex is working in construction and Hernandez hopes to one day pick up where she left off as a civil engineer. When the family had a refugee hearing on Sept. 17, there was no room to speak of drought or flood, no room to make their case that decades of environmental pressures led to wave after wave of violence and corruption—eventually landing one day in their cornfield. Whether the threats to their life will be enough to let them stay in Canada remains an open question. “They didn’t ask me many questions,” says Hernandez. “They didn’t ask me anything about climate change.”
An indigenous farmer looks out over his destroyed farm in Dominica a month after Hurricane Maria devastated the island nation. Climate change is expected to make such powerful storms worse in the coming decades. PHOTO BY STEFAN LABBÉ
‘There a policy’isn’t
Climate migrants already here
U
nder the 1951 UN Refugee Convention, a “refugee” is defined as person who has left and can’t return to their country “owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion.” Advocates now question whether the 70-year-old document needs an overhaul to reflect the pressures brought on by a changing planet. For now, Canada shuts its doors on climate migrants at every turn, says refugee lawyer Shazadi Meighen. “They are here, but there’s no specific avenue to be considered because of climate migration,” she says. “There isn’t a policy. There isn’t a proactive way we’ve thought about how to have these people here.” In an email to Glacier Media, a spokesperson for Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) says addressing climate change and its effects are a priority for the Government of Canada. “Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) continues to monitor the implications of climate change on migration and displacement patterns and flows,” writes the spokesperson. “In the event of natural disaster, decisions on actions by the Government of Canada are taken on a case-by-case basis.”
T
hat focus on natural disaster has done little to help people like 55-year-old Valerio Tezen, who escaped poverty in Guatemala after his flower crops collapsed. He grew up on a farm outside of San Juan Sacatepéquez, a town that in recent years has grown on the doorstep of Guatemala City. For decades, his family cultivated carnations, chrysanthemums and roses, mostly for export to countries like Canada and the U.S. First it was the “plague,” as Tezen recalls, waves of pests that drove farmers to purchase expensive greenhouses. In the coming years, rainfall across Central America is expected to decrease by up to 60 per cent in a belt of land known as the “dry corridor,” stretching from the highlands of Guatemala south into El Salvador and eastern Honduras. Tezen says many in his town have already reached a breaking point. In one corner of the municipality, a cement factory moved in a few years ago, pitting thousands of locals against an industrial behemoth that requires huge amounts of water. On the surrounding lands, Tezen says big landholders cut down trees, which used to anchor the region’s soil and act as windbreaks for the flowers. “They are people who have money. They don’t care about the small families supporting
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OCTOBER 7, 2021
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FEATURE STORY themselves with flowers,” he says. Drought came. Tezen says they were so desperate for water he dug wells with his hands. Some have tried to grow vegetables like cilantro, radishes, tomatoes and peppers. But many have been pushed out of the countryside and into the city looking for work. “I can’t grow more flowers, there’s no water,” he says. For Tezen, that meant borrowing money to buy a pickup truck, used to deliver flowers and furniture to people’s homes. But with nine children, his expenses grew and keeping up with bills was hard. Three times Tezen looked to Canada as a way out, a way to feed his family. Four years ago he finally got his break under Canada’s migrant worker program. But that break came after several $800 applications, money he borrowed. Every denial left him in a deeper hole with loan sharks. “If we were in Guatemala, we wouldn’t be speaking with you. They’d kill us,” he says. Today, the family is scattered. Tezen is on a two-year contract taking care of 50 calves on a farm outside Drummondville, Que.; his wife works as a migrant labourer on a mushroom farm in Oshawa, Ont., where she recently caught COVID-19, and their children are with their grandparents back in Guatemala. Every night, the family has a group video call on WhatsApp. “They tell me, ‘I want to hug you, papa. I want you here,’ They cry. They’re suffering,” he says. “I feel like I’m alone.” Still, Tezen says he’s grateful for the chance to come to Canada, grateful he’s found a way to survive after so many hard years. Like the Hernandez family, Tezen is part of a hidden group of climate migrants who have already arrived in Canada—it’s just that current Canadian immigration law makes them invisible, says Shazadi Meighen. “I do have people who have said the economic conditions in my country aren’t good— there’s a famine, there’s a shortage, there’s a drought. Those kinds of cases have come to me, but they haven’t used those terms [when they seek asylum or try to immigrate] because I know there isn’t a specific avenue for them,” says Shazadi Meighen. “There’s nothing I could do.”
Ana Hernandez PHOTO BY STEFAN LABBÉ
Stefan Labbé is a solutions journalist. That means he covers how people are responding to problems linked to climate change—from housing to energy and everything in between. Have a story idea? Get in touch. Email slabbe@glaciermedia.ca. ■
Roland’s Pub will be serving turkey dinner with all the trimmings and a slice of pumpkin pie for $27.95 on Sunday and Monday night. (Dine in only until 7pm, then take-out available)
Also serving brunch on Monday from 11am - 2pm. *We give thanks to everyone who has supported us thru this pandemic*
gershoncpa.com
604•902•1891 www.heikedesigns.com
TIP of the week:
Planning for the Fall garden? - part 3:
• Add seasonal colour inside and out • Get creative with decorations from the garden • Happy Thanksgiving - enjoy!! See full series and more information at www.heikedesigns.com
50 OCTOBER 7, 2021
Proud member of
WWW.WHISTLERLAWYER.CA adam@whistlerlawyer.ca | 604.905.5180
LOST LAKE TRAILS Please be advised that the Lost Lake Trail Park system will be hosting the runners, so if you plan to use the park trails please expect heavy traffic.
October 9,10,11 7:00 am - noon each day
SPORTS THE SCORE
Whistler Alpine Meadows races return after 2020 hiatus OREGON’S MAX KING SHATTERS 25K COURSE RECORD BY 11 MINUTES
BY MEGAN LALONDE AHEAD OF THE Whistler Alpine Meadows (WAM) 25-kilometre trail race on Sunday, Sept. 26, Bend, Ore. ultramarathoner Max King’s main goal was to run the course in under two hours—mostly because his friend, endurance athlete and event director Gary Robbins, told him it wouldn’t be possible. “I said, ‘Challenge accepted,’” recalled King. In reality, that was exactly the reaction Robbins was looking to achieve. “I knew that he would take that very personally, in a funny way,” he said. King lived up to the challenge, crossing the finish line in just one hour, 55 minutes and 41 seconds and shattering the previous course record by nearly 11 minutes. “Once the race started and I saw how seriously he was taking this sub-two-hour challenge, I had zero doubts that he would then knock the course record out of the park,” said Robbins. “It was incredible to see. We definitely had to adjust some of our volunteer times based on knowing that one of the world’s best mountain runners was legitimately going to run that course as fast as he could.” Robbins added, “I would go out on a limb and say I don’t think anyone’s breaking Max’s time anytime soon.”
MARATHON MADNESS Oregon’s Max King smashed the Whistler Alpine Meadows 25-kilometre race record on Sunday, Sept. 26 with a time of 1:55:41. PHOTO BY JAMIL COURY
52 OCTOBER 7, 2021
King initially travelled to Whistler to produce social media content for Salomon during the WAM 60-km event on Saturday, but made a last-minute decision to join the 25-km race. The runner said he arrived at the start line with few expectations, considering he had never visited Whistler before and admits he’s “not well versed” in the Canadian racing scene. “I just went out, really, to run a fun
RESULTS 60KM MEN: 1. Shaun Stephens-Whale, Squamish - 5:41:19 2. Andrew Russell, Saanichton 6:06:20 3. Colin Miller, Lions Bay 6:42:35 TOP LOCAL FINISHER: Dana Luck, 13th overall – 7:40:59 60KM WOMEN: 1. Jennifer Shaub, Nelson – 7:28:18 2. Julia Hlynsky, West Vancouver – 7:33:58 3. Kate Butcher, Vancouver – 7:40:45 TOP LOCAL FINISHER: Maude Cyr, 25th overall (7th in women’s), Pemberton – 8:30:26 25KM MEN: 1. Max King, Bend – 1:55:41 2. Vincent Pagot, Chilliwack – 2:15:52 3. Tyler D’Arcy, Saanichton – 2:19:13 TOP LOCAL FINISHER: Alex Dunn, 6th overall, 2:25:23
race … I knew going in that I had a chance of winning, but didn’t know who else was competing so I wasn’t sure how I was going to do,” said King. He likened the course to “a two-hour interval workout” through temperate rainforest that, while technical, flowed well and ran faster than he was expecting. King credited Whistler’s mountain bike and trail building communities for creating so many
25KM WOMEN: 1. Patricia Roney, Victoria – 2:28:29 2. Brooke St. Germain, Vancouver – 2:35:19 3. Laurel Booker, North Vancouver – 2:36:54 TOP LOCAL FINISHER: Lee Ann Ahrens, 28th overall (6th in women’s), 2:42:54 13KM MEN: 1. Jordan Guenette, West Vancouver – 1:04:12 2. Gary Robbins, Vancouver – 1:07:08 3. Ben Skinner, Whistler – 1:14:57 (< Top local finisher) 13KM WOMEN: 1. Brooke Spence, North Vancouver – 1:12:41 2. Kalie McCrystal, Squamish – 1:13:16 3. Jeanelle Hazlett, North Vancouver – 1:13:56 TOP LOCAL FINISHER: Lesley Trivett, 48th overall (19th in women’s) – 2:13:41
multi-use trails built specifically to be a blast, adding, “When you get on a course like that, it’s a ton of fun to run it, and to run it fast.” B.C. women also posted incredibly strong times across all three courses over race weekend. Nelson’s Jennifer Shaub took the 60-km win, completing the gruelling course in 7:28:18 for ninth place overall. Victoria-based runner Patricia Roney was the top female finisher and seventh overall in the 25-km event, with her time of 2:28:29, while Brooke Spence of North Vancouver took the 13-km win, even landing on the co-ed podium in the process. She crossed the finish line shortly after Robbins to take third overall in 1:12:41. As for the men, Shaun Stephens-Whale of Squamish won the 60-km race in less than six hours with his time of 5:41:19, while West Vancouver’s Jordan Guennette took the 13-km victory in 1:04:12.
‘A LOT OF INCREDIBLE HURDLES TO BE OVERCOME’ Organized by Coast Mountain Trail Running’s (CMTR) Robbins and Geoff Langford, the 2021 WAM races were among the first held in Whistler after COVID-19 forced CMTR to step back from hosting events in 2020. So, aside from a freshly-set course record, what was new for WAM after last year’s hiatus? “Only everything,” Robbins answered with a laugh.
SEE PAGE 53
>>
SPORTS THE SCORE
Our RMTs Looking for are oneback place and working get to ease thoseto aches you and ‘backpains? in action’ We keep you playing with both physiotherapy and massage
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Action Photos
DIALED IN Padraic O’Rourke gauges the green ahead of a putt on Day 1 of the 2021 B.C. Club Professional Championship at Royal Colwood Golf Club in Victoria. PHOTO COURTESY OF PGA OF B.C.
Whistler golfer Padraic O’Rourke wins 2021 B.C. Club Professional Championship
LOCAL GOLFER Padraic O’Rourke came out on top at the PGA of B.C. Club Professional Championship (CPC) at Royal Colwood Golf Club on Vancouver Island on
Open through Thanksgiving
View at bikeparkphotos.com
BACK-TO-BACK SCORES OF 69 WAS ENOUGH FOR O’ROURKE TO TAKE HOME THE DICK MUNN TROPHY
BY HARRISON BROOKS
in the Bike Park
Portrait Sessions > mail@coastphoto.com
Sept. 21. “It was great. I didn’t go there with a lot of expectations, to be honest. I didn’t play a lot of golf this year and I guess going in there with a little bit lower expectations was kind of a good thing,” said O’Rourke,
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ALPINE MEADOWS FROM PAGE 52 “We didn’t get any permit approvals for any of our historical courses, so we were down to two options and those options were to cancel, again, or to redesign everything,” he explained. During WAM’s last iteration in 2019, runners had the option of competing in 25-km, 55-km, 110-km or 160-km (100 mile) races, as well as one entirely uphill race along Blackcomb’s Ascent Trail. This year, WAM offered a new 13-km distance in addition to the 25-km and 60-km events. “There were a lot of incredible hurdles to be overcome to get these events off the ground this year, and all of that had to be done in the last five weeks,” Robbins said, singling out Whistler local Sonia Mahoney for a herculean effort leading up to race weekend. “She ended up having to do more than pretty much anybody else to salvage the races and they would not have happened without her.” This year also marked WAM’s first as a stop on the prestigious Golden Trail Series tour. In 2022, Whistler will serve as the series’ North American finale, where double points will be up for grabs. “I would say next year we’ll see runners from 20-plus
countries coming to Whistler to run the 50K race,” Robbins said. The event director himself also decided to join in on the fun this year, competing in the 13-km event. It marked only the second time Robbins has raced in one of his own events in the last decade. He finished second, with a time of 1:07:08. “My honest goal going in was to be within three minutes of (winner) Jordan (Guenette) at the finish and at 2m56s back I nailed my race goals,” Robbins wrote in an Instagram post. Also competing this year were WAM veterans and former Vancouver Canucks Daniel and Henrik Sedin, who both crossed the finish line in 2:34:02 for 13th and 14th place, respectively. “I think it’s hilarious that Daniel always outkicks Henrik at the finish line and never lets him beat him. Every single time, every single race,” said Robbins. “It was just really nice to be back with these things again and it was great to be in Whistler and to see how excited everybody was to be back at a start, and more importantly, a finish line.” n
OCTOBER 7, 2021
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SPORTS THE SCORE << FROM PAGE 53 the director of golf at the Fairmont Chateau Whistler Golf Club. “I just took my game for where it was at and just sort of managed my ball really well for the two days and I hit 33 out of the 36 greens in regulation, so I definitely stroked the ball well and that probably separated me from the field a bit.” The annual two-day tournament invited any members who serve in head-executive or head-teaching professional roles, and those that operate teaching facilities not associated with a golf course, to register. According to PGA of B.C. communications manager Eric Mackenzie, a booming interest in golf thanks to its status as a COVID-19-friendly sport meant most local golf professionals eligible to play in this tournament haven’t had the same amount of time available to work on their games as they may have had in previous years, which left the field of competitors more open than usual. And O’Rourke, who has finished top five in the tournament multiple times before, but was never in striking distance of the top spot, took advantage of that open field. “I knew if I played well I could win for sure but I wasn’t going to lose any sleep over it,” said O’Rourke. “It’s been a really busy golf season so I haven’t been able to get out and play a lot of golf. “I played the practise round and I knew the scoring there was going to be really
DIALED IN Padraic O’Rourke tees off on Day 1 of the 2021 B.C. Club Professional Championship at Royal Colwood Golf Club in Victoria. PHOTO COURTESY OF PGA OF B.C.
