STILL INFLUENCERS IN SALMON ARM STILL INFLUENCERS IN SALMON ARM STILL INFLUENCERS IN SALMON ARM

IN 2000, PAUL AND JANE said a final good-bye to Whistler and moved to a custom-built home in Salmon Arm. Towards the end of their Whistler era, Paul had spent years trying to build a retirement community, including chairing the Mature Action Committee.

The efforts went nowhere, largely “because it ran contrary to the youth culture Whistler was pushing” he told Pique Newsmagazine in 2001. He called it a loss for the whole community, much like the lack of affordable housing for workers—another case of killing the goose that laid the golden egg, which is how he characterized the Olympics.

“In a normal town losing the old people would be a disaster,” he told Pique “But even Whistler will be unable to retain any continuity. You cannot look forward if you have lost the ability to look back.”

In Salmon Arm, Paul and Jane continued to get involved in what they believed in. They established the Paul and Jane Burrows Endowment with the Shuswap Community Foundation, which will support environmental stewardship in the region for years to come.

Paul was active in Rotary, a founding member of Probus, and sat on the city’s Design Review Panel. He was also a big part of a citizens’ effort that succeeded in getting the Walmart shopping centre reduced in size by two thirds because the site is on an ecologically sensitive area at the mouth of the Salmon Arm River where it empties into Shuswap Lake.

“There was this rebel side to him — he was indefatigable. I mean, he was taking on Walmart,” says Cindy Derkaz, a Salmon Arm realtor who knew the Burrows well.

“Paul was a leader among the good caring citizens of our community — never afraid to speak up on controversial issues.”

That’s a side of Burrows many Whistlerites also well know, as they will some of the highlights that Salmon Arm’s Friday AM editor and publisher, Lorne Reimer, included in a tribute to Paul shortly after his death.

With their shared background, the two were also friends, so no surprise that Burrows’ final words to his fellow newsman were, “Keep the fire burning.”

All Roads Lead To Whistler

Paul landed in Toronto, but the summers were too hot and humid for him. Vancouver’s climate was much more appealing, plus the pub scene offered two things: No. 1, he had a stage where he could entertain everyone with his stories and jokes, his 12-string guitar, and bawdy rugby songs he’d learned in South Africa.

“You couldn’t really sing some of those songs in this day and age,” notes Hugh Smythe, who was on the first pro ski patrol with Paul before going on to become president of Intrawest Mountain Resorts when it owned Whistler Blackcomb.

“I’d never heard a rugby song prior, and I don’t know that I’ve quite heard anything like it since.”

Paul taught himself to play the guitar (and the accordion) and, by all reports, played well. And while someone described his accent as English, Irish, Rhodesian and Canadian all mixed up in a blender, he had a lovely singing voice.

Two stories circulate about how Paul and Jane met: One has it that she and a bunch of her girlfriends saw him performing at the Devonshire Pub in Vancouver. The other says it happened when Jane was teaching at Britannia Beach and saw him at L’Apres, the restaurant at Whistler Mountain. Either way, Jane fell for him hook, line and sinker. They never parted.

Vancouver’s pub scene also connected Paul to a gang of ex-pats who loved skiing Mount Baker. It’s where he often skied, and first connected with a 17-year-old Smythe as well as Al Raine, another leading figure in the world of skiing and Whistler, and current mayor of Sun Peaks.

Next thing he knew, as Paul himself told the tale, he was living at Alta Lake, as Whistler was called then, in a trailer in the parking lot of Garibaldi Lifts Ltd., in charge of the pro ski patrol. Later, he went on to be one of five locals who formed Whistler (Alta Lake) Search and Rescue after an avalanche took the lives of four skiers in 1972.

As important as it was, Paul’s impact on Whistler’s early ski scene was just the beginning. Soon, he’d become more seminal in the valley than he was on the ski slopes.

WHAT WHISTLER ‘COULD AND SHOULD BECOME’

pivotal in Whistler—described Paul as one of the resort’s most prominent early pioneers.

“As soon as Whistler opened, Paul made the move and became one of the most active early residents of the fledgling ski area. Strong-minded and outspoken, he got involved in everything, from the Alta Lake Ratepayers Association to the many conversations taking place about what Whistler could and should become.”

The Whistler Question was crucial to those conversations.

In 1975, the Resort Municipality of Whistler was incorporated. Paul ran for mayor in Whistler’s first-ever election race, and was defeated by Pat Carleton, a coffee salesman, as he always liked to point out. It was something Paul never got over, but it spurred him on.

He’d built his first house in 1969, a tiny, 450-square-foot A-frame on Matterhorn Drive, and that’s where he and Jane started the newspaper. In the basement. The first edition got cranked out, literally, on a Gestetner machine on April 14, 1976—one week after Paul’s 39th birthday. Two sheets of legal-sized paper, mimeographed on both sides, and stapled in one corner.

It set the tone of what was to follow for the next 41 years: A good mix of sober news, sports, and fun community items, and always asking questions and more questions.

Paul often told the story of how he and Jane came up with the name. It was simple. A big question hung over the whole place at the time: Would Whistler make it; would it survive?

It certainly did, and while the Question is Paul’s ultimate contribution, he would also go on to start, shape, and generally impact the community in so many ways; the list of his accomplishments reads like a community service directory of Whistler. (See sidebar.)

He founded Rotary clubs, served for three terms on council and was part of so many Whistler boards, not-for-profits, associations and community-minded efforts—both serious and light-hearted—it’s tough to keep track of them all.

In 2000, after nearly 40 years, he and Jane finally said good-bye to their beloved Whistler and retired to Salmon Arm, where they built their dream home, a far cry from that little A-frame in Alpine Meadows. Then, in 2012, they had one final mountain to climb. Jane was diagnosed with familial Alzheimer’s disease, and Paul became her primary caregiver.

The thing that Jane’s nephew, Peter Elliott, told me last week that he most loved about Paul was the way he looked after Jane in her last years.

“It became his whole life to take care of her,” says Elliott from his home in Kingston, Ont. “He never did anything halfassed, if it was skiing or making wine or putting out a paper, and with Alzheimer’s it was the same thing.

“He became an expert on Alzheimer’s. And he cared.”

A big Burrowesque thank you to everyone who provided background (publishable and not), photos and stories for this article. Whether or not your stories are here, they were invaluable in shaping the narrative. Plus, an extra-special shout-out to Allyn Pringle, Brad Nichols and Jillian Roberts at the Whistler Museum and Archives, who jumped through hoops doing research to set the record straight on Paul and Jane Burrows, and their legacy at Whistler. Go to piquenewsmagazine. com for more stories about them, as well as to hear more tales from Burrows’ time at The Whistler Question ■

‘GONE FISHIN’ ‘GONE FISHIN’ ‘GONE FISHIN’

“I LIVED WITH THEM IN THE SUMMER OF ’76, in the basement of their little A-frame in Alpine Meadows, helping them with the Question and helping Paul fix their rental housing. We bonded, I guess is the word, and that bond stayed with us until last week.

One day we went fishing on Alta Lake. Jane stayed on shore with the dog, and Paul and I went out in his canoe. The water was so clear you could see the fish 20 feet down. I’d never experienced that kind of super-clear water in northern Ontario. And I have a picture of him. We’re standing alongside the canoe after, and I’m pointing frontwards, off to the right in the photo, and Paul’s behind and he’s pointing the opposite way, off to the left. It’s like the front end of the canoe doesn’t know where the back end is going.

I always picture that... Jane taking the photo, and we’re all laughing because we were just two guys out there trying to catch a fish—and we did. We actually caught a trout and ate it that night. It was delicious.”