Pique Newsmagazine 3017

The legend(s) of Air Jordan

Founding Publishers KATHY & BOB BARNETT

Publisher SARAH STROTHER - sstrother@wplpmedia.com

Editor BRADEN DUPUIS - bdupuis@piquenewsmagazine.com

Sales Manager SUSAN HUTCHINSON - shutchinson@wplpmedia.com

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Art Director JON PARRIS - jparris@wplpmedia.com

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Production production@piquenewsmagazine.com

Features Editor BRANDON BARRETT - bbarrett@piquenewsmagazine.com

Arts Editor ALYSSA NOEL - arts@piquenewsmagazine.com

Social Media Editor MEGAN LALONDE - mlalonde@piquenewsmagazine.com

Reporters

BRANDON BARRETT - bbarrett@piquenewsmagazine.com

MEGAN LALONDE - mlalonde@piquenewsmagazine.com

ALYSSA NOEL arts@piquenewsmagazine.com

ROBERT WISLA - rwisla@piquenewsmagazine.com

DAVID SONG - sports@piquenewsmagazine.com

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Contributors G.D. MAXWELL, GLENDA BARTOSH, LESLIE ANTHONY, ANDREW MITCHELL, ALISON TAYLOR, VINCE SHULEY

President, Whistler Publishing LP

SARAH STROTHER - sstrother@wplpmedia.com

08 OPENING REMARKS Editor Braden Dupuis untangles the two-year timeline of a Whistler Freedom of Information request.

10 LETTERS TO THE EDITOR This week’s letter writers denounce the Resort Municipality of Whistler’s new Q&A policy at council meetings, and advocate for a switch to clean energy.

13 PIQUE’N YER INTEREST Columnist Robert Wisla recounts his first experience with a blackdiamond run—and shares an update on his progression this season.

58 MAXED OUT Max is beginning to come to terms with an unfortunate new self-diagnosis: Stockholm Syndrome.

26 THE OUTSIDER After digging in to some backcountry mishaps, Vince Shuley is ready to hand out the first-ever Couloir Cowboy Award.

If you have

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

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36 FORK IN THE ROAD Columnist Glenda Bartosh looks for the sweet spots to change behaviour beyond Earth Day.

41 MUSEUM MUSINGS Whistler can thank the visionary thinking of a few early locals for the ample green space and community parks in the resort.

Timeline of a Whistler Freedom of Information request

HERE AT PIQUE , we occasionally hear from readers who wonder why they don’t see certain stories, or who criticize us for not asking what they deem “the tough questions.”

My response is always some version of the same: Pique pursues difficult stories and asks tough questions of officials every day—we just don’t always get timely or usable answers.

That is to say, news reporting is a constant information juggling act, and you don’t often see all of the ingredients that went in to

BY BRADEN DUPUIS

making the finished product.

Some people seem to believe that hardhitting, investigative journalism is something that can be pulled off in a day, and always produces results.

The reality couldn’t be further from the truth.

Investigative journalism takes time, money, and a dogged persistence. Even with all of that, many journalistic investigations don’t result in anything being published.

It’s a major reason why so many news outlets are sadly moving away from investigative journalism—the potential return on investment is low at the best of times, and often a total crapshoot.

Because in most cases, if officials don’t want you to have certain info, they have many tools at their disposal to keep it from you—or at the very least, delay until it’s no longer relevant.

Take the 2021 ransomware attack that crippled Resort Municipality of Whistler (RMOW) services for weeks. It’s been almost exactly two years since the major cyber security breach, and a related Freedom of Information process has only recently wrapped up.

What do we have to show for the two-yearlong journalistic endeavour? We’ll come back to that. First, a little more on the process itself.

(In the interest of fairness, let’s preface this by acknowledging that the ransomware

attack caught the entire town off guard, and left local officials operating in the dark without a playbook—in situations like that, all bets are off as far as normal operating procedures go.)

On April 28, 2021, the RMOW was made aware of a serious IT security breach, potentially exposing the personal information of thousands.

In the coming days, the criminals responsible for the attack leaked sensitive employee info on the dark web (buried in a folder labelled “trash”) as proof of their exploits.

In May 2021, Pique reported, in general terms, the contents of the trash folder, believing it to be in the public interest, and a clear sign of the extent of the seriousness of the attack that the public deserved to know.

In response, the RMOW launched a lawsuit against the paper, seeking unsuccessfully to restrict what Pique could publish about the ransomware attack. The RMOW argued that it was seeking to protect the privacy of its staff, and alleged in its court filings that it did not have detailed knowledge of the data available on the dark web.

Supreme Court Justice Sandra Wilkinson

Pique submitted a scaled-back version of the FOI request on Sept. 22, 2021, seeking meeting notes, correspondence and court costs.

The revised request was received on Oct. 4, 2021, and on Oct. 21, the RMOW invoiced Pique $217.50 to collect the requested info.

Again believing the info to be in the public interest, Pique applied for the fees to be waived.

On Nov. 5, 2021, the RMOW granted that request.

On Jan. 5, 2022, the RMOW advised Pique it had applied for a 30-day extension with the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner (OIPC), and was given a new deadline of Feb. 2, 2022.

On that day, more than nine months after the initial attack, Pique received its first FOI response on the matter from the RMOW.

It contained pages and pages of black ink, interspersed with meaningless staff exchanges and useless information. Anything remotely revealing or useful for Pique’s readers was banished into the ether using the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act.

In total, the RMOW cited 10 different sections or subsections of the Act in denying

she did not believe the RMOW’s application of the act was correct in all cases.

“However, in my opinion, the areas to which it has been inappropriately applied are relatively small and the information somewhat inconsequential,” Hodge wrote.

Rather than drag the process out further and send it to inquiry, Pique requested the file be closed.

So… what did we learn from this exercise? A few things.

The RMOW spent $28,000 of your money to sue your local newspaper after the municipality compromised your personal information. The RMOW would not disclose this info freely; it had to be uncovered using an FOI.

We also learned that mayor and council were “supportive of the decision” to sue, according to a text from Mayor Jack Crompton to former communications manager Gillian Robinson— but, according to those text exchanges, the court action was filed before council was informed. So this was fundamentally a staff decision—are voters comfortable with that?

And finally, we learned, or maybe just reinforced, that municipal governments and politicians will fill you full of hot air and lovely thoughts about “transparency” and “openness” until the exact second they have something that might even marginally embarrass them.

At that moment, they will put up every roadblock and hurdle in your path to prevent you from getting the info you seek.

If the above explanation felt at all convoluted to you, you are not alone.

declined the RMOW’s request for a temporary order restricting the newsmagazine’s coverage. Referring to the injunctive relief the RMOW requested, Wilkinson said: “I have serious concerns about the precedent that this sets.”

The RMOW walked away from the lawsuit in July 2021.

In August, Pique submitted a broad Freedom of Information request seeking a wide range of correspondence related to the attack and subsequent lawsuit, as well as the total costs of the legal action.

When the RMOW’s cost estimate for collecting the information came in at $3,510,

Pique the info it sought.

On Feb. 10, 2022, Pique requested that the OIPC review the RMOW’s response.

Over the next several months, an investigator with the OIPC reviewed the unredacted records and corresponded with RMOW officials on multiple occasions.

On Feb. 9, 2023, the RMOW released a “reconsidered” version of the requested documents, which unredacted some of the originally withheld information—but still did little to answer Pique’s questions.

In her final assessment, issued Feb. 28, 2023, OIPC investigator Shannon Hodge said

This is to offer but a small insight into what Canadian journalists deal with in navigating government bureaucracy, and not just in Whistler—it is a major problem at every level of government, and encompasses organizations ranging from the RCMP to your local health authority.

