Living and learning in Whistler

FROM AVALANCHE SAFETY TO EXCEL, THERE MIGHT BE MORE LEARNING OPPORTUNITIES IN THE RESORT THAN YOU THINK

By megan lalonde

Ask a local why they moved to Whistler, and there is a good chance they will reply with some variation of “the mountains.” Maybe they’ll say “the snow,” “the bike trails,” or “the lifestyle.” Maybe they travelled to the Sea to Sky for a working holiday break in between semesters or degrees, or before entering the daily grind of the corporate world. Once in a blue moon, they might tell you they moved for a job

Rarely do you hear about Whistler newcomers drawn to the resort for school.

Rarely, but not never.

Dive a little deeper and it’s clear there are far more learning opportunities for adults in Whistler beyond the on-the-job training.

The Whistler Adventure School, for example, offers outdoors-centric programs for marketing and media; mountain sport technicians; design and innovation; adventure tourism and bike or ski and snowboard guiding.

ALLTRACKS Academy, meanwhile, offers a range of courses for skiers and snowboarders, whether they’re looking to earn instructor qualifications or improve their technique, while companies like Mountain Skills Academy and Adventures or Altus Mountain Guides offer climbing and mountaineering courses, ranging from introductory touring courses and basic Avalanche Skills Training to more advanced backcountry endeavours like crevasse rescue. Extremely Canadian also offers avalanche training in addition to its renowned steeps and freeride clinics, and even Whistler Blackcomb’s snow school is a great place to start if you’re looking to progress your skiing or snowboarding.

But that’s not to say learning in Whistler is confined to the slopes. On the more academic side, the Whistler Institute offers accredited professional development programs through its partnership with the British Columbia Institute of Technology (BCIT)—like this spring’s “Presenting & Analyzing Data with MS Excel” and “Managing Employee Performance and Conflict,” for example—plus its thought-provoking Global Speaker Series.

Learning at Tamwood International College might be based in the classroom, but the draw for its students lies in the Whistler lifestyle as much as in its courses. The school, which began as a summer camp in Whistler in 1993, offers two accredited work and study programs within its School of

Hospitality and Tourism, in addition to English courses out of its Whistler Village campus.

“Under that umbrella we have students who study hospitality and tourism, or foundations of food and beverage,” explained Sigrid McKay, Tamwood’s Whistler campus coordinator. Both programs include a six-month study term followed by a six-month work placement. “Basically, they’re set up for jobs in the industry for the first six months and then they apply the skills that they learned in their co-op, and at the end they get a diploma,” she said.

“This is a great asset to have, and it’s also just great hands-on knowledge for the industry.”

Students looking to learn or improve their English, meanwhile, can start with as few as five courses, which they can complete in a single week, or commit to a longer study period.

Tamwood’s English-as-a-second-language programming “is super flexible,” McKay explained. “Students can take a week off, a week on, and then just rejoin the classes because the teachers are able to cater their lesson plan to the abilities of students.”

There’s an obvious need: according to the latest Vital Signs report from the Whistler Community Foundation, about 15 per cent of Whistler residents changed addresses to or from another country between 2016 and 2021, while about 19 per cent of locals reported their mother tongue to be a language other than English in Statistics Canada’s 2021 census, with 45 different languages named.

Currently, Tamwood has about 40 students across all its Whistler courses, said McKay, most of whom came to Whistler from abroad specifically to study— and, of course, to enjoy the great outdoors. “It’s a learning holiday,” said McKay.

Though classes take place Monday to Friday, “We start in the afternoons in the winter so students can go skiing and snowboarding in the morning and then it switches in the summer so people have time to go biking and hiking in the afternoon.”

For more information, visit tamwood.com. ■

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Protecting the high seas must be a high priority

AS WITH MUCH of human activity, we’ve exploited and polluted the oceans without really understanding them. We know more about the moon and Mars than what lies beneath the seas.

We do know, however, that oceans provide oxygen and that they absorb carbon dioxide, making them critical to slowing climate disruption. They account for almost all living space on the planet, and provide much of the world’s food.

Because countries are only responsible for ocean territories within a designated distance from their coastlines, the almost two-thirds of ocean area that make up the high seas

BY DAVID SUZUKI

have pretty much been a free-for-all when it comes to activities like fishing, mining and transportation.

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That may soon change. On March 4, 193 nations agreed on a historic treaty to protect international waters. It comes in the wake of the December UN biodiversity conference (COP15) in Montreal. There, countries agreed to protect 30 per cent of lands and oceans by 2030. The UN High Seas Treaty is essential to realizing that goal for oceans, as it creates a legal framework to set up a network of marine protected areas and includes requirements for environmental impact assessments in areas beyond national jurisdictions.

As with the conferences of the parties on climate and biodiversity, the treaty establishes a new COP to ensure governments meet regularly and are accountable for ocean having to carry out environmental impact assessments laid out by the treaty.”

Canada, which hosted the fifth International Marine Protected Areas Congress (IMPAC5) in February, has committed to protecting 25 per cent of its territorial waters by 2025 and 30 per cent by 2030, and to playing its part in ensuring protections extend to the high seas.

The federal government has effectively declared a moratorium on deep-sea mining and has set a goal to establish 10 new national marine conservation areas.

It has also worked with the B.C. government and First Nations on a plan to establish a marine protected area network in the Great Bear Sea, which reaches from northern Vancouver Island to the Alaska border. It will be the world’s largest Indigenous-led, collaboratively developed MPA network.

The federal government is also working with Indigenous nations to establish a co-managed marine protected area, Tang. gwan—hačxswiqak—Tsigis, off the West Coast of Vancouver Island, in which vast, underwater mountain ranges and unique deepwater ecosystems will be protected from oil and gas activities, deep-sea mining, bottom trawl fishing and dumping.

Government is also supporting fisheries closures in the Gwaxdlala/Nalaxdlala Indigenous Protected and Conserved Area, established by Mamalilikulla First Nation. It will form part of the Great Bear network.

Most of Canada’s marine conservation areas will recognize the importance of reconciliation and Indigenous leadership.

We’re already seeing positive effects. After a court challenge by World Wildlife Fund Canada and the David Suzuki Foundation, represented by Ecojustice, ExxonMobil relinquished its oil and gas exploration governance and biodiversity protection.

Although it’s been a long time coming, it will take a lot of work to realize its promise. The world has held 27 climate COPs since 1995 and we’re still behind in addressing that rapidly increasing crisis. And most countries have failed to uphold international agreements on high seas fishing.

The treaty aims at fairness between nations, covering, for example, equal access, shared benefits, capacity development and technology transfer for marine genetic resources—genetic material from marine sponges, krill, corals, seaweeds and bacteria, which “are attracting increasing scientific and commercial attention due to their potential use in medicines and cosmetics,” the Guardian reports.

But concerns have been raised that “bodies already responsible for regulating activities such as fisheries, shipping and deepsea mining could continue to do so without permits on the B.C. coast in March. Canada has also agreed to phase out West Coast opennet pen fish farming.

These national and international agreements, plans and actions show what can be accomplished with Indigenous leadership and pressure and effort from the public, scientists and conservation organizations. But even with the significant progress over the past few years, we can’t get complacent. The world is finally waking up to the climate and biodiversity crises. Protecting the oceans is a major part of resolving them. It’s up to us all to make sure governments live up to their promises.

There’s no time to lose!

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