tough because the greens are very tricky, so I knew that something around par for the two days wasn’t going to be too far away. So I had that in mind for the two rounds and luckily I was able to shoot a couple under
and ended up winning by five.” O’Rourke finished round one tied for the lead with last year’s winner Brad Clapp of the Ledgeview Golf Club in Abbotsford, but separated himself from the pack on
Day 2, winning the tournament and getting his hand on the Dick Munn trophy and a cheque for $2,700. “It feels amazing, to be honest, to be able to get my name on the trophy beside some of the names on it,” O’Rourke said in a press release from PGA of B.C. “To get the monkey off the back feels great, there’s no doubt about that.” On top of winning the CPC this year, O’Rourke also won the 2020 Dick Munn Golf Professional of the Year award for his work in the business and career development side of the sport. He joins Kelowna Golf and Country Club’s head professional Rob Anderson and Point Grey Golf and Country Club’s Dave Zibrik as the only people to win each award since the CPC started in 2006. Next up on his calendar for this season, O’Rourke will be heading to Ontario at the end of the month to play in the Canadian Club Professional Championship. After winning the B.C. CPC and shooting a 65 at Nicklaus North during the Whistler Open, he believes another win is well within the realm of possibility. “You never know, right? I’m feeling pretty good about my game and if I play my game, I won’t be too far away, to be honest,” he said. “Obviously, I have never seen the golf course but I look forward to getting out there a couple days early and having a look around. Competition will be high, but if the game shows up, I won’t be a million miles away.” n
THE SKI SWAP Open to the public!
SATURDAY OCTOBER 9, 2021
Fairmont Chateau Whistler MacDonald Ballroom
Looking to sell your equipment? Bring your used skis, boots, apparel and racing gear and let us sell them for you. It’s easy!
Masks are mandatory & you must complete Sellers Form prior to drop off GEAR CHECK-IN: Saturday, Oct. 9 • 7:30 to 10:30am SALE HOURS: 11:30am to 5:00pm COLLECTION: Saturday, Oct. 9 • 5:00 to 6:30pm
Download Sellers Form: wmsc.info 54 OCTOBER 7, 2021
MAY 31 – JUNE 2, 2019 Oct WHISTLER 9th -OLYMPIC 11th, 2021 PLAZA
whistlerhalfmarathon.com
Whistler Community Wildfire Mitigation Survey The Resort Municipality of Whistler has launched a survey to identify ways to improve community awareness about its Wildfire Mitigation Program. Feedback from the survey will help shape the RMOW’s communications strategies related to the three pillars of the Wildfire Mitigation Program: Wildfire Fuel Thinning, FireSmart program and Public Education and ultimately the updated Community Wildfire Resiliency Plan. Survey closes on October 18. Take the survey at whistler.ca/wildfire
SUPPORTING WAG
LOST LAKE TRAILS
Please be advised that the Lost Lake Park trail system the runners soSUN, if you plan FRI, MAY will 31, be hosting SAT, JUNE 1, JUNE 2, 9am 3:30pm 5pmpark trails please 7:30pm expect heavy to use&the traffic. Run with Rob Krar
Opening Presentation OCTOBER 9, 10, 11 Register online by Rob Krar whistlerhalfmarathon.com/ 7:00am - noon each day dog-jog whistlerhalfmarathon.com/
whistlerhalfmarathon.com/ guided-trail-runs
Resort Municipality of Whistler whistler.ca/wildfire
film-festival
Resort Municipality of Whistler
Valley Trail Detour ±
R
2.5 ha
R
_ ^
_ ^
R 1.5 ha
_ ^ _ ^
R
Potential Access Points
Stand Plots Threat Plots Trail Treatment Unit Highway 99 Road Private Land 20m Contours
0
37.5
75
150 m
On October 12, fuel thinning crews will begin treating areas near Whistler Secondary School. Work will take place between the high school and the Valley Trail as well as north of the school grounds. Closure of the Valley Trail will be required from the Rainbow neighborhood intersection to the Alpine Meadows intersection at Highway 99 and Alpine Way. Please use the Valley Trail on the west side of Highway 99. The project is expected to take one month to complete.
Learn more about these and other fuel reduction projects at whistler.ca/FuelThinning. Resort Municipality of Whistler Whistler.ca/FuelThinning OCTOBER 7, 2021
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SPORTS THE SCORE
Luge World Cup stop in Whistler cancelled THE INTERNATIONAL LUGE FEDERATION PULLED THE WHISTLER STOP OF THE CIRCUIT FOR THE SECOND YEAR IN A ROW
BY HARRISON BROOKS FOR THE SECOND year in a row, the Whistler Sliding Centre will not host any Luge World Cup events due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Whistler and Lake Placid, N.Y. were each scheduled to host a stop on this year’s circuit, but the International Luge Federation (FIL) decided to move each event to the 2014 Olympic track in Sochi, Russia. The news, announced at the end of August, came as a surprise to Whistler Sport Legacies president Roger Soane, especially after losing the 2021 World Championships in February for the same reasons. “It is frustrating because we know that the Europeans typically don’t like to come to North America ... but the sliding associations in Canada and USA have pushed very hard [for] races be held in North America every year,” said Soane. “I understand why they aren’t coming this year because at the time they wanted to secure flights, we couldn’t guarantee what the process would be to come into Canada. So, I get it, but I think it was a premature decision because I think if they’d waited
56 OCTOBER 7, 2021
a little longer, we would have had a much better result.” With Whistler’s track also being used as a high-performance training centre, Soane said he doesn’t believe the FIL’s decision will impact the sliding centre too much from a financial standpoint. However, Soane’s main concern is seeing North America’s absence from the schedule become a trend moving forward, which he said could have lasting impacts on the sport in Canada. “It’s not as though the track would be dark; there’s plenty of people that want to train on the track and in fact holding a championship means that a lot of the junior sliders get pushed out for that period because they can’t access the track. As far as we’re concerned, it’s disappointing because it’s what we are built for; it’s what Whistler does well. We do great events, we’ve got a great track and to be quite honest the athletes do like coming to Whistler because it is such a great location,” he said. “We don’t grow up as Canadians thinking, ‘I’m going to jump in a bobsleigh.’ Our athletes are plucked out of other sports because of their athletic prowess, so we don’t have a huge [number] of athletes in the pools of these sliding sports. And if you talk to some of the athletes in Whistler who are sliders
now, they got into the sport because they came to a competition and they saw it and they saw the excitement and thought, ‘I’d like to try that.’ So, to me, it’s about grassroots, it’s about hosting these events because it inspires the next generation of sliders.” Local luger Caitlyn Nash, who first started sliding after witnessing the sport for the first time at the Vancouver Olympics in 2010, is a prime example of how important hosting events in Whistler is for the next generation of sliders. Currently, Nash is finishing up training in Calgary before heading to Latvia for her first races of the season. And with her goal of qualifying for the World Cup circuit for the first time as a singles rider, the loss of the home track advantage was disappointing news for the 18-year-old. “Obviously racing on a home track gives our team a big advantage points-wise for qualifying for [the 2022] Olympics, and then having that opportunity being taken away from us at the last minute is kind of a big blow especially after all the training we did last year,” she said. “That was going to be one of my first world cups ever and racing at home, with the entire community behind me
would have been something so unique and so rewarding. Obviously I know my community is going to stand beside me and support me and cheer for me from wherever I am racing in the world, so I’m not feeling the lack of support in any way.” However, Nash is taking the loss of the Whistler World Cup in stride. She’s trying to stay positive about the season, even if it makes her road through the World Cup circuit and toward next year’s Olympics a little more uncertain. “It definitely does [shift your focus]. But in a way I am excited because I get to take what I’ve learned sliding in Whistler and now apply it to other tracks,” she said. “At this point everyone just has to be flexible, and as disappointing as it is, for that to be cancelled has given us an opportunity now to slide on some newer tracks that we wouldn’t have [been able] to go to this season and gives us something a little more unique and challenging.” Despite the bad news regarding this year’s World Cup event, Soane’s fears haven’t come to fruition quite yet. It was announced on Sept. 25 that Whistler will host the 2025 Luge World Championships and will remain, at least for the time being, a regular stop on the World Cup circuit in the future—COVID-19 permitting. n
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lisa@lisajohnson.me 208-1420 Alpha Lake Road, Whistler, BC
NEED A COVID TEST FOR TRAVEL?
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Clark Lewis, MD
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OCTOBER 7, 2021
57
FORK IN THE ROAD
Thank you, thank you, thank you! ANOTHER PANDEMIC THANKSGIVING MEANS FINDING YOUR OWN WAY TO GRATTITUDE YES, WE’RE PRETTY much masked and vaxed. And, yes, the golds and reds and copper tones of autumn twig memories and longings for fall rituals. But this Thanksgiving—no surprise in this household, at least—is once again taking place in Covidian mode as a lot of folks just don’t feel safe travelling, and a lot of others don’t feel safe having a lot of folks over to munch on drumsticks and scarf down pumpkin pie. So this Thanksgiving, like last year’s, is pushing us again to rethink the traditional turkey dinner when every chair in the
BY GLENDA BARTOSH house would be dragged out for loved ones to sit down around a homestyle festive table bursting with food and drink. First, you may not join up with anyone beyond your household or small bubble. Then you may not even have turkey. Lots of folks don’t anymore for good reason, including philosophy (think vegan, think animal welfare) and ease (pre-made cutlets or a turducken roast anyone?). Or simply because they really never liked turkey, anyhow, so why not shake things up and try a spinach and ricotta lasagna, a nice glazed pork tenderloin, or a Wet-Coast-style
BRANCHING BENEFITS Simply acknowledging your gratitude for the good things in your life — or, better, upping the ante and expressing your thankfulness to others — spreads good vibes and comfort like a sheltering tree.
58 OCTOBER 7, 2021
salmon, hopefully one that’s been certified as part of a sustainable catch. However you choose to spend your Thanksgiving holiday, I hope you take a minute or three when you have some precious time to yourself and give some thought to what you have in your life right now to really, truly feel thankful for. It can be too easy these days to feel pissed off or defeated by all the extra frustrations in our lives—the extra decisions to make, the extra extras it takes just to get through basics, safely. Delta? Fourth wave? Ugh! Who needs it? Even I, the eternal optimist, heaved a big sigh the other day and felt, well, fed up. But then I started thinking, wait a minute, there are tons of things I’m really grateful for right now, and if Thanksgiving isn’t the time to mull over that, I don’t know when is. So here’s a list, or at least the start of one, for things I feel thankful for. But actually, most of these “things” are people. People I depend on just to live; people far and wide I love; people with skills and talent, and spines of steel who don’t give up when it comes to doing what’s right and just and fair. To all those people whose names I know, and to all those I don’t, but am totally linked to in our interconnected everyday web of life, Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours, however you spend it. We have much to be grateful for, and much more work to do.
THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU TO...