Since the ransomware attack on the RMOW, two senior managers connected to the incident have left the municipality. A new council was elected. And the reporter who covered it all (yours truly) is now the editor of the newspaper. Sometimes, if you just delay long enough, the world has no choice but to move on without you. ■

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Limiting public input in Whistler is a ‘blow to democracy’

In a worrying turn of events, the Resort Municipality of Whistler (RMOW) is looking at reducing the time allowed for the public to ask questions on agenda items at future council meetings. Whilst this measure may be understandable if related to questions being asked that have no relevance to the agenda of the day, it could be construed as a blow to the democratic rights of citizens to address hot community issues with their elected representatives.

Case in point being the Northlands development, which, as most Whistlerites know, is the last large parcel of land in Whistler Village ripe for development. The recreational facility currently located on the site, the Whistler Racket Club, was not included in the original plans drawn up by the developer in conjunction with the RMOW. Those members of the community who were concerned attended the council Q&A session to vocalize their objections.

The RMOW listened to these concerns, and, together with the developer, acknowledged that a replacement facility would be factored into future plans. A perfect example of democracy at work and a functioning municipal council.

To reduce or eliminate the ability of citizens to voice their concerns and help shape important legislation is a fundamental blow to democracy, and has to be of concern.

Surely citizens’ rights to probe elected officials’ decision-making is more important than “improving effectiveness and productivity” by gagging them.

Guy Darby // Whistler

[Editor’s note: While the RMOW has said it would support “further investigation of a rightsize destination recreation facility” with tennis and pickleball courts in the next version of the

Northlands designs, those designs are not yet public, and there is no guarantee at this point a recreation facility will be included.]

2023 is the year for clean electricity

I’m a retired horticulturist who worked for the Food and Agriculture Organization (UN) for 10 years.

The latest UN report on climate change states clearly that we must end fossil fuel supremacy while accelerating climate solutions by directing funding to proven, cost-effective, widely available clean energy.

In Canada, it’s time for 100-per-cent clean

electricity to power our homes and lives. Not only is it possible, it’s more affordable and will improve air quality and drastically reduce our carbon emissions.

The upcoming Federal Clean Electricity Regulations and other measures need to enable the massive scaling-up of wind, solar, energy storage and energy efficiency measures.

The B.C. government seems to be more focused on supporting the gas fracking industry and LNG export facilities rather than supporting sustainable power production like solar, wind and geothermal.

This has to change. But change will only happen if it is actively supported by the voting public, and that is when you come in.

Erich Baumann // Whistler n

FOR THE RECORD

In last week’s Pique, an article about the late Garry Watson mentioned the Resort Municipality of Whistler is hosting a reception for Watson at 5:30 on May 2 at the Maury Young Arts Centre. In fact, the reception begins at 4 p.m., while a presentation from Whistler Museum curator Brad Nichols will take place during the regular council meeting scheduled for 5:30 p.m.

In lieu of flowers, Watson’s family asks that donations be made to the Whistler Museum and Archives Society. n

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Allen Weare Puckett (1942-2023)

Allen Puckett, a part-time Whistler resident since 1986 and a full-time resident since 2008, died April 7, 2023, at his home in Whistler He was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s in 2016

B orn in Pasadena, California, Allen was the ldest child of Allen Emerson Puckett and B etty Jane Howlett Puckett Ward He graduated from John Muir High School, the University of California, B erkeley, and Har vard Law School, where he was awarded the Nathan Burkan Prize for his thesis on legal protection for computer software.

After graduating from law school, Allen joined McKinsey & Company’s San Francisco office where he was an associate and partner and did management consulting in the U.S., Europe, Australia and South America. Tom Peters, a former colleague and well known business and management writer, said that “Allen Puckett was the best consultant I ever worked with…[because he] asked the dumbest questions imaginable.” Questions others were afraid to ask.

After twelve years with McKinsey, Allen held senior management positions with several large public companies. One moved him to Seattle, where he met his wife, Laura. After ser ving on the board of a start-up, he co-founded four healthcare companies. He was on the board of various nonprofits including Delta Dental of Washington, Wellspring Family Ser vices, and Sightline Institute In Whistler he ser ved as a Village Host and on the 2012-2013 Learning and Education Task Force

Sur vivors include his wife of 30+ years, Laura; his two sons, Glenn (Tamar) of Seattle, Washington, and Tod (Sarah) of Piedmont, California; his five grandchildren: Z achar y, Talia, Ella, Macy and Sophia; the mother of his two sons, Joan Adrienne Roth; his stepmother, Marilyn Puckett of Pacific Palisades, California; his sisters Nancy (Jeff ) Grant and Susan Prislin of Thousand Oaks, California; his half-siblings Margaret (Russell) Harris of Virginia B each, Virginia, and James Puckett of Pacific Palisades, California; two nieces and two nephews and their children; and several cousins and their families.

Allen had a wonderful breadth and balance of interests, activities and knowledge, ranging from the intellectual, like mathematics and physics, business, and histor y, to music, scuba diving, nonfiction and literature of all kinds, and nature He had a special capacity for joy and a great sense of humor, and his generosity toward his family, friends, and community knew no bounds. His gentle spirit shone through in his intense curiosity about his fellow humans and the world. Even in the late stages of Alzheimer’s, he radiated love and gratitude. His singing voice remained strong up until the end, and music never failed to lift his spirits and the spirits of those around him.

There will be no memorial ser vice. Allen donated his body to the University of British Columbia. The family is profoundly grateful for his caregivers, especially one angel and one music therapist. Wonderful professionals at the Whistler Medical Clinic, including Dr. Brennan McKnight with her constant smiles and encouragement, and at the Whistler Health Care Centre applauded his constant singing (through his mask). The palliative care team based in Squamish, including half a dozen nurses and Dr Brenda Millar, is a great gift to the Sea-to-Sky corridor They allowed us to keep Allen at home and comfortable.

Memorial donations in Allen’s name can be made to Sightline Institute (sightline.org) or Children’s Alliance (childrensalliance.org).

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Why that first black-diamond run hits different

A FEW WEEKS AGO, I finally crossed the threshold from the blue squares into the black diamonds, accomplishing one of the primary goals I set for myself at the beginning of ski season.

I’ll never forget my first-ever attempt at a black-diamond run. It was at my hometown ski resort, Sun Peaks, and I was still in the

BY ROBERT WISLA

rwisla@piquenewsmagazine.com

very early stages of learning to ski. In my late teens, I learned to ski on rentals on the ropetow at the family-run Harper Mountain and beginner runs at Sun Peaks without a lesson or anything. My dad taught me the pizza, and I taught myself the rest. In hindsight, a lesson or two would have been a good move, which I will come back to.

It was my first year of university, and I decided to get into the sport all on my own. I bought a student pass for Sun Peaks. Then an old pair of boots and long, skinny skis that were much too long for me, for about $100 from the local thrift store. Those long skis were somewhat awkward, but they were cheap, and I was a poor university student—so where there’s a will, there’s a way, and after a few weekends, the green runs were becoming a breeze with turns and all.

Near the end of the season, I felt comfortable on most of the easier intermediate runs on the ski hill, and found my favourite spots in the mountains. Until one day a wrong turn sent me down my first black diamond.

I believe I went down the Juniper Ridge run off Sun Peaks’ Burfield Chairlift. I can still remember how it wasn’t that bad at the beginning, but then it quickly got steep, and I began to question all my life choices.

through waist-deep powder, carrying all my gear until I reached a connecting intermediate run. Sweating, wet, and exhausted, I vowed not to do another black diamond—at least until I got better equipment.