• All the people working during these uncertain times at Nesters Market, in The Grocery Store, the Fresh St. Market IGA, Whistler Creekside and every store—the
village drugstore, Whistler Hardware—I’ve ever bought food and supplies in, and every restaurant I’ve eaten at. I thank you for being thoughtful and patient while I fumbled with my mask or hand sanitizer, and for going above and beyond the call of duty, cheerfully smiling or sharing a cute one-liner when you tallied my bill or walked me over to the right aisle for the tinned soup. You made my day. You made my hubbie’s day. Bet you made everybody’s day, whoever you crossed paths with, without being cross. • Thank you, thank you to all the amazing farmers and growers working so hard to get your lovely fresh and often organic products to the farmers’ markets and local stores in Pemberton, Whistler, Squamish, the West End—you name it if you’re reading this somewhere else. You’ve faced down a heat dome, floods, uncertain supply chains for everything from seeds to pots, and even pot, and come through with gorgeous, nourishing, tasty food time and time again. I promise you, I try not to waste a speck, and I appreciate your talent, skill and resources for growing food, raising animals, delivering eggs and milk— all things I wouldn’t know where to even start if I had to fend for myself. All the while you’ve had your own worries and frustrations about keeping yourselves and your loved ones safe along with all the pickers, planters and harvesters you need to get food to my table and into my tummy, all safe and sound. • More thanks to all the amazing caregivers and professionals in our care centres and hospitals. You do your utmost to keep me and my loved ones as healthy and happy as possible. Thanks to the people who hand me a clean mask to wear—for free! And thank you to all those behind the scenes, washing floors,
cleaning washrooms, checking the HVAC— all you wonderful hidden souls keeping systems running everywhere. We never see you, but we feel the benefits of your work and knowledge. • Thank you, thank you, to all the activists young and old (along with the journalists who cover them and the scientists who inform them) who are vocal, persistent, insistent, out in the streets of Berlin, London, Whistler, Penticton, Vancouver—organizing events via 350. org or Fridays for Future, and more, to remind our leaders their job is to lead and enact laws and policies that will stabilize our climate, and protect things like our precious glaciers, including Wedgemount. (I remember it 40 years ago—it was way, way bigger than now.) Thank you to all those toughing it out in Fairy Creek, or surrounding the B.C. Legislature in a sit-in as I write this, demanding our politicians protect the real, old old growth, the valuable stuff with a price tag on its head on the valley bottoms, the stuff the Union Of BC Indian Chiefs has rightly called for a moratorium on harvesting. Finally, thank you, thank you, to all the Indigenous people of this beautiful place I call home, for continuing to share your knowledge and deep appreciation of the web of the natural world we all depend on for life itself. We need your voices more than ever, and we’re thankful for the generosity of your thoughtful ancestors that started the first Thanksgiving 400 years ago on the shores of North America. Glenda Bartosh is an award-winning journalist who wouldn’t know how to survive in the wild if she tried. n
MEADOW PARK SPORTS CENTRE SWIM • SKATE • SWEAT • SQUASH OPEN DAILY: 6 a.m. to 8:30 p.m. Passholder access only
Proof of vaccination and government photo ID required for entry
FITNESS CLASS SCHEDULE OCT 7 THURSDAY
I Cardio Bands & Core 7:45-8:45 a.m. Laura *NEW*
I Aqua Fit Shallow 8:30-9:30 a.m. Marie-Anne
OCT 8 FRIDAY
OCT 9 SATURDAY
OCT 10 SUNDAY
OCT 11 MONDAY
I Low Impact: Strength & Stretch 7:45-8:45 a.m. Beth I Sweat Effect 9-10 a.m. Beth
I Zumba 10:30-11:30 a.m. Susie
OCT 12 TUESDAY
OCT 13 WEDNESDAY
I Vakandi Fit 6:15-7:15 a.m. Kim
I Dumbbells & Down Dogs 7:45-8:45 a.m. Lou
I Full Body Boost 7:45-8:45 a.m. Lou
I Full Body Boost 9-10 a.m. Lou
*NEW*
F Vinyasa Flow 12:15-1:15 p.m. Hailey
I Low Impact: Strength & Stretch 9-10 a.m. Laura
I Aqua Fit – Deep 8:30-9:30 a.m. Marie-Anne
I Gentle Fit For Seniors 10:15-11: 15 a.m. Diana
I Dumbbells I High Intensity & Down Dogs Interval Training 9-10 a.m. 6:15-7:15 p.m. Lou Alex
F FLEXIBLE
REGISTRATION Flex-reg’ classes have a separate fee and allow you to register for classes on the days that fit your schedule.
*NEW*
12:15-1:15 p.m. Carmen
I Mountain Ready Conditioning 5:45-6:45 p.m. Steve
FITNESS Registered fitness classes have a separate fee and a defined start and end date. Pre-registration is required for the entire set of classes.
Training 7:15-8:30 p.m. Garret
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ARTS SCENE
Twenty years of the Whistler Writers Festival FROM STELLA HARVEY’S LIVING ROOM TO THE FAIRMONT CHATEAU, THE LITERARY FESTIVAL HAS MAINTAINED ITS INTIMATE FEEL
BY BRANDON BARRETT TWENTY-SOME-ODD people turned up to Stella Harvey’s living room for the first edition of the Whistler Writers Festival (WWF) in 2002. One of those guests made his way from Vancouver, and, without a place to stay, asked the festival founder if he could sleep in the car he had parked in her driveway. Of course, Harvey wasn’t having any of that. “I said, ‘Absolutely not; you’re going to stay in my house,’” she recalls. That kind of hospitality wasn’t unusual in the beginning, when visiting authors and attendees alike would crash in Harvey’s home over the course of the festival. Although it has since outgrown the confines of her living room—the festival typically draws about 1,500 attendees these days— the intimacy and approachability of those early years remains at its core. “What hasn’t changed is that feeling of personal connection,” says festival manager Rebecca Wood Barrett. “We have a small team but I feel like we have a touch-point with everyone who comes: the authors, the musicians, our technical team, and our guests. I hope that’s true for them, too, that they feel like they have been up close and personal and have been able to have a conversation with those authors and with our volunteers.”
KING’S CROWNING Thomas King anchors the 20th-anniversary edition of the Whistler Writers Festival. PHOTO BY HELEN HOY
60 OCTOBER 7, 2021
This year marks the 20th anniversary of Whistler’s premier literary event, and while its underlying philosophy hasn’t wavered, the dynamics of hosting a large-scale, multi-venue event have. “We’ve got 13 reading events and 16 workshops, and they’re all bespoke in some way,” Wood Barrett says. “Administratively, you can’t just do the cookie-cutter and say, ‘OK, we’ll do this the same way.’ That’s where the level of complexity comes in.” Add in the virtual element that was first
says. “Last year with the virtual model and seeing people from all over the world and certainly from all over Canada as well, it made us start to think: if you really truly believe in that kind of accessibility, you need to then expand and be able to provide a hybrid model, so if people couldn’t come in for whatever reason in-person—cost, disability, etc.—they could still access this.” On the surface, it might seem unlikely for a town known mostly for its athletics to host such a successful literary festival, but
“I would say Whistler by its very nature— and this probably has to do with the pursuit of athletics and the mountains—it does attract a certain person who has a certain type of energy. In a lot of ways, those are the type of people that are creative as well. There is a certain go-getterness here.” - REBECCA WOOD BARRETT
introduced in 2020 when COVID-19 pushed the entire event online (this year’s program is a hybrid, featuring both in-person and digital events), and things only become more complicated for the small-but-mighty team of organizers. Going virtual has come with its blessings, however, improving accessibility for a festival that has always emphasized reaching as diverse an audience as possible. “We talk about accessibility all the time and it’s really important to us,” Harvey
those same people drawn to the mountains are just as likely to take a creative leap as a literal one, posits Wood Barrett. “I would say Whistler by its very nature— and this probably has to do with the pursuit of athletics and the mountains—it does attract a certain person who has a certain type of energy,” she says. “In a lot of ways, those are the type of people that are creative as well. There is a certain go-getterness here.” It certainly doesn’t hurt that Harvey has helped nurture a space where those who may
have otherwise been reluctant to pursue their creative ambitions feel safe to do so. “I think there’s probably a writer or an artist in all of us,” she muses. “It’s interesting some of the people I’ve met over the years who were a bit shy or scared to join the group or come out to one of these things and then after a while, they find their tribe.” Scheduled for Oct. 14 to 17, the event is headlined this year by award-winning novelist and Order of Canada recipient Thomas King (The Back of the Turtle; The Inconvenient Indian), who will be in conversation with Anishinaabe journalist and speaker Tanya Talaga (All Our Relations: Finding The Path Forward) as part of the Saturday Night Gala, held virtually and in-person at the Fairmont at 6 p.m. on Oct. 16. Other program highlights include Friday’s Booklovers’ Literary Salon at 4 p.m., when Darrel McLeod will lead a conversation with Talaga at the Fairmont and online about her works that explore the troubling rise of youth suicide in Indigenous communities. Also on Friday, from 5:30 to 6:15 p.m., is the Tasting & Literary Cabaret Watch Party, also in-person and online, celebrating 20 years of the festival. Then, on Sunday, from 11 a.m. to 12 p.m., is the always-popular Sunday Brunch, with moderator Alix Ohlin leading a wide-ranging talk with authors George Elliott Clarke (Where Beauty Survived: An Africadian Memoir), Omar El Akkad (What Strange Paradise), Robert Jones Jr. (The Prophets), Eden Robinson (Return of the Trickster), and M.G. Vassanji (What You Are). For the full schedule, and to buy tickets, visit whistlerwritersfest.com. n
ARTS SCENE
Laughing through humourless times with Charlie Demers VANCOUVER COMIC AND WRITER JOINS IVAN DECKER AT MAURY YOUNG OCT. 8
FUNGUS AMONG US MUSHROOM FESTIVAL
OCTOBER 15-16, 2021
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reasons—the tidal wave of cancelled gigs, the loss of social and financial opportunities, the existential crisis that comes with the sudden upending of a career—COVID-19 proved incredibly tough on the comedy world. But according to the polymathic Vancouver comic, novelist, playwright and activist Charlie Demers, the pandemic brought with it another, less tangible effect. “We live in times that not only feel perilous and sometimes hopeless, but they feel absolutely humourless, and everything that comes along with humourlessness,” he opines. “And when I say humourlessness, I also mean a complete lack of perspective on the self and the limitations of the self and one’s own flaws and hypocrisies. We live in times where even people we agree with are just consistently acting in these totally insufferable ways. That’s just become a part of everyone’s reality.” Not ideal if you make people laugh for a living, but then, comedians have never been shy about exposing the folly of the times. And in a fraught few months that have seen a vocal minority of conspiracists eschewing science in favour of the dreaded YouTube algorithm, hordes of galaxy-brain anti-vaxxers pumping themselves full of horse dewormer, and a callous lack of consideration for the health and safety of those around them, there is certainly plenty of grist for the mill to go around. “The people who we disagree with are now, to us, like these monsters, these people who picket hospitals and who have just become these completely unimaginable others. I’m not saying you can paper over those differences with a well-timed joke or a funny pun or something like that, but I do think humourlessness is a big part of how we got to these situations,” Demers argues. “When you look at the setup of live standup comedy, the comedian is onstage under a bright light and the audience is in the dark, and both those things are important. The audience has to be allowed to be in the dark because they have to be allowed a certain sense of anonymity, a certain sense of safety to giggle and laugh at the things they’re supposed to be embarrassed about, according to the rules of polite society. There is no place like the comedy club or the theatre in our lives right now. “Existentially, the loss of comedy has been bad for comedians, but it’s been bad for everybody else, too.” But what happens if those social rules get tossed out and a growing subset of the online
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STAND-UP GUY Like so many comics, Charlie Demers saw his gigs dry up almost instantly when COVID-19 hit, but he posits the pandemic has had another, less tangible impact on the comedy world.
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commentariat seems utterly incapable of shame? Is it the comic’s job to call them out, or seek to understand and empathize? “Every major spiritual tradition in human history and every compelling philosophical school wrestles with this kind of question in a different way, and there are perils to either response to the kind of sociopathic sort of behaviours we’re seeing,” says Demers. “I think ultimately we need some of the compassion to draw people back into where we want them to be. We need some of that hard-ass response, too, because the rest of us need to survive somehow and that kind of harmful and destructive behaviour can’t just go unchecked. But for the comedian and for the comic perspective, the response is a way of being critical, sometimes being laceratingly critical, but in a way that is still brings aesthetic pleasure. That’s why for those of us who express ourselves in comedy, that’s the beautiful thing, ultimately. It can be your sort of wounded cry to the universe, but it’s a funny sound.” Demers joins close friend and Juno Award-winning comic Ivan Decker, with opener Andrea Jin, on Oct. 8 at the Maury Young Arts Centre, a show originally scheduled for March 2020 until … well, you know. “It feels very significant to me, this particular show,” Demers says. Doors are at 7:30 p.m., with the show starting at 8. Tickets are $20 in advance, $25 on the day, and $5 to livestream, available at showpass.com/comedyevening-demers-decker. n
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OCTOBER 7, 2021
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ARTS SCENE
POETS’ PAUSE Mary MacDonald will be hosting Picking Up What Was Lost, part of the Whistler Writers Festival on Oct. 16, which will feature readings and discussion with poets Steven Heighton, Canisia Lubrin, Arleen Paré, Yusuf Saadi and Terence Young. PHOTO SUBMITTED
Picking up what was lost POETRY REVIEW OF WORKS BY STEVEN HEIGHTON, CANISIA LUBRIN, ARLEEN PARÉ, YUSUF SAADI AND TERENCE YOUNG
BY MARY MACDONALD THIS YEAR, the Whistler Writers Festival hosts five poets: Steven Heighton (Selected Poems 1983-2020), Canisia Lubrin (The Dyzgraphxst), Arleen Paré (First), Yusuf Saadi (Pluviophile), and Terence Young (Smithereens). Heighton is a master craftsman, equally at ease in fiction, non-fiction, and children’s literature. As a poet, his voice is tender and heartbreakingly beautiful. His poems open quietly, like a chrysalis opens to a butterfly.
Terence Young’s Smithereens is a delicate and sophisticated collection, also a meditation on lost time. The poems begin small with the quotidian and before you know it, the power and the passion have crept up on you and exploded into, well, smithereens. In Young’s deft hands, the playful seamlessly waltzes into joy and upheaval. My child’s fever, his sharp pain, the sudden pang of each tympanum ruptures, a boy deafened, bleeding from both ears while I am thinking emergency room, gas mask, oblivion.
What I wouldn’t do or undo (winter whispered in a voice akin to mine) to see one more time what my touch might make of your face. The Dyzgraphxst arrived this year sweeping the poetry stage, winning the Griffin Poetry Prize. There is an epic feel to this work, poems simultaneously deconstructed and reckoned with. Lubrin has cast her net broadly— climate change, wars, mass migration, love and loss, family, and kinship.
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of peace, to want to live in a world my own hand has made, not hands too aware of their wild plots just one hand in the world, meeting other hands
Yusuf Saadi’s first collection was nominated for the Griffin Poetry Prize this year. Pluviophile means “lover of rain,” and the poems are exquisite, small jewels, each a search for the sacred within. For the mystery and magic life beholds. So soft, straight lines melt into curves – each road in your palm bridges the distances between us. The brink But all the poems here are merely fragments. You will want to come to hear the poets read for the wholeness.
First is a tough and tender exploration of firsts. Poet Arlene Paré is searching for a long lost first friend from childhood. Then her work fans out to other firsts, taking readers on a juxtaposition of memory, until they too are searching and raining tears. How fragile we are.
Mary MacDonald is a poet and writer. Her work has appeared in Room Magazine and Pique Newsmagazine. Her poetry chapbook, Going in Now, was published in 2014. The Crooked Thing was released in October 2020. MacDonald is a member of Whistler’s Viscous Circle Writing Group, sits on the board of the Whistler Writing Society, and serves as curator and moderator for the poetry division of the festival.
When she becomes lost no one will know where she is. Her two sisters will be lost too. All three of them disappearing into the thin air of grown up. Her parents gone. Her aunt. Her hair her blue eye her backbone steely as petrified wood.
MacDonald will be leading these five poets in discussion at Picking Up What Was Lost, part of the Whistler Writers Festival. The virtual panel discussion and reading is set for Saturday, Oct. 16 from 11:30 a.m. to 12:45 p.m. Tickets available at whistlerwritersfest.com. n
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WHAT’S IN A NAME? WVLC president Terry Minger shows a chart describing the proposed Whistler Resort Association to the Whistler Rotary Club, 1979. WHISTLER QUESTION COLLECTION
What is the WRA? BY ALLYN PRINGLE IN LATE AUGUST 1979, the government of British Columbia introduced an amendment to the Resort Municipality of Whistler Act (the legislation that established Whistler as a municipality in 1975) that would allow for the creation of a resort association. According to Section 14.1 of the Act, the purpose of such an association would be “to promote, facilitate and encourage the development, maintenance and operation of the resort land.” Thanks to this legislation, the Whistler Resort Association (WRA) began operations in 1980. There were no other resort associations in British Columbia at the time, though several examples could be found in American resorts such as Sun Valley, Aspen, and Vail. In its Oct. 1979 newsletter, the Whistler Village Land Company (WVLC) wrote that: “The concept of a destination resort and of a resort association are both new to Canada, and that is perhaps why some misunderstandings have arisen.” Though they did not detail what kind of misunderstandings had occurred, the WVLC did go on to provide an explanation of the purpose and structure of the WRA. The WVLC stated that the main purpose of the WRA was, “to ensure the success of Whistler,” mainly through marketing. Marketing Whistler included promoting and advertising the resort, providing public relations, and making reservations. WRA operations would include a computerized, central-reservation system able to book rooms for large groups such as conferences, a service to handle general inquiries about Whistler, and a central-billing system. The WRA would also be able to sponsor events in Whistler, such as concerts and festivals. The membership of the WRA was to include those who owned or operated in the (still under construction) Town Centre and the Blackcomb benchlands, as well as anyone owning or operating a tourism-related business outside of the “resort land” who chose to join. According to Land Company President Terry Minger, the WRA would function not unlike a
shopping centre-merchants’ association or a tenants’ organization. For the first few years, the WRA was expected to be funded mainly by the WVLC and contributions from the operators of Whistler Mountain and Blackcomb Mountain, organizations that would also make up the majority of the board positions. The proposed budget for its first year of operations was set at $500,000. Though some had expected the WRA to begin operating as early as late 1979, its bylaws first had to be approved by the provincial government. In March 1980, the Whistler council voted to receive the new Resort Association Bylaws. By May 1980, all that the Whistler Question had to report was that no statement had been issued by the WVLC, the municipal council, or the province regarding the passage of the bylaws. Finally, by July 1980, the bylaws of the WRA had been approved and the association could move forward. The WRA quickly got to work hiring staff, such as its first executive director Karl Crosby, setting up systems, and marketing the resort of Whistler to the world. There were some challenges in the early years, such as a recession, continued construction, competing demands of members, and various changes in management (past general manager Peter Alder once said that the WRA “went through managers like they went through coffees in the morning”), but the WRA remained a visible force promoting Whistler. It set up information booths at travel displays outside Whistler, coordinated visits for tour operators and conference organizers to show what Whistler was capable of, produced maps and directional signs in the valley, helped sponsor events such the Fall Festival, Winterfest, and the first street entertainment program, and in 1981 introduced Whistler’s first mascot, a marmot named Willie Whistler. By 1986, membership of the WRA had grown to more than 600 entities. The WRA continues to operate in Whistler, promoting Whistler as a destination resort, operating a computerized central reservation system, and more, though today the organization is much better known as Tourism Whistler. n
PARTIAL RECALL
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1 TIME-HONOURED TRADITIONS T’ec Georgina Dan and Tmícwts’a7 Irene Terry Peters from the Spo7ez Storytellers and Performance Team. PHOTO BY LOGAN SWAYZE/SQUAMISH LIL’WAT CULTURAL CENTRE. 2 SHOWING SUPPORT Hundreds from the Sea to Sky community visited the SLCC to show their commitment to Truth and Reconciliation and their support for our region’s First Nations on Sept. 30. PHOTO BY LOGAN SWAYZE/SQUAMISH LIL’WAT CULTURAL CENTRE. 3 ORANGE SHIRT DAY Students from École La Passerelle in Whistler gather in a special school assembly to commemorate Orange Shirt Day. PHOTO SUBMITTED. 4 NEXT GENERATION Lil’wat artist Qawam Redmond Andrews, left, and apprentice Squamish Nation artist Courtney Williams at the unveiling of their summer carving “Human transforming into an Eagle.” Under the guidance of great master carvers from Lil’wat Nation and Squamish Nation, these two young artists worked together, creating a public art piece to be gifted to the community. PHOTO BY LOGAN SWAYZE/SQUAMISH LIL’WAT CULTURAL CENTRE. 5 LISTENING AND LEARNING Chepximiya Siyam’ Chief Janice George from Squamish Nation speaks to a crowd of hundreds outside the SLCC on Thursday morning. PHOTO BY LOGAN SWAYZE/SQUAMISH LIL’WAT CULTURAL CENTRE. 6 CARVING CANOES Indigenous carvers create a child’s canoe in front of the SLCC on Thursday, to honour the thousands of First Nations, Inuit and Metis children who never made it home from Canada’s residential school system. PHOTO BY CLARE OGILVIE.
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WEEK OF OCTOBER 7 BY ROB BREZSNY
ARIES (March 21-April 19): Aries poet Anna Kamieńska said her soul didn’t emanate light. It was filled with “bright darkness.” I suspect that description may apply to you in the coming weeks. Bright darkness will be one of your primary qualities. And that’s a good thing! You may not be a beacon of shiny cheer, but you will illuminate the shadows and secrets. You will bring deeper awareness to hidden agendas and sins of omission. You will see, and help others to see, what has been missing in situations that lack transparency. Congratulations in advance! TAURUS (April 20-May 20): “There is something truly restorative, finally comforting, in coming to the end of an illusion—a false hope.” So declared author Sue Miller, and now I’m sharing it with you, Taurus—just in time for the end of at least one of your illusions. (Could be two, even three.) I hope your misconceptions or misaligned fantasies will serve you well as they decay and dissolve. I trust they will be excellent fertilizer, helping you grow inspired visions that guide your future success. My prediction: You will soon know more about what isn’t real, which will boost your ability to evaluate what is real. GEMINI (May 21-June 20): Afghan-American novelist Khaled Hosseini writes, “People mostly have it backward. They think they live by what they want. But really what guides them is what they’re afraid of—what they don’t want.” Is that true for you, Gemini? The coming weeks will be an excellent time to meditate on that question. And if you find you’re motivated to live your life more out of fear than out of love, I urge you to take strenuous action to change that situation! Make sure love is at least 51 per cent and fear no more than 49 per cent. I believe you can do much better than that, though. Aim for 75 per cent love! CANCER (June 21-July 22): “Sometimes dreams are wiser than waking.” Oglala Lakota medicine man Black Elk said that, and now I’m passing it on to you. It’s not always the case that dreams are wiser than waking, of course, but I suspect they will be for you in the coming weeks. The adventures you experience while you’re sleeping could provide crucial clues to inform your waking-life decisions. They should help you tune into resources and influences that will guide you during the coming months. And now I will make a bold prediction: that your dreams will change your brain chemistry in ways that enable you to see truths that until now have been invisible or unavailable. (PS: I encourage you to also be alert for intriguing insights and fantasies that well up when you’re tired or lounging around.) LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): “Don’t hope more than you’re willing to work,” advises author Rita Mae Brown. So let me ask you, Leo: How hard are you willing to work to make your dreams come true, create your ideal life, and become the person you’d love to be? When you answer that question honestly, you’ll know exactly how much hope you have earned the right to foster. I’m pleased to inform you that the coming weeks will be a favourable time to upgrade your commitment to the work and therefore deepen your right to hope. VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): “To be truly visionary, we have to root our imagination in our concrete reality while simultaneously imagining possibilities beyond that reality.” This shrewd advice comes from author bell hooks (who doesn’t capitalize her name). I think it should be at the heart of your process in the coming days. Why? Because you now have an extraordinary potential to dream up creative innovations that acknowledge your limitations but also transcend those limitations. You have extra power available to harness your fantasies and instigate practical changes. LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): “Some people are crazy drunk on rotgut sobriety,” wrote aphorist Daniel Liebert. I trust you’re not one of them. But if you are, I beg you to change your habits during the next three weeks.
According to my reading of the astrological omens, you have a heavenly mandate to seek more than the usual amounts of whimsical ebullience, sweet diversions, uplifting obsessions, and holy amusements. Your health and success in the coming months require you to enjoy a period of concentrated joy and fun now. Be imaginative and innovative in your quest for zest. SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): Scottish Poet Laureate Jackie Kay, born under the sign of Scorpio, writes, “It used to be that privacy came naturally to everybody and that we understood implicitly what kind of things a person might like to keep private. Now somebody has torn up the rulebook on privacy and there’s a kind of free fall and free for all and few people naturally know how to guard this precious thing, privacy.” The coming weeks will be a good time for you to investigate this subject, Scorpio—to take it more seriously than you have before. In the process, I hope you will identify what’s truly important for you to keep confidential and protected, and then initiate the necessary adjustments. (PS: Please feel no guilt or embarrassment about your desire to have secrets!) SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): “All our Western thought is founded on this repulsive pretense that pain is the proper price of any good thing,” wrote feisty author Rebecca West (1892–1983). I am very happy to report that your current torrent of good things will NOT require you to pay the price of pain. On the contrary, I expect that your phase of grace and luck will teach you how to cultivate even more grace and luck; it will inspire you to be generous in ways that bring generosity coming back your way. As articulated by ancient Chinese philosopher Sun Tzu, here’s the operative principle: “Opportunities multiply as they are seized.” CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): “If you don’t ask, the answer is always no,” declares author Nora Roberts. In that spirit and in accordance with astrological omens, I urge you to be bold and lucid about asking for what you want in the coming weeks. In addition, I encourage you to ask many probing questions so as to ferret out the best ways to get what you want. If you are skilled in carrying out this strategy, you will be a winsome blend of receptivity and aggressiveness, innocent humility and understated confidence. And that will be crucial in your campaign to get exactly what you want. AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): “Few persons enjoy real liberty,” wrote poet Alfred de Musset. “We are all slaves to ideas or habits.” That’s the bad news. The good news is that October is Supercharge Your Freedom Month for you Aquarians. I invite you to use all your ingenuity to deepen, augment, and refine your drive for liberation. What could you do to escape the numbness of the routine? How might you diminish the hold of limiting beliefs and inhibiting patterns? What shrunken expectations are impinging on your motivational verve? Life is blessing you with the opportunity to celebrate and cultivate what novelist Tim Tharp calls “the spectacular now.” Be a cheerful, magnanimous freedom fighter. PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): The brilliant Piscean composer Frédéric Chopin (1810–1849) wrote, “I wish I could throw off the thoughts that poison my happiness, but I take a kind of pleasure in indulging them.” What?! That’s crazy! If he had been brave enough and wilful enough to stop taking pleasure in indulging his toxic thoughts, they might have lost their power to demoralize him. With this in mind, I’m asking you to investigate whether you, like Chopin, ever get a bit of secret excitement from undermining your own joy and success. The coming weeks will be a favourable time to dissolve that bad habit. Homework. Hold your own hand and tell yourself what you will do to end a nagging discomfort in your life. https:// Newsletter.FreeWillAstrology.com.
In addition to this column, Rob Brezsny creates
EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPES In-depth weekly forecasts designed to inspire and uplift you. To buy access, phone 1-888-499-4425. Once you’ve chosen the Block of Time you like, call 1-888-682-8777 to hear Rob’s forecasts. www.freewillastrology.com
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Opens Oct. 1st, 2021 5 dedicated and exclusive desks available in this bright spacious loft style office. Each desk has its own large window and mountain view.
306-988-0155
Please call to make an appointment
BEDS IN STOCK! SAME DAY DELIVERY! MATTRESSES-BUNK BEDSSOFA BEDS-CUSTOM SOFAS
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www.classymiko.com
Queen mattresses from $289.99 Bunk Beds from $699.99 Sofa beds from $1099.99
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whistlerfurniture.ca 2-1020 Millar Creek Road
604.938.4285 FOR SALE - MISC
604-992-4746
roxysinwhistler.com
Playful Kitten. Slim, busty brunette. SWF 27 years. Pamper, delight & allow yourself to enjoy the ultimate indulging in the moment. Like fire & ice, she engages your senses and soothes your soul.
Geared for all those who have had enough of working from home! Flexible bi-weekly bookings . Features: private lockable office, covered deck, standing desk, shower, all you can drink coffee & tea, filtered water, fridge, high speed wifi, printer/scanner, ergonomic chairs, bus stop, parking and security.
Located on the funky side of Whistler
Function Junction Unit 201 - 1390 Alpha Lake Rd. 604.905.8244
www.momentumstation.com
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LONG-TERM RENTALS MULTIPLE LOCATIONS
For a weekly sales report of new and sold listings in Whistler & Pemberton, please go to whistlerrealestatemarket.com or contact josh@joshcrane.ca
PEMBERTON Lot For Sale: Ivey Lake Subdivision 5.44 ACRE •
$590,000
PRE-LOVED RE-LOVED = COMMUNITY LOVE RE-USE-IT CENTRE Donations daily 10 am to 4 pm Accepting pre-loved clothing, gear and household items. Shopping daily 10 am to 6 pm 8000 Nesters Road 604-932-1121
RE-BUILD-IT CENTRE Donations daily 10 am to 5 pm Accepting pre-loved furniture, tools and building supplies Shopping daily 10 am to 5 pm 1003 Lynham Road 604-932-1125 Visit mywcss.org and our social channels for updates.