Fast forward a few years, and I’m living in Whistler, a few years out of practice from skiing due to moving towns a few times and the pandemic. So with brand-new skis and boots, I felt like this was the year to get better

mountain I had yet to explore up to that point. From there we went to the Flute Bowl, my first experience doing off-piste skiing. I could handle the alpine, the conditions were prime, and there was much room to manoeuvre. Challenging but doable.

Then we went into the trees, where my lack of lessons kicked in. The run required threading through trees on steep terrain, super tight turns, and even a cliff we had to climb down. Yet, with lots of patience and an impromptu lesson on off-piste tree skiing from my friend, we made it to the bottom of Symphony without any crashes. Later that day, I did the Saddle, my first groomed black diamond, and although I was much slower than my friend and it’s one of the more straightforward expert runs on Whistler, there were no crashes!

It didn’t take long until I lost control, crisscrossing my skis and flipping over. My skis detached and attempted to finish the run on their own while I tumbled down in the worst wipeout I’ve ever had. The brakes on one of the skis didn’t kick in, so down it went until some trees caught it further down the run. The other ski was located up the mountain, keeping my poles company.

It was a quiet day on the mountain, and no one was around to help me, so I endeavoured to gather up my equipment, still dazed from the fall. Long story short, I couldn’t get my skis back on, so I shimmied down the mountainside

at skiing. Few places on Earth have as much varied topography to learn the sport. About 20 per cent of Whistler Blackcomb is beginner terrain, 50 per cent intermediate, and 30 per cent expert.

A lot of it came back quickly, like riding a bike, and with modern, wider skis, it was a blast to explore the mountain and get better at skiing. I felt comfortable doing groomed, intermediate runs when my friend from the U.K., who had worked as a ski instructor at Cypress Mountain, came up for a ski day.

Before long, we were heading to the Symphony Amphitheatre, a part of the

I’ve done a few more expert runs since, and I finally see the appeal. There’s such a feeling of accomplishment, and I can understand why some people want to blitz through clifftop couloirs. As my friend said, “You have to get out of your comfort zone, or you’ll never learn.”

Just a couple of weekends ago, I successfully skied Arthur’s Choice on Blackcomb, named after Whistler Councillor Arthur De Jong. While it was awesome, and crossed off one of my primary objectives of the season, it won’t be my last expert run. Next on the list is the famed Spanky’s Ladder (or maybe even Air Jordan). Wish me luck! ■

S N O W M O B I L E T O U R S

S 0 %

I can still remember how it wasn’t that bad at the beginning, but then it quickly got steep, and I began to question all my life choices.

Whistler

Blackcomb staff address guest concerns

PANDEMIC IMPACTS LINGERED FOR GROOMING OPS AND VOLUNTEERS, BUT PATROLLERS SAY INCIDENTS LOOKED SIMILAR TO PRE-COVID SEASONS

BY MEGAN LALONDE

IT WAS A LATE Wednesday morning in mid-January when Paul O’Mara came across an older skier lying in the snow near the top of Emerald Chair.

She’d broken her femur. O’Mara said he stuck around while a doctor and a team of patrollers delivered the “best on-mountain care” he could imagine, but the accident scene sparked concern. The injured skier had ridden off what O’Mara described as “an unmarked five- or six-foot drop.”

The incident prompted the longtime local to write a letter to Pique’s editor about an injury he claims could have been prevented.

In an interview, O’Mara highlighted two main observations from his 50-plus days of skiing this winter that caused him to question safety on the slopes: a “dramatic” reduction in the amount of groomed terrain compared to previous years, he said, and fewer yellowjacketed mountain safety volunteers across the resort. “I’ve noticed that the skiing and the riding is a little more hectic than I remember it,” he added.

O’Mara said he could name “a litany of things the mountain has messed up,” but no others directly related to safety. “It was just this one day where this particular snowform occurred in a really dangerous spot, that wasn’t properly marked and it ended up hurting somebody,” he said.

SAFETY FIRST

Issues like the one O’Mara witnessed are what Whistler Blackcomb’s team strives to prevent. Mistakes happen, vice-president of mountain operations Doug MacFarlane acknowledged,

but he wants to make one point clear: “Everything we do is founded in safety.”

MacFarlane got his start in the ski industry as a patroller in 1988, then working as a safety risk manager before entering mountain ops. “From the very first day we open, there’s hundreds—if not thousands—of decisions we make before we bring people up on the mountain,” he explained.

That includes everything from patrol’s systematic morning trail checks to groomers keeping an eye out for any concerns during their shifts. “Every morning meeting, every conversation our teams have—whether you’re a lift operator, patroller, groomer—all has a safety component embedded in it,” said MacFarlane. “That’s just in our DNA. To say that we don’t would be kind of insulting to all my team that put their lives into this place.”

That said, guests’ observations hold weight for MacFarlane. He encouraged skiers and riders to continue providing constructive criticism he and his team can learn from. “I do look… and pay attention to our guests’ feedback in the surveys,” he said, while guests can also send concerns to WBGuestCommunication@vailresorts.com to be passed along to the appropriate manager.

To O’Mara’s first point, MacFarlane acknowledged the pandemic had a lingering impact on the resort’s grooming operations in terms of both staffing and equipment.

A number of new groomers joined the team this year after some tenured staff moved on, he explained. “To replace a groomer that’s worked for you for 30 years, and think that someone new, just starting out, is going to be able to do that same body of work is just not feasible,” said MacFarlane.

As those newer staff were trained and mentored over the course of the season, grooming resources continued to be carefully orchestrated on a nightly basis, said MacFarlane, based on everything from weather—for example, “Do you want to invest all your hours in a piece of terrain you’re not going to open tomorrow?” he said—to guests’ skiing habits.

“Certainly, that team is growing and learning and going in the right direction,” said MacFarlane.

A DECLINE IN VOLUNTEERISM

As for mountain host and safety volunteers, those programs were combined this year, with every volunteer donning a safety jacket during their shift. MacFarlane acknowledged neither program boasted quite the same volume of participants as they did pre-pandemic, falling in line with a wider trend that has seen volunteerism decline from coast to coast. Senior patrol manager Adam Mercer and patrol manager Seamus Frew echoed that point during a sit-down with Pique on Monday morning, April 24.

“Volunteerism has been consistent over the last couple of years, but pre-pandemic, the numbers were higher,” said Frew. So we have seen a bit of a drop.”

It makes a difference “having that head count to support what we’re trying to do,” Mercer added, but volunteers are just one part of Whistler Blackcomb’s team.

While it’s a program MacFarlane said he’d like to see grow, the resort’s bigger priority this winter was rebuilding its paid employee roster after the blows it suffered during the pandemic.

“We were really hyper-focused on competitive wages, having enough staff to run all our essential services—patrol was definitely one of those—and securing enough of those employees to make us whole,” MacFarlane explained. Those efforts paid off, with patrol reportedly running with a fullystaffed squad over the last few months.

“Certainly we shrunk back as a company, as business fell off with COVID … [the volunteer program] was one of those things that was impacted,” said MacFarlane. Building it back up, “is a process that we’re building through,” he admitted.

But did those hazards O’Mara cited result in more injuries this winter?

ON PATROL

It’s a difficult question to answer definitively, but it doesn’t appear so. As business returned to more normal levels this winter, Mercer and Frew said the volume and seriousness of injuries suffered on-mountain were similar to pre-COVID seasons.

“As long as I’ve been here, it’s just one of these,” said Mercer, motioning a wavering line with his hand. “Some weeks are a little bit more, some months are a little bit more or less.” Generally, in terms of both incident rates and acuity, “it’s about the same,” he said.

Patrol can typically count on the severity of injuries going up when conditions are hard and fast, and light is good, for example, just as they can count on seeing more twisting injuries pop up in heavy snow and low visibility. Anecdotally, however, “I think that there’s probably more people skiing these days that require more assistance from patrol in general,” Mercer observed.

“Which is OK,” he added. “We’re happy to do that—it’s super gratifying.”

That could be due, in part, to everything from an aging contingent of baby-boomer skiers, as Mercer theorized, or a higher volume of newer riders needing patrol’s help getting down a steeper-than-expected slope they mistakenly landed on, or after suffering an injury—say, a sprained wrist—some moreexperienced skiers or snowboarders might feel comfortable riding out with.

Though Vail Resorts declined to share Whistler Blackcomb’s current injury rate, MacFarlane said that data helps inform decision-making throughout the year—for example, whether grooming patterns or run merges need to be re-evaluated.

“I certainly pay attention to where accidents are happening and if there’s lessons to be learned,” he said. “It’s the same in our bike park, in our terrain parks, on our ski runs … Is there a trend? Is there anything you should be looking out for? That’s our job, and how we react to it. If I saw something was built incorrectly, or my team did, they’re empowered to change it.” n

‘Everything we do is founded in safety’:

SAFETY CHECK The resort’s snow safety program and responding to on-mountain incidents take up the bulk of Whistler Ski Patrol’s time on the hill.

FILE PHOTO BY MITCH WINTON / COURTESY OF WB

Whistler wants to get a handle on growth—but are we asking the right questions?

BY BRANDON BARRETT

WHILE THE IDEA and challenges associated with it are by no means new, the term “overtourism” hasn’t been in the lexicon for too long. First coined on Twitter in 2012, it didn’t start to get real traction until 2017, when it began popping up in headlines all over the world.

The term’s popularization wasn’t due to any dramatic spike in visitor numbers— outside of the anomaly of the pandemic, global tourism has been on a massive upswing for decades. What made the news that summer of 2017 was the backlash from local residents in destinations such as Barcelona, Venice and Dubrovnik, which hadn’t happened at such scale before. There were protests in the streets, graffiti imploring tourists to go home, and in some cases, local authorities tried to stem the tide through increased fees, refusing to issue permits for tourism-focused businesses, and even closing entire islands to visitors.

In Whistler, always a forward-looking town, the discussion around overtourism that had largely been taking place for years in conference rooms and at council meetings hit the wider community when Tourism Whistler (TW) in 2019 launched a tourism visioning exercise, coming off surges in visitation.

“We did quite a bit of research and were asking people at the time what ideal tourism looks like in the future, as well as what’s special and unique about Whistler that we want to protect, and engaging residents, visitors, businesses and government officials,” Tourism Whistler president and CEO Barrett Fisher said last month.

With visitation beginning to return to a semblance of normality (although still lagging behind pre-pandemic levels), the conversation around overtourism has picked up steam once more in Whistler, except now armed with the insights gleaned from several years of relative downtime.

At municipal hall, elected officials and Resort Municipality of Whistler (RMOW) staff have named “smart tourism” as one of four core strategic priorities for council’s term, an effort “to help us look at our parks, trails, tourism programming and transportation options to encourage dispersion throughout the resort,” according to a February report. As part of the work to define what a “smart tourism economy” could look like for Whistler, the RMOW wants to determine what additional metrics it needs to track its progress towards becoming “a regenerative destination.”

“We are working hard now to understand changing trends in population, demographics and visitation to ensure that our services and amenities support residents and visitors,” said Mayor Jack Crompton. “I point to the Balance Model as one of the tools that will be really important to ensuring we have good information to navigate by. GHGs, number

of cars, congestion on the highway, parking utilization, resident satisfaction, access to nature, nature corridors, waste, visitation; we have a huge number of metrics and we are using those to make informed decisions about how we are managing the capacity challenges we are facing.”

A DEEPER UNDERSTANDING OF WHISTLER’S NATURAL ASSETS

At least some in the community, however, wonder whether the RMOW is asking the right questions when it comes to managing growth. In a recent letter to council over the RMOW’s divisive plans to upgrade Rainbow Park and its associated months-long closure, Rhonda Millikin, award-winning ecologist, adjunct professor and 2022 council hopeful, argued that the municipality needs to better understand the carrying capacity of Whistler’s natural assets before it makes major decisions on things like parks infrastructure.

“I’m just really concerned that this is setting a precedent,” Millikin told Pique in a follow-up interview. “It’s one of our parks where we’re seeing huge numbers of tourists coming, which is great. But we haven’t asked the question whether that trend is sustainable long-term for our natural assets.

“I don’t think [the RMOW] fully understands what our natural assets can handle.”

What we do know, at least in terms of usage, is that demand for Whistler’s parks exploded in the pandemic, with visitation to the resort’s four destination parks up 35 per cent in 2022 compared to the previous

FOR YEARS, THE RESORT HAS FOCUSED ON VISITOR DISPERSAL OVER VISITOR LIMITS; SOME ARGUE THAT NEEDS TO CHANGE

RUNAWAY RAMBLA In an effort to improve locals’ experience, in 2015, Barcelona limited the number of visitors to La Rambla, pictured, to 800 per day.

PHOTO BY ALEXANDER SPATARI / GETTY IMAGES

summer, which was itself 77-per-cent higher than the same period in 2019.

Less is known about the natural carrying capacity of Whistler’s parks, rivers, lakes, and other ecologically sensitive areas, something Claire Ruddy, executive director of the Association of Whistler Area Residents for the Environment (AWARE), has been pushing the municipality on for years.

“When it comes to human-centric elements of our community, we have a lot of really good data and we use that to make informed decisions,” she said in a 2021 interview. “But when it comes to the natural areas, the ecosystems and the species of the valley, there hasn’t been an investment in mapping out those values and understanding them in a really deep way.”

While pointing to the troves of data the RMOW already relies on to make informed decisions, Crompton acknowledged there is always room for better datasets.

“This town has been keeping metrics on what the impact of our tourism economy is on the people and the place for a very long time. Those metrics are critical to us doing this work well,” he said. “We certainly can add new metrics that will give us different insights, but we’re not without a large number of metrics that give us very good information.”

Millikin believes the Rainbow Park project to be indicative of a deeper issue at the RMOW: its apparent tendency to operate in so-called “siloes,” rather than taking a more holistic approach to its biggest challenges.

“We’re still siloing our solutions,” she said. “There could be, with user fees, a way to solve multiple issues: climate change, community engagement, natural asset protection. So, I think there might be a rush to solve the problem with an immediate low-hanging fruit instead of considering a bigger solution. I think that’s a major problem.”

By establishing a user-fee model at busy parks and natural areas that would exempt local residents, Millikin believes the RMOW could ensure their long-term sustainability while also driving funds to support the research and preservation of Whistler’s cherished natural spaces.

“The money needs to go back to natural assets and not to operational funds,” she said.

VISITOR DISPERSAL VERSUS VISITOR LIMITS

Another key tenet of the RMOW’s smart tourism priority is looking to what other global destinations have done to effectively manage visitor volumes. Several destinations went so far as to implement visitor limits, or even outright bans, unwilling to wade back into a rushing tourism stream after COVID slowed international visitation to a trickle.

Machu Picchu, considered a global poster child for overtourism, was closed in March 2020 for several months. Upon reopening, Peruvian authorities reduced the number of daily visitors to the historic site from 4,000 to 2,224, issued in specific time blocks to avoid crowding.

At Montana’s Glacier National Park, which saw more annual visitors than Whistler

did pre-COVID, it’s not unusual for parking lots to be full by sunrise and some trails to see upwards of 1,000 hikers a day. Like so many green spaces across North America, the park experienced a spike in visitors during the pandemic, prompting officials to institute an online reservation system for its scenic Goingto-the-Sun Road corridor during peak season.