5.44 ACRE Lot 51, Ivey Lake Subdivision, $590,000, 2-minute walk to Lake. 2.3 Km northeast of Pemberton, a 30-minute drive to Whistler. Fantastic view of Mt Currie. 604-744-8816 owen.hairsine@gmail.com
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Nail Salon Supervisor/Manager for Soles Nail Lounge & Footwear We are currently looking to hire highly motivated workers with good work ethic to fill the following roles:
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Must have management experience AND be certified as a nail technician. Retail experience also an advantage as we also have a retail footwear store. 40 hrs/wk
3-1365 Alpha Lake Road Whistler, B.C, V0N1B1
Please forward resume to liz@solesofwhistler.com
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***Local Automotive*** Automotive technician for year round position in Whistler. 604-905-9109 steve@localautomotive.com
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big or small we do it all!
HOME SERVICES Whistler Premier Resorts, Whistler’s leading property management firm is currently recruiting!
What We Offer You:
• Full Time Positions • Competitive Wages • • Discounted Ski Pass • Discounted Employee Rates • • Supportive Team Environment • Staff Housing • • Opportunities for growth & more • • Signing Bonus •
The current career opportunities are:
ROOM ATTENDANT GUEST SERVICE AGENT ROOM •ATTENDANT NIGHT AUDIT HOUSEMAN/INSPECTOR GUEST• SERVICE AGENT PARTNIGHT TIME MAINTENANCE TECHNICIAN AUDIT • HOUSEMAN APPLY TODAY AT PEOPLE@WHISTLERPREMIER.COM
Call 604-902-MOVE www.alltimemoving.ca
BUILDING AND RENOVATIONS
Wiebe Construction Services Serving Whistler for over 25 years
Local Reliable Qualified Bookkeeping Payroll Bank Reconciliation sonia@mountaintownbk.com
Ph: 604-902-7510
• Kitchen and Bath • Renovations & Repairs • Drywall • Painting • Finishing • Minor Electrical & Plumbing
Services
HEALTH & WELLBEING PHYSICAL THERAPY
Ray Wiebe 604.935.2432 Pat Wiebe 604.902.9300 raymondo99.69@gmail.com
Sally John Physiotherapy COVID-19 PRECAUTIONS TAKEN PRIOR TO APPOINTMENT DOUBLE VACCINATION REQUIRED
REGISTERED PHYSIOTHERAPIST
IN HOME PHYSIOTHERAPY AVAILABLE
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CUSTOM-MADE ORTHOTICS at competitive prices for ski boots & shoes, including training shoes. 17 years of making orthotics
Protect your pooch this winter! Antifreeze is highly toxic for pets – check for spills and keep safely stored away from pets.
PLAY HERE
2997 Alpine Cresent (Alta Vista)
Ice melters can irritate paws – wipe off paws after walks to avoid dogs ingesting. White dogs are difficult to see in the snow – keep pets on leash as cars are not able to brake or react quickly in the winter weather.
68 OCTOBER 7, 2021
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NOTICES GENERAL NOTICES ROTARY CLUBS OF WHISTLER The Rotary Clubs of Whistler are now meeting virtually. The Whistler Club Tuesdays at 3. The Millennium Club Thursdays at 12:15. Contact us at info@Whistler-rotary.org for log in info. All welcome.
LEGAL/PUBLIC NOTICES Warehouse Lien act the following Registered Owners below are indebted to Cooper’s Towing Ltd. for unpaid towing and storage fees plus any related charges that may accrue. Notice is hereby given that on October 13th, 2021 or thereafter the goods will be seized and sold. A Lien is claimed under the act. 1. Latorre, Paula 2008 Honda Civic VIN: 2HGFG12338H005625 $1,421.70 2. Jervis, Timothy 2008 PJ Trailer VIN: 4P5CC142581108387 $1923.60 3. Yeongdong, Seo 2003 Ford Focus VIN: 1FAFP36353W265013 $1482.60 4. Kailum, Mackenzie 1997 Toyota Camry VIN: 4T1BG22K1VU160642 $1453.20 The vehicles are currently being stored at Cooper’s Towing Ltd 1212 Alpha Lake Rd Whistler, BC, V0N 1B1 For more information, please call Cooper’s Towing Ltd. @ 604-902-1930
MEETING PLACE Welcome Centre at Whistler Public Library Information, support, community connections and ESL practice groups for newcomers and immigrants. Meet people, make connections, volunteer, build your communication skills in English. Multicultural Meet Up every Friday 9.30-12pm.604-698-5960 info@welcomewhistler.com FB: WhistlerWelcomeCentre
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NOW HIRING: • Culinary • Housekeeping • Guest Relations Manager (12-month contract) • Maintenance Manager • Spa Receptionist To apply email your resume to: careers@nitalakelodge.com
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BISTRO TEAM LEAD / BARISTAS GUEST EXPERIENCE AGENTS GUEST EXPERIENCE TEAM LEADS RESERVATIONS AGENT RESERVATIONS TEAM LEAD SPA EXPERIENCE AGENTS NIGHT CLEANER SUPERVISOR MAINTENANCE HELPER MAINTENANCE MANAGER
WHAT WE OFFER:
BATH MEMBERSHIP FOR YOU AND A FRIEND STAFF HOUSING UPON AVAILABILITY FREE MASSAGE AFTER 3 MONTHS WHISTLER BLACKCOMB SPIRIT PASS AND MORE!
apply at hr.whistler@scandinave.com
Glacier Media Group is growing. Check our job board regularly for the latest openings:
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Thursdays – Cardio, Bands & Core @ 7:45-8:45 am w Laura Saturdays – Vinyasa Flow @ 12:15-1:15 pm w Hailey Tuesdays – Vikandi Fit @ 6:15-7:15 am w Kim Wednesdays – Gentle Fit For Seniors @ 10:15-11:15 am w Diana
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EXCITING CAREER OPPORTUNITIES, APPLY TODAY! Diamond Resorts Canada Ltd., Whistler, BC
EXCITING CAREER OPPORTUNITIES, APPLY TODAY! Diamond Resorts Canada Ltd., Whistler, BC
Off Property Contacts &Vacation Counselors (full time)
Full Time Tour Receptionist
Eligible successful candidates may receive*:
Eligible successful candidates may receive*:
• Extensive benefits package which may include; ski pass or wellness allowance, disability coverage, travel insurance and extended health and dental.
• Extensive benefits package which may include; ski pass or wellness allowance, disability coverage, travel insurance and extended health and dental.
• Six figure earning potential! • Discounted employee rates at any Diamond Resort International resort.
• Discounted employee rates at any Diamond Resort International resort.
• Full-time work year round and a FUN work environment.
• Full-time work year round and a FUN work environment.
*eligibility and conditions based on DRCL policies and practices set out in general terms and conditions of employment.
*eligibility and conditions based on DRCL policies and practices set out in general terms and conditions of employment.
Email your resume with the position you wish to apply for to: embarc_hr@diamondresorts.com
Email your resume with the position you wish to apply for to: embarc_hr@diamondresorts.com
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THE FIRST PLACE TO LOOK FOR LOCAL JOB OPENINGS AUGUST 12, 2021 ISSUE 28.32 WWW.PIQ UENEWS MAGAZIN
NESTERS MARKET & WELLNESS CENTRE
NOW HIRING Deli, Bakery, Produce, Grocery and Meat Clerks Cashiers Full or Part Time E-mail or drop in your resume to: bruce_stewart@nestersmarket.com please cc ian_fairweather@nestersmarket.com or call us at 604-932-3545
PERKS • Competitive wage – Depending on experience • Access to medical and dental benefits for full time applicants • Percentage discount from store bought goods • Flexible and set schedule • Relative training
We offer competitive wages, a unique environment, seasonal bonuses, staff discounts and benefits. Ask about accommodation.
Come Grow Sport with us at our Whistler Olympic Legacy Venues
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EMPLOYEE DROUGHT
Employers hoping to find workers
To apply, go to our website: https://ziptrekeco.bamboohr.com/jobs/ or email your cover letter and resume to HR@ziptrek.com
We offer competitive wages, a unique environment, seasonal bonuses, staff discounts and benefits. Ask about accommodation.
WE OFFER: Competitive wage • Health benefits Staff parking • Flexible schedule • Ski pass Opportunities to travel to our other locations Great working environment
14
SUMMER LOVIN’
CAUGHT IN CLOSURE A
rescue from behind a
FREE BALLIN’
hiker recounts washed-out trail
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FESTIVAL’S FUTURE Angela
the reins of the Whistler
Heck takes Film Festival
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FREE WHEELIN’
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RMOW mostly happy
with Summer Experience Plan
ELECTION PREVIEW The environment labour
to Sky PUBLISHING MACHINE The Sea
38
and
has produced a lot of published
6
are top of mind in B.C. and Whistler
authors
# 57
Rescuing a rarity THE WINDING TALE OF A STOLEN CLASSIC CAR AND
ITS UNLIKELY RECOVERY
SEPTEMBER 2, 2021 ISSUE 28.35
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Municipal hall
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OVER
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40
Whistler
2 FUTURE
sobriety on the local scene
3 5 OF
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and
6 3 5 full time 9 roles 4 6 For seasonal (Restrictions may apply) 4 7 2 website for Check our seasonal7opportunities 2 6 9 at our 3 venues 4 9 1 2
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WHAT A RACKET Neighbours frustrated as Racket Club membership grows
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YOUTH MOVEMENT Whistler employers tap local youth to ease labour crunch
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FREE
BACK ON THE SCENE Musicians in the resort reflect as live gigs GRIND TOreturn
d Kittens The Real Wil of Whistler’s and the rise te scene women’s ska
MEDIUM
28.37 ISSUE to meet with 2021Whistler officials SEPTEMBER 16,UBCM
Visit our website to view current postings and to apply: www.whistlersportlegacies.com/careers
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provincial ministers at annual convention
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SING-ALONG
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INFORMATIO N
1 YO U R VO T E 2 0 2
TION EDERAL ELEC A DA’ S 4 4 T H F UIDE TO CAN THE PIQUE G
NORTH ARM FARM FARM FIELD LABOURER
57 processing 4 1 fruits 8 9 &6vegetables. 3 5 7 2At least # 58 Weeding, irrigating, harvesting#and 5 2 9 Looking 1 4 7for6 hardworking 8 3 2 full seasons of agricultural experience required. individuals able to work in all types of6outside 3 7 conditions. 8 5 2 9Minimum 1 4 40hrs/wk over a minimum 5 days/wk. $18/hr. 3 7 5$15.20 2 8 -6 1 4 9 rd rd Job duration: 32 weeks Jan 1st-Aug 31st -or8 March 6 1 43 -November 9 5 2 33 72022
2 9 resumes 4 7 3 to1 Applicants can mail, or email 1 5 3 6 7 9 North Arm Farm 7 8BC 6 2 4 PO BOX 165, Pemberton, V0N5 2L0 Email: info@northarmfarm.com 9 4 2 3 1 8
70 OCTOBER 7, 2021
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STAND-UP PADDLEBOARDING HAS SUCCESSFULLY TURNED INTO WHISTL ER’S FAVOURITE WATER SPORT
for help from the feds
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Global IT Support Specialist.
1 4 9 7
28.33 AUGUST 19, 2021 ISSUE
AUGUST 26, 2021 ISSUE 28.34
www.whistlersportlegacies.com/careers
is now hiring for a
7 2
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IN THE RUNNING SEPTEMB ER 23, 2021 enters the homestretch
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Vaccine card’s so far introduction has been smooth
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A BEAR’S TALE Kathleen Russell’s children’s book, Walter the
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Roland’s Pub is looking for an Assistant Kitchen Manager Day and night shifts. • Assisting Kitchen manager with ordering • Managing inventory • Receiving deliveries • Assisting with menu changes • Food costing • Preparing soups & sauces • Creating specials Line cooking is also required. Salary will be based on experience. Extended Medical & Dental benefits, ski pass, and staff discounts in Pub and Red Door Bistro. Send resume to info@rolandswhistler.com
HIRING FOR THE FOLLOWING CAREER ROLE
ACCOUNTING MANAGER ./ Experience with QuickBooks Enterprise ./ Minimum 3 - 5 years of accounting experience ./ Knowledge of Canadian Tax Law
FOR FULL JOB DESCRIPTION AND TO APPLY ONLINE VISIT WHISKIJACKRESORTS.COM/EMPLOYMENT-OPPORTUNITIES OR EMAIL EMMA@WHISKIJACK.CA With over a hundred units in nine properties located throughout Whistler, BC, Whiski Jack Resorts is the most prominent shared ownership group in the region.
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EXCITING CAREER OPPORTUNITIES, APPLY TODAY! Diamond Resorts Canada Ltd., Whistler, BC
Full & Part Time Housekeepers Full Time Member Experience Associate Full Time Maintenance Technician
Eligible successful candidates may receive*:
• Extensive benefits package which may include; ski pass or wellness allowance, disability coverage, travel insurance and extended health and dental. • Travel Allowance and discounted employee rates at any Diamond Resort International resort. • Full-time work year round and a FUN work environment. *eligibility and conditions based on DRCL policies and practices set out in general terms and conditions of employment.