In 2015, Barcelona, in many ways ahead of the curve on managing overtourism, introduced a cap on the number of tourists visiting the Catalan capital, which then hovered around 7.5 million annually. The mayor of the day also issued a temporary freeze on new developments, and imposed visitor camps on groups visiting iconic sites. At La Boqueria market and La Rambla, a busy central street, visitor groups were limited to no more than 15 people, and Gaudi’s Park Güell, formerly free, began charging admission and limiting visitors to 800 a day.

Barcelona is a somewhat-unique example in that, rather than to solely preserve sensitive natural habitat or a delicate historic site, the pushback against overtourism was largely to do with locals’ quality of life, which they had seen deteriorate for years as visitation to the city of more than 1.6 million ballooned. So, is Whistler likely to follow in the footsteps of other tourism hotspots that have imposed caps on visitation?

“I don’t expect we’re going to start charging people to enter Rainbow Park or Lakeside Park. There are user fees for parking and access to Whistler Blackcomb, but at this point, we don’t have plans to charge for park use,” said Crompton, later pointing to the locals areas that

have already been set aside for protection.

“We have intact wetlands that are left. We have nature corridors that we’ve made sure remain intact. The Emerald Forest is a great example of a piece of our community that we felt strongly needed to be left undeveloped,” he added. “We continue to make decisions ensuring that this place remains healthy and that nature is protected. It’s not something you do once and then you’re done.”

Tourism Whistler has made significant headway in its push to disperse visitation, both to off-peak seasons and to off-thebeaten-path locations. But Fisher was clear implementing a visitor cap is not as simple as it appears on its face.

“We clearly need to do what’s right for the environment, our natural carrying capacity, what’s right for the community, and for our visitors—but it’s complex. You can take actions that could impact an outcome, but one also needs to think about the unintended consequence of that action. It might solve one issue and then create another,” she said. “For example, we have longtime loyal Vancouver and Lower Mainland visitors who we appreciate and want to support. We don’t want to turn visitors away, per se, but there are systems in place at other destinations and some parks, such as reservation systems, because at a certain point, if too many people come on a particular day, it undermines the experience for everyone, not only for the community, but for the visitor as well. These are tough topics that require some really collaborative, focused and comprehensive analysis and discussion.” n

Vail Resorts names new VP and Chief Operating Officer for Whistler Blackcomb

FORMER GM OF PERISHER, AUSTRALIAN BELINDA TREMBATH BRINGS

MORE THAN 30 YEARS OF EXPERIENCE IN THE SKI INDUSTRY TO THE ROLE

BY BRANDON BARRETT

WHISTLER BLACKCOMB has a new head honcho.

On Thursday, April 20, Vail Resorts named Australian Belinda Trembath as Whistler Blackcomb’s (WB) newest vice president and chief operating officer, effective May 15.

Trembath brings more than 30 years of ski industry and mountain operations experience to the role. Chair of the Australian Ski Areas Association since 2018, Trembath began skiing at the age of six. She began her career as a ski instructor, and in 2006, she was appointed vice president and general manager of Australia’s Mount Hotham. In 2019, she also began providing oversight for Falls Creek, the largest skiable area in the Australian state of Victoria. Then, in 2022, she was named to the position she currently holds: vice president and general manager of Perisher, the largest alpine resort in the southern hemisphere, which was acquired by Vail Resorts in 2015.

In a release, Vail Resorts said Trembath “played a key leadership role” in helping Perisher, Falls Creek, and Mount Hotham navigate the pandemic and international border closures. She has also been a proactive member on various tourism and government advisory boards throughout her career, the company said.

“Belinda is dedicated to ensuring the preservation of unique mountain cultures alongside a commitment to excellence across the employee, guest, and community experience,” said Doug Pierini, senior vice president and chief operating officer of Vail Resorts’ west region, as well as interim chief operating officer at WB, in the release. “This is what makes her an exceptional mountain operator. I can’t imagine a better leader to step into the COO role at Whistler Blackcomb to

help guide the next chapter of such an iconic, influential, world-class resort.”

Trembath takes over the top position at WB from Geoff Buchheister, who announced his departure in February after close to four years in the COO chair.

“I am honoured and thrilled to be the COO of Whistler Blackcomb,” said Trembath in the release. “It is not lost on me how profound this opportunity is, and I look forward to being an advocate for our resort and its passionate employees, our guests, and the iconic Whistler community. Canada has always held a special place in my heart—early on in my career, I spent a season in B.C. at Big White. A spark ignited within me, and I always hoped to find my way back. It is a bit surreal that this dream is now a reality. My husband and children also feel a connection to the beauty of B.C., and they are looking forward to this new adventure.”

Vail Resorts commended Trembath’s “strength of leadership” for how she implemented strategic growth programs and leading the three Australian resorts through multiple technology advancements, “allowing them to lead through innovation and outsidethe-box thinking to enhance the employee and guest experience,” the release continued.

Trembath will be tasked with leading the resort, which includes mountain and base area operations, food and beverage, snow and bike school, and “other important areas of business,” the company said.

Trembath takes over at a time when Vail Resorts has come under fire over how it has handled operations at WB. Most recently, the Colorado-based company issued an apology following a rocky start to the spring ski season after complaints mounted that Vail hadn’t properly communicated its decision to have only the Excalibur Gondola running for the remainder of the season—except for the Blackcomb Gondola on weekends—leading to lengthy queues of frustrated skiers and riders in the village earlier this month. n

HEAD HONCHO Whistler Blackcomb’s new vice president and Chief Operating Officer, Belinda Trembath, who comes to Whistler after leading Perisher in Australia, the largest alpine resort in the southern hemisphere.

PHOTO SUBMITTED

Old, emaciated bear shot and killed by COS near Whistler day lots

CONSERVATION OFFICERS DECIDED TO KILL THE ELDERLY BEAR APRIL 22 AFTER IT HAD SHOWN INCREASINGLY AGGRESSIVE BEHAVIOUR

BY BRANDON BARRETT

AN OLD, EMACIATED BEAR was shot and killed near the Whistler day lots this weekend, as a group of onlookers watched on, after it had reportedly shown increasingly aggressive behaviour in recent weeks, said the Conservation Officer Service (COS).

On Saturday, April 22, COS received two separate reports (in the span of about 30 minutes) of a black bear swatting and charging people in Whistler Village, said Sgt. Simon Gravel.

Those followed a number of similar reports over the past two weeks, as the conservation officers monitored the bear, which Gravel said had been “very active” around the village and surrounding area in that time.

“It was very lethargic, sleeping close to the trail, getting into garbage, entering an enclosed space in an underground parking lot,” he added. “We monitored and tried to shepherd it away from the village area a few times, but the bear was lethargic, not moving very quickly and appeared to be in very poor condition, but still mobile.”

Showing clear signs of distress, severely underweight and missing teeth, Gravel said that COs made the decision to shoot and kill the bear on Saturday, around 4 p.m., after it

had charged an officer trying to assess the animal’s condition as it was laying down in a wooded area on the edge of Day Lot 3.

“After further assessment, the bear also charged at the officer, with a garbage bag hanging from its rear,” he said. “Just by the weight and condition of the bear, it was very obvious it was in distress.”

A PUBLIC KILLING

Banff native Angelina Kellas was one of about 30 estimated people who she said witnessed the bear’s killing on Saturday afternoon. An ecological integrity monitor in the summer, and daughter of a 40-year wildlife management officer, Kellas said she was taken aback by the sudden and public nature of the shooting.

“It was crazy. Just from growing up in Banff, I’ve never heard of wildlife being managed that way,” she said. “It depends on the situation, but obviously I don’t have the background context of what was happening with this bear. Maybe the bear was an immediate threat to the public and that’s why they had to do it.”

Initially, Kellas said the scene seemed “crazy and chaotic” as COs and attending RCMP officers cordoned members of the public from a pathway close to where the bear was located.

“The lady pushing us back the other way said it was for our safety; she didn’t tell us

why or what was happening. We walked by another police officer on the path who didn’t say anything either,” she said.

Even still, Kellas said most of the group had a full view, moments later, when the bear was abruptly shot several times point-blank with a handgun.

“All of us were shocked and it was kind of traumatic, I feel like,” she recalled. “My one friend heard the gunshots and went down on the ground because she didn’t know where it was coming from.”

Gravel stressed that the use of a firearm so close to onlookers and the village was a “last resort” on the part of COs.

“We don’t like using a firearm in a busy area, but it’s definitely a last resort, and when we do have to do that, every element of safety is considered. Our officers are well trained to ensure the discharge of a firearm will cause zero risk,” he explained. “That sometimes involves crowd control. If we have the option to capture a bear and euthanize it in a different location, we would do it, but it’s also risky in some situations.”

Tranquilizing or “darting” a bear doesn’t necessarily mean the animal will fall asleep immediately, “so there’s some time delay there, and depending on the assessment, that delay could allow the bear to move to a different area, a public area, or cause traffic issues,” added Gravel. “In this case, it was

judged to be safe to do so. It was the most humane thing to do, and efforts were made to ensure people were not in proximity.”

Tagged in 2008 on Whistler Mountain for a research project, the bear that was killed had generated no reports of conflict over the years until recent weeks, according to the COS.

“So, it is possible to have bears living in Whistler, and having wildlife without conflict with humans,” said Gravel. “This makes me somehow happy and optimistic about our bears in Whistler.

“If the bear hadn’t come down and sought unnatural food from the village, it would have probably died in the wild without us knowing.”

At the time of its death, the bear was a fraction of the 245 pounds it weighed when captured in 2008, coming in at an estimated 60 pounds, said Gravel, who worried about the public perception Saturday’s shooting could create in a community that has shown reluctance historically to call problem bears in over fear it will lead to the COS killing the animal.

“We’re not going to extend the life of a dying bear in cases like this. The only exception would be in the case of bear cubs, but suffering animals like this are euthanized,” he said. “Maybe we cannot please everyone with this management decision, but that’s how it is determined by a biologist and that’s where the province stands right now.”  n

RMOW lays out potential Meadow Park redesign

MAJOR FACE-LIFT AIMS TO ALLEVIATE MUNICIPAL PARK CONGESTION AND BRING INFRASTRUCTURE UP TO CODE

BY ROBERT WISLA

IN AN ATTEMPT to alleviate municipal park congestion and bring infrastructure up to code, the Resort Municipality of Whistler (RMOW) is planning to give Meadow Park a major face-lift that will see the park re-designed from top to bottom.

The RMOW’s parks planning department gave an update on the current state of the planned upgrades at the April 18 Committee of the Whole meeting. The presentation laid out the park’s preliminary redesign and project timeline, as well as the public feedback gathered so far.

“Meadow Park was constructed almost 40 years ago, which is starting to sound like a long time ago. It does serve a multitude of purposes, not only as a destination for visitors but as an important community and neighbourhood amenity,” RMOW parks planner Annie Oja said in her presentation. “It requires investment to address failing infrastructure, including the spray park, [which] no longer meets Vancouver Coastal Health standards; to respond to everincreasing resident and visitor demands; to provide long-term climate resilience; and to meet future programming opportunities.”

The redesign aims to spread out visitors from other parks, such as Whistler’s popular lakeside Rainbow Park, to other, quieter areas in an attempt to ease the growing pressure on Whistler’s parks. Whistler’s four destination parks saw approximately 176,000 visits in 2021, a 35-per-cent increase from summer 2020, and up 77 per cent from the same period in 2019.

Staff noted that Meadow Park had not received any significant improvements for more than 20 years. The last considerable investment was in 2004, when the RMOW upgraded the playground, and before that, in 1999, when the washroom facilities were upgraded.

The RMOW incorporated feedback from its 2019 Outside Voices engagement process, and a more recent round of public engagement held at the end of January, into the preliminary design. According to the RMOW, community input showed a desire from residents for a greater variety of uses in the park, as well as maintaining it as a locally focused park rather than for destination tourists.

In the preliminary plan, the riverfront along the increasingly popular River of Golden Dreams would be expanded, with the Valley Trail moved slightly north to open more picnic space along the riverbank. The spray park would be replaced, and a large, fenced-in, off-leash dog area created, with access down to the river.

A walking trail would encircle the outside of the park with a new accessible outdoor fitness area. Two smaller-sized baseball diamonds currently take up most of the park’s space. The upgrade would eliminate the east baseball diamond to accommodate the

additional off-leash dog and play area.

“In regards to the baseball diamonds, we do know that they are undersized and they can only be used for little league, which is the Whistler Minor Baseball League, and they’re also slightly underutilized, in that ball season runs from May to June, which is a total of six weeks in operation,” Oja said.

“So based on this, we have gone from two diamonds to one in order to accommodate these programming objectives.”

Sarah Smith, league convenor of the Whistler Slo-Pitch Association, said that losing the baseball diamond would not be ideal for the league, and hopes the RMOW builds another baseball diamond in a different park.

“For Whistler Slo Pitch, losing that diamond is really unfortunate, as it was good for a backup and for teams to practise at. We hope that there are plans to build another diamond or two in the near future,” Smith said in an email. “The demand for [base]ball is too high in Whistler to only have three good diamonds for kids and adults. Spruce Grove is a fabulous facility, and we’re adding a batting cage this year, so I’d love to see even more expansion there.”

In addition to altering the park’s design, the upgrades will also change the water system to reduce the amount of water used. Meadow Park currently uses 15.3 million litres of water annually: 11 million for irrigation and 4.3 million for the splash park. The upgrade will change the irrigation system to a non-potable water source, reducing stress on Whistler’s drinking water system.

The current estimated cost for the upgrade project is $3.5 million, with the entirety of the project covered by provincial Resort Municipality Initiative funds. So far, the RMOW has spent $120,000 on design fees and the installation of a test well. The municipality has budgeted $352,000 in 2023 for the continued work.

The public will still be able to have their input on the design at consultation sessions planned in May and June, with staff aiming to bring a final plan before Whistler council in July. Following the plan’s approval, the RMOW aims to tender the contract this fall, with construction beginning in the spring of 2024, and finishing by the end of fall 2024.

The proposed redesign comes on the heels of the RMOW’s controversial plans to upgrade Rainbow Park, which initially drew swift criticism from the public, primarily due to the lack of direct community consultation; a Valley Trail connection that was slated to run parallel to the beachfront; and the monthslong closure of the park that is required to complete the work.

Since receiving the community’s input— girded by an online petition, “Please Don’t Pave Rainbow Park!” that has garnered more than 3,000 signatures—the RMOW altered its draft plans to remove the Valley Trail relocation and reduce the paved area for food trucks by half. n

Whistler luger alleges coach abuse, negligence led to ‘catastrophic’ 2019 injury

GARRETT REID’S LAWSUIT NAMES LUGE COACH MATT MCMURRAY, WHISTLER SPORT LEGACIES, LUGE CANADA AND BC LUGE ASSOCIATION

BY BRANDON BARRETT

A LOCAL LUGE RACER alleges his “catastrophic” 2019 injury at the Whistler Sliding Centre was the result of negligence on the part of his coach, who he claims demonstrated a pattern of systemic abuse, harassment and bullying in the lead-up to the crash, according to a civil suit filed last week in B.C.’s Supreme Court.