Email your resume with the position you wish to apply for to: embarc_hr@diamondresorts.com
is now hiring for
Guest Service Agent This dynamic role includes the following Perks and Benefits:
• Competitive Wages and Benefits • Signing Bonus and Seasonal Bonuses provided • Fun Team Environment • Supportive Management team • Wages starting from $19 per hour • Discounted Ski Pass Available • Part-time and Full-time Positions Available Please reply with a cover letter and resume to hr@listelhotel.com
Thank you for your interest. Only those applicants being considered for an interview will be contacted.
LOOKING FOR A CHANGE OF SCENERY? An opportunity to grow with the business for the right applicant. Shifts vary.
We have the following positions available to join our well established family practice: REGISTERED DENTAL HYGIENIST (FT or PT) who is a team player, hard working, able to multi-task, and is very personable. New grads welcome!
Assistant Manager: 4-5 days/wk Sales Associate: 2-3 days/wk
No weekend or evening shifts! Free parking in Creekside! Extended benefits package provided after 3 months of employment. Please send your resume to: managercreeksidedentalwhistler@gmail.com
E-mail resume:
smallpotatoesbazaar@telus.net
COME BE A PART OF OUR TEAM!
Deadline: October 21st, 2021
We've Got You Covered PLAY HERE
VISITORS’ GUIDE 2017-2018 FREE
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Domino’s Pizza in Whistler is
NOW HIRING: ALL POSITIONS
www.whistlerexcavations.com
The Sea to Sky corridor’s top civil construction company. We are currently recruiting professionally minded people to join our team. Required: Heavy Duty Red Seal or Commercial Vehicle Technician
• Customer Service Representative • Delivery Experts (Drivers) • Assistant Managers All positions can earn 20$/hour minimum Subsidized accommodations and profit sharing available Apply in store between 11am-4pm Monday thru Sunday at 4368 Main Street, Whistler
604-932-0410
Please send resume to: Email: info@whistlerexcavations.com
MAEGAN@BCDOMINOS.COM
Hey, Whistler! How about flexible hours that lets you do your thing whatever your thing is?
www.whistlerexcavations.com
The Sea to Sky corridor’s top civil construction company. We are currently recruiting professionally minded people to join our team. Required: Class 1 or Class 3 Truck Drivers
$17 Part-time Crew Member $18 Full-time Crew Member $19 Full-time Shift Supervisor Visit us on Hiring Tuesdays 11am to 7pm or send your application to sheryll.cu@post.mcdonalds.ca!
Please send resume to: Email: info@whistlerexcavations.com
Full Time Sales Associate Glacier Media Group is growing. Check our job TUESDAYS-SATURDAYS
4 - 5 days a week
board regularly for the latest openings:
Garibaldi Graphics has a full time, long term position available in a busy printing/retail www.glaciermedia.ca/careers store located in Function Junction. Must have computer skills, enjoy multi tasking, be reliable and have a friendly and professional demeanor. Duties include customer service and executing a variety of print jobs.
Garibaldi Graphics has a full time, long term position available in a busy printing/retail store located in Function Junction. Must have computer skills, enjoy multi tasking, be reliable and have a friendly and professional demeanor. Duties include customer service and executing a variety of print jobs. Wellness benefits offered.
R001408475
FULL TIME SALES ASSOCIATE
Please apply in person to #104-1200 Alpha Lake Road in Function Junction or email resume to whistler@garibaldigraphics.com
OCTOBER 7, 2021
Please apply in person to #104-1200 Alpha Lake Road in Function Junction
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Lil’wat Nation ONSITE MAINTENANCE & CARETAKER The Brew Creek Centre is a boutique west coast events and lodging venue, and we are seeking a year round steward and caretaker to our 20 acre property. The core duties include: security, grounds & facilities upkeep, snow removal, event support and maintaining an unparalleled guest experience. A modern and spacious two bedroom home is included in your rewards package. Essential Qualities • Ability to work independently • Detail oriented, with the ability to multitask • Strong mechanical aptitude - generally handy • Solution focused problem solver • Machine operations experience is an asset (bobcat skid steer, mini excavator etc.) • Strong level of physical fitness and willing to work in all weather conditions
Apply to careers@thebrewcreekcentre.com We look forward to connecting with you.
Employment Opportunities
• Land Use Referral Research Assistant • Finance Manager • Education Assistant - Community School • High School Teacher - Community School • Education Jurisdiction Coordinator • Community Advocacy Representative • Indigenous Support Worker Casual- Ts’zil Learning Centre • Early Childhood Educator and/or Assistant - Daycare • Early Childhood Educator Infant Toddler - Daycare • Administrative Assistant to Health Director
Benefits Pension Plan Employee Assistance Program Extended Health Benefits Professional Development Gym facility Please visit our career page for more information: lilwat.ca/careers/career-opportunities-2/
Home Improvement and Building Supply Centre
WE ARE HIRING! Full-time/Part-time Sales Associates We are looking for motivated individuals with excellent customer service skills to join our team! • Competitive Wages • Extended Health Benefits • Ski Pass or Wellness Fund Allowance Please send your resume to whistleradmin@windsorply.ca or apply within. #107-1055 Millar Creek Rd., Whistler, BC V8E 0K7 www.windsorplywood.com
OUT ! NOW
Employment Opportunities: Guest Services Agents Maintenance • Housekeeping Apply to: jobs@pembertonvalleylodge.com
Competitive wages, health benefits, casual environment 74 OCTOBER 7, 2021
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Climate Action and Resilience Specialist (Full-time, Regular) The Squamish-Lillooet Regional District (SLRD) is located in southwestern BC and consists of four member municipalities (Squamish, Whistler, Pemberton, Lillooet) and 4 electoral areas. The region contains some of the most spectacular forests, waterways, and mountains in the province and affords an endless range of opportunities for outdoor adventure. Headquartered in Pemberton, which is the approximate geographic centre of the region, the SLRD delivers a wide range of regional, subregional and local services to its residents. Services include land use planning, solid waste management, building inspection, fire protection, emergency preparedness, 911 services, recreation, water and sewer utilities, regional transit, trails and open spaces as well as financial support for various community services. The SLRD is seeking an experienced and collaborative individual to fill the position of Climate Action and Resilience Specialist. Reporting to the Director of Protective Services, this position is responsible for coordinating the SLRD’s overall approach to climate action and resilience, and the implementation and monitoring of related strategies. The ideal candidate will possess: a post secondary degree in environmental studies, community planning, sustainability, climate change, disaster risk reduction, or a related discipline; and a minimum of 5 years of professional experience developing and advancing climate action policies, programs and initiatives (an equivalent combination of experience, training and education may be considered). For further information, please refer to the full job description at www.slrd.bc.ca/employment. Salary will be determined commensurate with experience. This position also offers a comprehensive benefits package, participation in the Municipal Pension Plan, a compressed work week and the possibility to work from home. Interested candidates are invited to submit their resume with a cover letter by email, no later than October 31, 2021 at 11:59 pm, to: Monica Halitzki, Human Resources Manager Squamish-Lillooet Regional District mhalitzki@slrd.bc.ca We sincerely thank all applicants for their interest, however, only those shortlisted for an interview will be contacted.
NETWORK ADMINISTRATOR Full Time, Year Round
Tourism Whistler is looking for a tech superstar to join our talented I.T. team as a Network Administrator. The Network Administrator provides technical leadership relating to the network, software, and hardware for Tourism Whistler’s administrative office and operational centres. What we offer: a flex schedule, excellent benefits, training & development, and a great team environment. What we’re looking for: a candidate who is passionate about mountain culture and customer service, with a technical aptitude and the desire to rise to a challenge. TO VIEW OUR CAREER OPPORTUNITIES, AND TO APPLY, VISIT US ONLINE AT WHISTLER.COM/CAREERS.
JUNIOR OR SENIOR ACCOUNTANT GSK Chartered Professional Accountants LLP is a Squamish firm seeking a Junior or Senior Accountant to join our office. Candidates with a CPA designation or who are enrolled in the CPA certification program are preferred, but it is not required. We offer a great work environment, exposure to a wide variety of clients and excellent training for the right candidate. MAIN RESPONSIBILITIES • Preparing year-end accounting records for businesses; • Preparing corporate and personal tax returns; and • Assisting with light administrative duties. QUALIFICATIONS • Basic understanding of accounting or bookkeeping; • Strong computer skills including experience with accounting software such as Sage Simply Accounting, Quickbooks, Caseware and/or other tax software; • Have strong written and communication skills; • Be self-motivated; and • Produce high quality and detail-oriented work. We offer a competitive salary that will be commensurate with experience and qualifications. Please send your cover letter and resume to ross@gskllp.ca OCTOBER 7, 2021
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helping to make Whistler the place you call home The Whistler Housing Authority is seeking a qualified candidate to join our organization. Operations Manager
Reservations Agent Concierge Service Express Attendant General Maintenance
• People & Culture Generalist • Loss Prevention Manager • Assistant Director of Finance
• $1000 Winter Wellness Package • Travel Perks and Benefits • Complimentary meal at work • Recognition and Rewards • Subsidized Staff Accommodation • Growth Opportunities • Flexible Schedules
• • • • •
A job description is available at www.whistlerhousing.ca Interested candidates are invited to submit a resume and cover letter by email to mail@whistlerhousing.ca Deadline for applications is October 12th, 2021 at 4:00 p.m.
DISTRICT OF SQUAMISH
• • • •
The Operations Manager will be responsible for the WHA’s Employee Housing Program’s operations, policies, and procedures. This dynamic role leads the creation and oversight of housing policy, compliance, and research, and provides guidance for the WHA’s communication and engagement strategies, including supervision of the WHA’s IT systems and website. This role suits a results-oriented innovative thinker with strong leadership skills and the ability to manage multiple projects to progress the affordable housing goals for Whistler’s workforce.
WE ARE
HIRING Utilities Technician Regular Part-Time Chief Operator Wastewater Treatment Plant Regular Full-Time Project Manager Temporary Full-Time Environmental Specialist Temporary Full-Time Manager of Bylaw Enforcement and Animal Control Regular Full-Time
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LIL’WAT NATION JOB POSTING: Title: Location: Status: Reporting to: Wage/Salary: Start Date: Closing Date:
ARE YOU A SELF-MOTIVATED INDIVIDUAL LOOKING TO GROW YOUR CAREER IN SQUAMISH?
Child and Youth Therapist Master’s Degree in Counselling Psychology or Equivalent Xet’olacw Community School, Mount Currie, B.C. .8FTE to 1.0 Full Time (4 days per week or 5 days per week) – Part Time Negotiable School Principal Commensurate with Experience August 30, 2021 Post until position is filled
Summary: Xet’olacw Community School is a Lil’wat Nation school situated 35 minutes north of Whistler, BC in the Mount Currie Community. The School is a modern, dynamic institution with a strong First Nations curriculum as well as academics from N to 12. Xet’olacw Community School is looking to hire a full time child and youth therapist for their school. The child and youth therapist will work with students aged 4-19 within a school based setting. In addition to being trauma informed, flexible and having experience working with Indigenous students, preferred therapeutic modalities include narrative therapy, expressive arts, and CBT. The successful candidate will demonstrate clear boundaries, strong ethics and a firm understanding of informed consent. The successful candidate will be able to both understand and honour the impact of the history of colonialism on Indigenous communities in their work with the students, their families, the staff and the community. Key Qualifications and Attributes: • A Master’s Degree in Counselling Psychology or equivalent • Excellent communication skills; confidence to role model these skills and engage in them • Be registered with the BCACC, CCPA (certified member) and/or the BCTF • Ability to liaise (or learn to liaise) between Indigenous and non-indigenous culture, work within a team, on various teams and independently • Flexibility and collaborative team player • Engages in consistent and healthy self-care practices • Open to Learning Key Deliverables: • Provide therapy to children and youth aged 4-18 and carry a caseload of individual clients, co-facilitate group therapy and maintain appropriate records. • Be prepared and comfortable presenting psychoeducation to students in their classrooms (including but not limited to boundaries, abuse prevention, healthy relationships, and mental health information as needed and requested by teaching staff and administration). • Participate in school based teams, inter-agency teams and develop mental health resources when needed • Liaise and attend meetings with other health care professionals and service providers when requested by clients (to best support a circle of care and mental health) and with appropriate informed consent. Key Responsibilities: • Arrive each school day by 8:30 a.m. Be available after hours and on holidays under extenuating circumstances for at risk students and their families. • Create a schedule that outlines your therapeutic caseload and that honours the scheduling needs of the school (and individual classrooms). • Co-facilitate or facilitate teaching classes, group therapy and super courses. • Provide therapy and classroom psychoeducation that is culturally competent, has a clear beginning, middle and end and that is tailored to the needs of the individual or group. • Be available for debriefing and support for staff regarding mental health in the classroom and to support the mental health of the students on your caseload. • Participate in peer supervision and personal supervision as needed or requested. • Be open to participating in culturally oriented activities (including but not limited to; stein Valley hiking, Outdoor-based super courses, learning Ucwalmicwts words and phrases). • Record Keeping: Keep a file for each student including but not limited to the signed permission, Welcome to Counselling Agreement, Informed Consent documents, a record of dates, times, and themes of sessions. Send cover letter and resume including references. Upon receiving your information an applicant’s Declaration and Agreement will be sent to be signed. Contact Information: Verna Stager, Education Director • Xet’olacw Community School P.O. Box 604, Mount Currie, B.C. V0N 2K0 Phone: 604 894-6131 / Fax: 604 894-5717 • glenda.gabriel@lilwat.ca
Come be a part of our awesome team as The Squamish Chief’s new Media Account Manager. If you don’t already live in Squamish, you should know it’s one of the most innovative and attractive communities on the West Coast just a short commute from the North Shore of Vancouver. It has a growing worldwide reputation for outdoor recreation with world-class mountain biking, rock climbing, water sports and skiing, boarding and the backcountry in the winter. We’re youthful, engaged and passionate about where we live! And if you’re a local – well, you know you’re in the right place to forge a career and lucky to call Squamish home. We’ve got an opportunity to work and truly be a part of this inspired community at its media hub, The Squamish Chief. We’re part of Glacier Media Group and Local News Network, the largest local digital network in Canada. We work with our clients to offer cutting edge solutions like programmatic, Social, SEO, sponsored content and community display advertising on our website – and yes, we reach customers through our trusted newspaper as well. We’ve got media opportunities covered.