In the suit, Whistler luger Garrett Reid alleged that coach Matthew McMurray subjected him to abuse and neglect while the 19-year-old was a member of the Canadian National NextGen team from 2018 to 2019, culminating in a crash on Nov. 16, 2019 that reportedly led to a litany of injuries.

“McMurray’s conduct leading up to the Injury was an abuse of power and exploitation of the trust and psychological intimacy inherent to the relationship between a coach and a young athlete, particularly one intent on succeeding in a highly competitive sporting endeavour,” the legal filing read.

The Whistler 2010 Sport Legacies Society (WSLS), Luge Canada, and the B.C. Luge Association are named alongside McMurray

as defendants in the suit. Kenneth Reid, appointed co-committee of Garrett’s person and estate, is listed as a plaintiff as well.

AUSTRIA CRASH

According to the suit, prior to the November 2019 injury, the teenaged Reid was involved in a separate crash in February 2019 while training for the upcoming Junior World Luge Championship in Austria. The crash purportedly resulted in Reid’s sled flipping up and impacting the right side of his helmet, equipment that had been issued by Luge Canada. Following that crash, Reid allegedly requested medical attention from McMurray, “who refused and told Garrett to stop asking,” the suit claimed.

Months later, medical imaging purportedly revealed that Garrett had healed fractures on the right side of his face, injuries that were allegedly sustained in the Austria crash. “McMurray and Luge Canada failed to provide Garrett with medical treatment following the Austria Crash,” the filing went on. “As a result, Garrett continued to train and race with undiagnosed and untreated facial fractures. Garrett’s performance results were negatively impacted.”

Reid claimed that, partly as a result of his diminished performance results, McMurray “heightened his verbal and psychological abuse,” according to the civil suit. “Garrett was subjected to daily bullying, humiliation, hazing, threats, and intimidation by McMurray,” it alleged.

The filing goes on to say that neither McMurray nor Luge Canada “took steps to replace the Helmet following the Austria Crash and Garrett was required to continue wearing the Helmet for the duration of the 2019 Championship and for the season thereafter.”

Despite multiple requests from Reid and his parents to replace the helmet, according to the court documents, neither Luge Canada nor McMurray issued him a new helmet after the accident in Austria.

WHISTLER INJURY

At the beginning of the 2019-20 luge season, Reid was back at the Whistler Sliding Centre, training under the supervision of McMurray. In the week leading up to the November injury, Reid claimed that McMurray directed him to “begin adding strips of sand paper, one at a time, to his sled,” a training technique used to “reduce control of the sled and, thereby result

in faster run times,” the filing stated.

Reid said he had never used the training technique before. Despite that, he claimed McMurray maintained his direction that Reid add one strip of sand paper at a time to his sled. Then, after completing a run with three strips of sand paper on his sled, Reid said he felt unsafe on the track and expressed his concerns to his coach, requesting to return to two strips of sand paper.

“As a result, McMurray subjected Garrett to verbal, psychological, and physical abuse regarding Garrett’s request to reduce the sand paper strips, and he continued to pressure Garrett into increasing the number of sand paper strips. McMurray told Garrett he needed to use three strips,” the suit alleged.

On the day of the accident, Nov. 16, Reid said he was participating in his first training session of the day, which was sponsored by the WSLS, when McMurray placed Reid at the men’s start, the highest luge start on the track. According to the filing, the usual practice and protocol is that athletes start at a lower start on the track “until they are accustomed to a new set-up,” as the lower starts result in reduced speeds.

Reid alleged that, as he rounded corner 15, he struggled to control his sled, which was

travelling at a “very high rate of speed.” The injury reportedly occurred as Reid was exiting corner 16, nicknamed “Thunderbird Corner” and the fastest section of the track. The right side of Reid’s helmet purportedly contacted the short wall at a high rate of speed. It was the same point of impact on the helmet as from the Austria crash months earlier, the suit said.

Following the injury, Reid said that, as a carded athlete, he continued to receive Athlete Assistance Payments (AAP), which “entitled him to receive direct financial benefits.” In the subsequent carding cycle, Reid said he received an AAP injury card, which entitled him to continue receiving benefits while not competing.

In the 2021 carding cycle, however, Reid claimed that Luge Canada “failed to submit a supported nomination for Garrett’s AAP injury card, causing Garrett to be removed from the program,” the suit read.

As the designated national sport organization for luge, the suit said that Luge Canada was responsible for submitting a complete and detailed package to Sport Canada for Reid to renew his AAP injury card for the next cycle. Despite this, and Reid’s claims that Luge Canada was “aware of Garrett’s commitment to returning to luge and of Garrett’s extensive rehabilitation efforts to recover from his injuries,” the organization “unilaterally chose to remove Garrett from the NextGen Team, provided him no financial support or assistance, and caused his removal from AAP, contrary to Garrett’s contract with Luge Canada,” the suit alleged.

In a statement this week, Luge Canada said, “The health and safety of all of our athletes is Luge Canada’s first priority. Garrett suffered an unfortunate accident in 2019 which has impacted us all in the luge community very profoundly.”

The organization said it would reserve further comment with the matter before the courts.

SEEKING DAMAGES

Reid is seeking general, special, aggravated, and punitive damages, as well as in-trust damages for care provided by family members. He is seeking

the costs of the legal action, pasts and future health-care costs, as well as such further and other relief deemed just by the court.

“The selfish, high-handed, and callous conduct of McMurray warrants condemnation of the court through awards of aggravated and punitive damages,” according to the filing.

The suit argued that Luge Canada is both vicariously and directly liable for Reid’s injury and alleged treatment by McMurray, and owed a duty of care to safeguard his welfare, safety and well-being.

“Luge Canada knew or ought to have known of McMurray’s conduct towards Garrett but failed to take any or any reasonable steps to investigate McMurray’s conduct, remove McMurray from his coaching position, report McMurray to law enforcement, or revoke McMurray’s coaching license,” the court documents read.

BC Luge also owed Reid a duty of care, the suit said, and knew that Reid was “the subject of McMurray’s abuse and dangerous coaching techniques, yet took no interventional steps to protect Garrett from the risk of harm,” the suit alleged.

The filing alleged negligence on the part of BC Luge for failing to conduct any, or any adequate investigation into the Austria crash and/or the November 2019 injury, as well as for failing to report McMurray’s conduct.

The WSLS, meanwhile, also breached its duty of care, Reid argued. The suit claimed the Whistler organization was negligent for failing to take any, or any reasonable care, to prevent injury or damage to Reid from the unusual danger of the local sliding track; by exposing him to an “unreasonable” risk of harm; and for failing to take reasonable care that Reid would be safe with respect to the conduct of third parties, including McMurray, while on the track.

None of the above claims have been proven in court.

If residing in Canada, the defendants have 21 days from the date they were served the notice of civil claim to respond.

Representatives for Reid and the WSLS declined to comment for the time being, with the matter still before the courts.  Pique  was unable to reach McMurray or the BC Luge Association by press time. Check back with  Pique for more on this story as it develops. n

The benefits with having Hilton Whistler as your tenants are that you can rely on your home being properly cared for We have a designated captain for each house, we conduct regular cleaning and maintenance inspections, and strive to create a stress-free and long-term relationship with owners

INTERESTED TO

LUGE LAWSUIT In a civil suit in B.C. Supreme Court, Whistler luger Garrett Reid is alleging that his “catastrophic” 2019 injury at the Whistler Sliding Centre was the result of neglect and abuse on the part of his coach.