Here’s what we’re looking for: • • • • •
You have sales experience and are comfortable making cold calls and setting up/ leading meetings with new and existing clients. A self-starter with a consultative selling approach working with clients planning both digital and print advertising campaigns. Building and maintaining client relationships with your exceptional communication skills comes easy to you. You are a goal orientated individual with a positive attitude and a willingness to learn. You possess strong organizational skills and have the ability to multitask in a fast paced environment.
Here’s the essentials of what we offer: • • •
Competitive salary + uncapped commission package. Comprehensive health and dental coverage and extended benefits. Extensive onboarding training and ongoing support.
Come join us! Please submit your cover letter and resume in confidence to Sarah Strother at: sstrother@wplpmedia.com Closing date is October 15, 2021
We thank for your interest; however, only those candidates selected for an interview will be contacted.
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EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITIES PIQUENEWSMAGAZINE.COM/JOBS
THE FIRST PLACE TO LOOK FOR LOCAL JOB OPENINGS
IS COMING TO WHISTLER SPRING 2022
JOIN JOE'S CULINARY TEAM!
Hiring: Operations Manager Citywide is looking for an experienced Whistler-based operations manager.
TEAM BENEFITS INCLUDE: • • • • • • •
Wages Above Industry Standard Gratuities Retention Bonus Accommodation Options Immediate Medical & Dental Benefits Employee Discounts Staff Meal
INTERVIEWS
Drop-in or email hr@joefortes.ca to pre-schedule. 4417 Sundial Place Whistler BC
Join our dynamic team at Whistler Dental!
We are recruiting a construction industry professional who is dedicated to their craft, organized, efficient and interested in operations as well as sales. The position is permanent and long term . If this sounds like you, please apply to: work@citywide.ca
citywide.ca Maury Young Arts Centre | 604.935.8410 Looking for a fun side hustle? Attn: Anna Lynch
WORK WITH US!
Apply to getinvolved@artswhistler.com
artswhistler.com/careers
Apply today! Job description at
Receptionist Wanted Send your resume and cover letter today: liz@whistlerdental.com
Talent Wanted WHISTLER DENTAL 78 OCTOBER 7, 2021
Excellent compensation packages State of the art practice Learn, Lead, and, Grow With Us!
Must have Serving It Right
We are currently (casual, part-time) recruiting for: Bartenders
Bartenders recruiting for:
(casual, part-time) We are currently Must have Serving It Right
WITH US! WORK
Job description description at at Apply today! Job
artswhistler.com/careers
Apply to to getinvolved@artswhistler.com Apply getinvolved@artswhistler.com Attn: Anna Anna Lynch Lynch Attn: Maury Young Young Arts Arts Centre Centre || 604.935.8410 604.935.8410 Maury
Looking for a fun side hustle?
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Resort Municipality of Whistler
Employment Opportunities • Equipment Operator II – Roads • Equipment Operator III – Roads • Planning Analyst • Materials Management and Youth/Public Service Specialist • Skate Host – Whistler Olympic Plaza Ice Rink • Recreation Cashier – Whistler Olympic Plaza Ice Rink Resort Municipality of Whistler whistler.ca/careers
AVAILABLE ON STANDS IN THE SEA TO SKY
The Pinnacle Hotel Whistler has the following positions available:
LAUNDRY ATTENDANTS, ROOM ATTENDANTS, HOUSEMAN AND MAINTENANCE POSITIONS HOUSEKEEPING SUPERVISOR Please reply by email: parmstrong@pinnaclehotels.ca
CALL THE EXPERTS
Want to advertise your service on this page? ACCOUNTING
Remote Controller-CFO Accounting Services Financial Statements
Call Pique at (604) 938-0202, or email sales@piquenewsmagazine.com
LANDSCAPING
Without a
SPECIALIZING IN OUTDOOR LIVING SPACES Landscape Design & Installation Seasonal Planters
Accounting Assistance 3rd Party Reports Staffing • Tax
We are booking 2022 maintenance contracts. Call us to set up your property visit. whistlercontroller@gmail.com
604.902.1350 • www.withoutahitch.ca
WELLNESS
Carol English Wellness Services 25 years experience in providing individually-tailored, premium skin care, aesthetic & wellness services. Environ Advanced Active Vitamin A, C & E Facials Innopen Medical Needling Waxing, Lash + Brow Tinting Massage Reiki + Bio Energy Healing Appointments available in Whistler & Pemberton
604-966-4868
WANT TO ADVERTISE YOUR SERVICE HERE?
CLAIM THIS SPACE. CALL YOUR SALES REP OR EMAIL
SALES@PIQUENEWSMAGAZINE.COM
Locals day Tuesday in Whistler! 15% discount on services (mention when booking)
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CALL THE EXPERTS
Want to advertise your service on this page? ALTERATIONS
Call Pique at (604) 938-0202, or email sales@piquenewsmagazine.com
BLINDS ETC.
BLINDS ETC.
PROFESSIONAL SEWING SERVICE
SUNCREST WINDOW COVERINGS
• Custom Garments • Curtains • Cushions • Upholstery • Sewing Classes
Custom Blinds • Shades • Draperies
Tel: 604-935-2101 Email: windowcov@shaw.ca www.whistlerwindowcoverings.ca
BLINDS ETC.
CARPET CLEANING
WINDOW COVERINGS
BLACK BEAR CARPET CLEANING LTD.
Whistler’s Source for Blinds since 1989
David Weldon
• SHUTTERS • DRAPERY
Connie Griffiths
604.967.2422 whistlersewing@gmail.com www.whistlersewing.com
david@summersnow.ca 604-938-3521
• BLINDS • SHADES
• • • •
Wood blinds Sunscreens Shades Motorization
• Carpets • Upholstery • Tiles • Car Interiors
Custom Window Treatments Contact us today for a free quote or consultation info@suncrestwindowcoverings.com
604.698.8406
CLEANING
• Furnace • Airducts • Dryer vents
Coast Mountain Cleaning • Full service cleaning • Residential & Commercial • Carpet & Upholstery Cleaning • Property Maintenance • Established 2011 We follow all VCH, Min of Health and WHO Covid 19 protocols
Insured & Bondable • Criminal background checks on all staff
www.summersnow.ca
100% ECO FRIENDLY CERTIFIED
Summer Snow Finishings Limited
www.blackbearcarpetcleaning.ca • 604 698 6610
CHIMNEY
FURNITURE
604-966-1437
coastmountaincleaning@gmail.com
We use tea tree oil based cleaning products.
GLASS
BLACKCOMB CHIMNEY PATROL LTD. Serving Whistler since 1986 Specialized in cleaning
MODERN DESIGNS.
Chimneys, Furnace & Airducts, Dryer vents.
...Furniture that won’t go out of style
604.932.1388 / 1.877.932.5775 blackcombchimney@yahoo.ca
AUTO GLASS SPECIALISTS · Frameless Shower Enclosures · Complete Window/Door Packages · Custom Railing Glass Systems · Fogged/Failed Window Replacements
mountainglass.ca | info@mountainglass.ca
604-932-7288
THE COMPLETE GLASS CENTRE
HOME SERVICES
HEATING AND COOLING
PAINT
Western Technical System Inc
HVAC/R
FOR ALL YOUR HOUSEHOLD & COMMERCIAL NEEDS
GENERAL MAINTENANCE
• Carpentry • Tiling • Drywall Repairs • Texture Finishing • Renovations • Installation • Painting • Plumbing • Snow Removal • Appliance Repairs Ask Us About • Mine Sweeping Your Home ROB PIDGEON • 604-932-7707 • Bonded & Insured
find us on
www.birdhouseservices.com BirdhouseServices@gmail.com
Our paint team has over 25 years combined paint sales experience, and we can help you get things right the first time. Now offering In Home Paint Consultations! Pemberton Valley Rona. Let us help you love where you live.
Residential/Commercial Heat Pumps Boilers-Furnaces-Chillers Design Build Call us today! 778-994-3159 www.westerntechnical.net
PROPERTY MAINTENANCE
604-894-6240 7426 Prospect St, Pemberton
SURVEYING
SURVEYING
BUNBURY & ASSOCIA BC LAND SURVEYORS
WHISTLER PROPERTY SERVICES
604-962-0050 info@50north.ca
Pressure Washing Window Cleaning Handyman Services
80 OCTOBER 7, 2021
Serving the Sea to Sky Corridor Since 1963 ▪ ▪ ▪
High Dusting Junk Removal
Phone: 604-932-3770
Surveys Surveys
▪ ▪ ▪
North Vancouver to Lillooet
Surveys Plans
Book your in-home leen Consultation with Col today!
Surveys
www.bunbury-surveys.com SQUAMISH OFFICE #207 - 38026 Second Avenue Phone: 604-892-3090 email: squamish@bunbury-surveys.com
DOUG BUSH SURVEY SERVICES LTD DOUGLAS J BUSH AScT, RSIS p: 604-932-3314 c: 604-935-9515 Engineering & construction layout Topographic & site improvement surveys Municipal, volumetric & hydrographic surveys GPS - global positioning systems www.dbss.ca // dougb@dbss.ca
PUZZLES ACROSS 1 6 10 15 20 21 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 33 35 37 38 39 40 41 43 45 48 49 50 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 65
Oscar-winner -- Kline Man of the house Rascal Hidden supply 1836 battle site Socrates’ hangout Multiplex offering Terre --, Ind. Sounds hoarse Undersized pups Optimal Took apart Devoured Ancestral Inclined Grumpily Mope Famous last word Habitual HMO staffers Talks online Level place Clear the windshield Lobster location 747 or DC-10 Mutter Give off, as rays Have the boldness to try Sci-fi award Rainy season Author Umberto -Barnstorms Puffin cousins Gridiron play Old-time slugger Mel -Romeo’s witty friend Shaft
66 67 68 69 71 72 73 75 76 77 79 82 84 86 90 91 92 93 95 96 97 98 99 100 102 103 104 105 106 107 109 110 113 114 115 118 119 120 124
126 129 130 131 133 134 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143
Barn topper Nerve network Tranquil Nature walk Soft mineral Henry VIII’s house Wet soils Codgers’ queries Jacket part Weather phenomenon Confronts Crowds Subs, on sonar Bribe, informally Type of coif Luke Skywalker’s sister Clever remark Flailed Seine moorage Pepper grinder Mongol dwelling Played with Foot-pound relative Put back into office Forward or reverse Took the bus Conduct (a war) Seven-veil dancer Antique Blush makeup Mine finds Govern Actress Zellweger Buzzing insect Golden Fleece ship Cleansing agent Likewise Radical Gaudiest
Resistance -- -- shoestring Installed electricity Cool place Meat avoider Small pies Any of Charlie’s girls Like a wolf’s howl Run off with Four duos Short of cash Wiped Mr. Flintstone Stone monument
DOWN 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 22 31 32 34
Jeweler’s measure Buoy up Florists’ supply Mischief-maker Snacker’s delight Turn aside Malaria symptom Tadpole’s place Potter or glassblower Conceited smile Buffalo Bill -St. Swamp gases BB shot Avoid Kids’ snits Broadcast portion Be sparing Type of mutual fund Shrewd Subway opposites Pacino and Unser Windflower
36 38 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 51 52 53 55 56 57 59 60 61 64 65 66 67 70 71 72 74 76 78 79 80 81 83 84 85 87 88 89
Easy gait Palo -Vitamin A source Rushes off Identifies Family member Regards as Speaker introducer Narrow inlet (var.) Pineapple island Dance in a roadhouse Expressed disapproval State-run game Go right in Was overfond Peanut covering Chew “Swan Lake” costumes Poles’ connector Good buddy Antique brooch Long sighs Improvise musically Bylaws -- McEntire Take a header Worn out Upriver spawner Found a roost Consent to County carnivals Wouldn’t hurt -- -Fish basket Shale extract TV’s Mason Patsy Down the road Woolen fabric Moves cautiously
91 92 94 96 97 98 101 102 104 107 108 109 111 112 113 114
Permit Campus area Dr. Jekyll and Mr. -Reminder Raise one’s voice Correct Dangerous pea family member It’s really tacky Heartaches Carry off By -- (alone) Simple sheds (hyph.) Flung Just as soon Knock sharply Friend, slangily
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Egyptian dam River to the North Sea Overeat Swiftness Enjoyed a repast Nut cake Computer chip maker Immobile class Without urgency Comics pooch Mr. Stravinsky Gift-wrapping need Meyers of “Kate & Allie” Quit stalling
LAST WEEKS’ ANSWERS
Enter a digit from 1 through 9 in each cell, in such a way that: • Each horizontal row contains each digit exactly once • Each vertical column contains each digit exactly once • Each 3x3 box contains each digit exactly once Solving a sudoku puzzle does not require any mathematics; simple logic suffices.
LEVEL OF DIFFICULTY: MEDIUM
3 6
1
6 5 8 6 3 2 7 5 6 6 7 3 1 4 1 2 7 4 1 5 3 8 3 5 9
MEDIUM Solution, tips and computer program at www.sudoku.com# 58
ANSWERS ON PAGE 70
OCTOBER 7, 2021
81
MAXED OUT
Tales from the inbox SUMMER’S TURNED to fall, leaves are doing just that, and my email boxes are getting stuffed. Time to answer some burning questions, or at least verbally burning effigies... even if they’re mine. Note: Some emails have been altered to follow basic rules of grammar and spelling. Hey Max: Since you seem to follow politics, do you think the Conservatives will dump Erin O’Toole for losing the election? No Con Left Behind Dear No: I don’t believe dumping Mr.
BY G.D. MAXWELL O’Toole would be either smart or kind. Dumping Prime Minister Trudeau would be both, not to mention giving him more time to surf and ski and less need to apologize. Keeping Mr. O’Toole will ensure the rabid right of the Conservative party will continue to fracture off to la-la land—the PPC’s domain—and uphold the post-Harper tradition of having a leader no one is sure they can trust. Dumping Trudeau would just be the right thing to do... because it’s 2022, or at least it will be soon. Max: Your opinions are scary. What’s even scarier is Pique Newsmagazine has let you print this dribble. I feel sorry for you. SS Dear Schultzstaffel: What’s really scary is you don’t seem to know the difference between dribble and drivel. Dribble is what runs down a baby’s cheek or what a Raptor does with a basketball. Drivel is what I write, though I prefer piffle. That said, thank you; it’s devoted readers like yourself that keep me from being fired. You poor, deluded sheep. You’ve been brainwashed, probably by whatever they put in your COVID vaccine. You’ve given up your freedom and you don’t even know it. I’d suggest you read or watch some of the links below and get yourself educated. Free Forever Dear FF: I know the casual nature of email, not to mention the dehumanizing effects of social media, have made such arcane things as salutations passé, but in the future I’d prefer if you’d start your missives with, “Dear Deluded Sheep,” or some such formal greeting. So much for Miss Manners. You’ll probably not be surprised to hear I didn’t bother linking to any of your 436 links. Many of them I’ve seen or been offered previously by others who share your unfortunately not unique worldview. I’m OK with Bill Gates controlling my mind, the microchips floating through my circulatory
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system, the poisonous ingredients in my vaccines and suffering from worldwide mass hypnosis. But then, I grew up in the 1960s and was willing to take just about anything offered. And while I wouldn’t think of discouraging you from writing again, please know I don’t respond to anonymous emails. I can understand why you might not want to use your real name but let me assure you, it’s actually very difficult to get someone committed just because they live in an alternate reality. I didn’t want you to mistake my not answering for having included you in my spam filter. I’d never do that. After all, as above, it’s loyal readers like yourself, etc. GD: Media has been full of stories the last little while about unvaccinated people in Alberta who caught COVID and are now
not overwhelm hospitals and ICU wards to the point even Jason Kenney has to call in the military to help and airlift patients out of province. Let them stay home, dose themselves with the latest quack remedy and die in peace. Then again, if medical professionals weren’t so darned humanitarian, they’d be turned away at the door and told to go home and hope for the best. It seems to me a weird priority that turns people away who have legitimate medical needs, that cancels long awaited surgeries, in order to overflow hospitals with people who wouldn’t take the simple step of getting vaccinated. I would prefer they made their too-little-toolate selfies from their own beds at home but then, there are those who question my empathy. Dear Max: You’ve been bang on with
I’m OK with Bill Gates controlling my mind, the microchips floating through my circulatory system… evangelical converts, telling other people to get vaccinated. Is it me or is this just hypocritical hindsight? No Sympathy Dear No: I hope you don’t mind me calling you by your first name. Whether it’s hypocritical hindsight or simply human nature is a matter of degree. Personally, I find it a basic lack of integrity. If those people, who didn’t get vaccinated for whatever reason, had any integrity, they’d have the courage of their convictions and
recent columns. I don’t often agree with you but you’ve sure nailed it lately. Keep up the good work. A Fan Dear Fan: This is a trick, right? Max: I’m steaming. Vail, or is that Fail, charged me a US$4.95 “shipping” charge to deliver my season pass. Each! With six kids, that’s US$39.60 to ship passes we already have from last year! What a ripoff. And trying to get an answer from anyone at WB
is impossible. What should I do? Outraged Dear Out... in keeping with my casual familiarity. I’ve chosen yours to represent the dozens of similar emails I’ve received. Six children! They say J.S. Bach had 20 children... because his organ had no stops! Sorry, old organist’s joke. I don’t know what to say. Vail Resorts has gotten rid of almost anyone locally who might address your issue. All decisions are now made in the Field of Brooms. Even the former director of miscommunications is gone. I’m not sure US$4.95 each is enough to start a class action suit and those things are really hard to do in Canada. But what I can offer, for whatever relief it may be, is to put you on the list for the T-shirts and sweatshirts I’m going to order from Toad Hall. Emblazoned with the old Whistler and Blackcomb mountain logos—the ones before the stylized swimming sperm— on the front, they’ll be printed on the back with: F#*K Vail: I ski Whistler and Blackcomb! Let me know how many you want. They’ll be in Canadian dollars. Max: Turkey or ham for Thanksgiving? Hungry Dear Hungry: Either, just let me know when you want me to come over. Kidding, of course. While many may see this as a firstworld problem—and others as genocide—I feel your pain. I used to just say it didn’t matter because whichever you decide on, you can have the other at Christmas. But someone said that was insensitive to people who don’t celebrate Christmas. Meh. But now that we have a federal holiday on September 30, I consider the problem solved. You should just about have finished the leftovers of one before you pop the other in the oven. And that leaves Christmas open for those who love goose. Win-win. ■
HAPPY THANKSGIVING VIRTUAL TOUR
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WEDGEWOODS 9055 Armchair Place A striking newly built masterpiece, situated to maximize light, views and the sounds of Green River. 8BR, 8BA, spacious covered decks, 4-car garage and a 2BR suite. Book your private tour today. $4,890,000
Rob Boyd
VILLAGE 720-4320 Sundial Crescent Pan Pacific Mountainside is a superbly located full service hotel within the heart of Whistler Village. Enjoy being within close walking distance to many of the best attractions, shops & restaurants that Whistler has to offer. $499,000
604-935-9172 Maggi Thornhill *PREC
BAYSHORES 2347 Cheakamus Way Ski home and view the Peak from the front deck of this well-kept family chalet, just a 2-min drive from Creekside. 2564sq ft, 4br, 3ba and flex room. New zoning will allow for a rental suite. $2,860,000
604-905-8199 Sherry Boyd
604-902-7220
FOR RENT
PEMBERTON 1304 Eagle Drive Breathtaking views from every window. Backs on to crown land, close to town, biking & hiking from your front door. Build your dream home in Pemberton. $599,000
Ken Achenbach
CHEAKAMUS #16 Basalt STUNNING 4 Bed/3.5 Bath brand new Townhome. Designer furnishings throughout, 2 car garage, movie room with wet bar, master enclave with huge en suite bath and W/I closet, steam shower, and more! Available for winter’s lease. $11,500/mo
604-966-7640 Jake Breuer
BENCHLANDS 230/231-4573 Chateau Blvd. Lockoff 775 sq.ft. one bedroom two bathroom unit in Glacier Lodge. Renovated Kitchen and else. Steps to Blackcomb Gondola. All shops and restrurants are just down stairs. AirBnB or owner’s unlimited use allowed. $1,180,000
604-698-7259 Allyson Sutton
604-932-7609
SOLD
WHISTLER VILLAGE 29-4355 Northlands Boulevard Sold for well over the asking price, with multiple offers, this gorgeous, spacious, 2B/2B townhome is in a highly-coveted complex, is steps away from restaurants/shopping/ski lifts and has one of the best pools and hot tubs in town! $1,499,000
Gina Daggett
WHISTLER CAY HEIGHTS 6400 St Andrews Way Great neighbourhood in Whistler! You’ll enjoy this 3 bedroom and large den, plus 2.5 bathroom Duplex spacious home. Approx. 2,000 sq.ft. with large sunny patio, 2 car garage with guest parking & stroll to local trails, shops & Whistler Village. $2,580,000
GARIBALDI HIGHLANDS, SQUAMISH 2632 Rhum & Eigg GARIBALDI HIGHLANDS GEM! 5 bed & 5 bath on a large 13,922 sq.ft. lot with amazing mountain views. Fully updated throughout, close to schools, university & biking/hiking trails. Potential 1 bed suite. View today! $1,979,000
604-616-6933 Angie Vazquez *PREC
778-998-2357 Kathy White
Whistler Village Shop
Whistler Creekside Shop
Squamish Station Shop
36-4314 Main Street · Whistler BC V8E 1A8 · Phone +1 604-932-1875
325-2063 Lake Placid Road · Whistler BC V8E 0B6 · Phone +1 604-932-1875
150-1200 Hunter Place · Squamish BC V8B 0G8 · Phone +1 778-733-0611
whistler.evrealestate.com
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Engel & Völkers Whistler *PERSONAL REAL ESTATE CORPORATION ©2019 Engel & Völkers. All rights reserved. Each brokerage independently owned and operated. Engel & Völkers and its independent License Partners are Equal Opportunity Employers and fully support the principles of the Fair Housing Act.
778-318-5900
3D Tour - rem.ax/307powderhorn
9202 Pinetree Lane
$1,700,000
#307 - 4821 Spearhead Dr.
$1,699,000
This spacious lot in Emerald has fantastic views of Arm Chair and Wedge Mountain. Take advantage of this wonderful elevated lot assuring privacy and mountain views. This serviced corner lot sides/backs onto parkland, is on the bus route, is a short walk to Emerald Park and the Green Lake boat launch.
Spacious 2.5 Bedroom unit at the Powderhorn complex, steps away from ski in/ski out access on Blackcomb Mountain, as well as Lost Lake and the Valley Trail. This unit offers ample opportunity for your creative touch! Flexible usage to utilize the great nightly rental performance or to use for your own personal usage.
Sherry Baker
Ursula Morel*
604.932.1315
604.932.8629
2.5
9297 Steller’s Way
Welcome to Wedgewoods, a master planned community of 108 beautiful properties. Phase Six includes the final 19 estate lots which allow for luxury homes plus a carriage house. Stunning mountain views and sunshine make Phase 6 a very special offering. 3.7 ACRES
Ann Chiasson
3D Tour - rem.ax/208horstman
#208 - 4653 Blackcomb Way
$899,000
1
604.905.0737
2162 Highway 99
Dave Beattie*
1
604.905.8855
2585 Lakeview Road - Gun Lake $5,450,000 This custom built log home is one of a kind. Set in a quiet bay on Gun lake, this 7037 ft2 home was created with family living in mind. A spacious kitchen and dining area allows room for everyone. Six bedrooms, all with ensuite baths, provides sleeping for up to 15.
Dave Sharpe
3D Tour - rem.ax/413alpenglow
$929,000
A beautiful 1 bedroom suite on the Blackcomb Benchlands awaits. Quartz countertops, stainless steel appliances, custom cabinetry, west-facing unit. private end unit for easy access outside. The large bedroom has sliding glass doors to a cute balcony for early morning coffee or nightcap.
Doug Treleaven
$899,000
7+ acres in the east end of the Pemberton Valley, 5 minutes from the Village of Pemberton and 2 hours from Vancouver. This private, easily accessible acreage includes a grove of cedar, wild cherry, apple, and hazelnut trees and a variety of wild berries. Over 20,000 sq. ft. of gardens and sun-filled greenhouses, plus an orchard of apple, cherry, and plum trees.
3D Tour - rem.ax/418marquise
#418 - 4809 Spearhead Drive
604.932.7651
3D Tour - rem.ax/2585lakeviewrd
This Phase 1 property allows you to live in your suite full time. You are close to the Chateau Golf Course, Lost Lake Park. The free bus stops in front of the building for easy access to the village and lifts. Alternatively, enjoy the short walk along the tree lined trail to reach the village.
Bruce Watt
$1,850,000
1
604.905.8626
#413 - 4369 Main Street
3D Tour - rem.ax/418marquise
$395,000
Best Price in Alpenglow! This 4th floor studio with views of Sproat Mountain is a perfect little getaway and revenue generator. Located in the middle of Whistler Village, steps from Olympic Plaza, food and shopping, and a short walk from the ski hill. Complex includes a pool, hot tub and exercise room, and secure underground parking.
Matt Chiasson
604.935.9171
6
604.902.2779
.5
#45 - 7410 Flint Street
$659,000
2 bed, 2 bath. The perfect starter home for a family or a solid investment centrally located in Pemberton. Wake up to views of Mount Currie from both bedrooms. This home also boasts a covered patio to enjoy in all weather with ample space for seating and a BBQ.
Meg McLean
2
604.907.2223
3D Tour - rem.ax/35peaks
#212 - 4220 Gateway Drive
$285,000
A renovated studio with loft - right in the heart of Whistler Village and within a 2 minute walk to the ski lifts. These fully furnished lofted studios include a fully equipped kitchen and sleep 6. Blackcomb Lodge has undergone extensive renovations and upgrades to the indoor swimming pool, hot tub and other common area facilities.
Michael d’Artois
604.905.9337
1
9407 Portage Road
$795,000
This is a great piece of property, almost 19,000 square feet. 3 bedroom with vaulted ceilings that has been well taken care of, about 10 minutes past Gates Lake in Birken B.C. The house is set back from the road, and there are many large tree’s on this property, so it’s nice and private. This property is suited for full time living, or use it as a weekend getaway.
Michael Nauss
WHISTLER OFFICE 106 - 7015 Nesters Road, Whistler, BC V8E 0X1 604.932.2300 or Toll Free 1.888.689.0070 *PERSONAL REAL ESTATE CORPORATION
If you are a home owner, buyer, tenant, landlord, or small business in need of help during this time, please see our updated list of resources at: remax-whistler.com/resources
604.932.9568
3
#35 - 1450 Vine Road
$719,000
This 2 bedroom 2 bathroom townhome in the popular Peaks complex in Pemberton comes with an oversized single garage, and the ability to park 2 vehicles in front of the unit, allowing space for all the toys to be safely stored inside. The back deck overlooks a quiet grassy common space with a very private feel to it.
Richard Grenfell
604.902.4260
2
PEMBERTON OFFICE 1411 Portage Road, Pemberton, BC V0N 2L1 604.894.6616 or Toll Free 1.888.689.0070