FILE PHOTO BY YORK M. CHAN / LUGE CANADA

The Whistler fitness program giving cancer patients a new lease on life

CANACTIVE IS THE BRAINCHILD OF PERSONAL TRAINER AND CANCER EXERCISE SPECIALIST, STEPHEN LIST

BY BRANDON BARRETT

A CANCER DIAGNOSIS comes with obvious physical health impacts. But, quite often, it’s also the invisible effects on one’s mental and emotional well-being that can suck patients into a vortex of hopelessness and inactivity.

“We know that rates of anxiety and depression can go up following a cancer diagnosis, and exercise is one aspect of that treatment path that you have more control over,” explained Stephen List, personal trainer at Whistler’s Meadow Park Sports Centre (MPSC). “They have a little bit more ownership over their situation because they can do this exercise.”

List would know. A qualified cancer exercise specialist with a master’s in health and exercise science, List is the lead instructor for CanActive, a local fitness program at the MPSC designed for people living with cancer, whether they are actively in treatment or not.

Patricia Stoop first captured the hearts of Whistlerites a decade ago when the community rallied to raise the necessary funds to cover a pricey new cancer drug called Perjeta. The drug eventually came with debilitating side effects, forcing Stoop to get around in a wheelchair and eat from a blender. (She has since gone off the drug, and stopped

cancer treatment entirely last September when it began to make her ill again. She began CanActive the following month.)

Today, Stoop is bench-pressing, deadlifting and hiking on a regular basis, mostly thanks to List and his fitness program.

“What happened in the summer of last

to her cardio and strength capabilities—not to mention her own personal goals—and has been developed in conjunction with her physician and other medical professionals.

“He’s very client-centred. One of my goals was to put my paddleboard on top of the car, and he came up with the exercises to do

a week, along with his other daily activities. Some of the major side effects of his treatment are chronic fatigue and mental fog, as well as the long-term loss of both muscle mass and bone density.

“You wake up in the morning and you go, ‘Crap, this feels terrible,’ but the endorphins created by the program really beat it back so that I have, more or less, a normal life,” Woods said. “Without a doubt, it’s a huge benefit to me physically, and then following up from that, mentally as well. I feel more alert. It’s a great benefit. It’s huge.”

List is clear his program is not a cure, but a complement to a patient’s existing treatment plan.

“It’s really positive for people to have this opportunity that they know is beneficial, and when done correctly, can have this really positive effect,” he said. ”It might improve the quality of their life, and to an extent, may improve the duration of their life.”

year, after working so hard to get over the adverse effects of my treatment, I started to get those same symptoms from before again,” she said. “I told myself there was no way I was going through this again, and I need to prevent it from happening.”

Stoop learned of CanActive through a friend and fellow cancer patient, and now hits the gym four times a week. Like List’s other clients, Stoop’s regimen has been specifically tailored

that. Or I want to be able to go hiking, then he’ll say we’re going to work on this quad or glute exercise,” said Stoop, who recently went skiing for the first time in 12 years. “It’s a meaningful task to do and gives me a sense of purpose in that I can maybe do things I used to not be able to.”

Nigel Woods, who in 2018 was diagnosed with prostate cancer, has worked with List for more than a year, working out three times

To others in the Sea to Sky living with cancer who might be considering the program, Woods was adamant: now’s the time.

“They shouldn’t wait til tomorrow,” he said. “They should just get at it, because it will be a game-changer.”

To inquire about the CanActive program, email List at slist@whistler.ca.

April is Cancer Awareness Month in Canada. Learn more at bccancerfoundation.com. n

“We know that rates of anxiety and depression can go up following a cancer diagnosis, and exercise is one aspect of that treatment path that you have more control over.” - STEPHEN LIST

WORTH’s Empower Her event aims to inspire women of Whistler’s recreation, tourism and hospitality industries

NON-PROFIT TO HOST PANEL DISCUSSION AND NETWORKING EVENING AT THE HILTON ON THURSDAY, MAY 4

BY MEGAN LALONDE

WHEN JOANNA JAGGER launched the first-ever Empower Her event in Vancouver a few years ago, word quickly spread up the Sea to Sky highway.

Theresa Lambert, then-general manager of the Nita Lake Lodge, gave Jagger a ring. “She said, ‘Hey, why are we only doing this event in Vancouver? We want it up in Whistler,’” explained Clea Cosmann, director of events at WORTH (Women of Recreation, Tourism & Hospitality).

That phone call “signified that there was a need for this sort of community building around the province,” said Cosmann. It also led to the second-ever Empower Her event, which drew more than 120 attendees to the Nita Lake Lodge in the fall of 2018, and lit the fuse that turned those grassroots, one-off events into WORTH. The volunteer-run nonprofit was incorporated in 2018, becoming the sole society in B.C. focused on helping women in the recreation, tourism and hospitality industries advance their careers.

WORTH aspires “to develop a community of confident women who are able to accelerate into leadership roles in these industries,” said

Cosmann. “That’s based on challenges we see across the board—we’ve just gone through this pandemic, and obviously things like the labour shortage is such a concern that we’re still dealing with, especially in communities like Whistler. The reason why we do what we do is to invigorate those who are still in the hospitality industry, and also making sure that we’re retaining women.”

WORTH finally makes its return to Whistler next week when its Empower Her event kicks off at the Hilton Resort and Spa on Thursday evening, May 4. It’s the fourth and final event in a sold-out series that also stopped in Kelowna, Victoria and Vancouver this year.

The event will begin with a networking mingle at 5:30 p.m., before the hour-long panel discussion gets underway at 6:30.

The four-woman panel will include locals Jackie Dickinson, Whistler Community Services Society executive director, and Priyanka Lewis, CEO of Brickworks, alongside profitable hospitality strategist Caroline Bagnall and Veronica Smith, senior IT director of hospitality and retail for Vail Resorts. Liza Walli, general manager at the Brew Creek Centre, will host the discussion.

Though women make up the majority of B.C.’s workforce in all three of these

industries, “as you get higher up into managerial positions, that percentage gets less and less,” said Cosmann. “Less than 20 per cent are in general management roles and less than eight per cent are in board positions. I want the women who attend these events to walk away inspired by the panellists that they listen to and that are paving the way

OWN A PIECE OF WHISTLER HISTORY!

and removing barriers for women that want to succeed in these industries, and to walk away having it feel like a celebration of our industries and feeling inspired.”

After a 30-minute Q&A session with panellists, attendees can network for another hour before making their way to Stonesedge for an after party at 9 p.m.

That night cap is a first for WORTH, said Cosmann, stemming from a partnership it has inked with Gibbons for the upcoming event.

“We know in Whistler people like to have a good time,” said Cosmann. But for her, “the networking part of it is so important.” That’s the portion of the evening where women who are still up-and-coming in their industries can meet major players in their field, she said. “There’s such high-calibre people in the room that it can be completely door-opening for them,” Cosmann added.

An online silent auction in conjunction with the event will also raise funds for WORTH, with bidding now open to both attendees and the general public. In addition to hosting events, WORTH provides leadership resources like skills training and a mentorship program.

General admission tickets for Thursday evening’s event are $50, or $40 for students. Cosmann said the venue’s capacity could accommodate up to 200 people, but expects to see the crowd fall somewhere within the 100-to-150 range. Tickets are available for purchase at worthassociation.com/empowerher-whistler-2023. Organizers are offering a discount for Pique readers: use the code Pique25 for 25-per-cent off ticket costs. n

“I want the women who attend these events to walk away inspired...”

- CLEA COSMANN

FITZ & RED CHAIRS

SLRD approves major Lil’wat Nation housing development

THE MIXED-USE DEVELOPMENT COULD PUT A ‘SIGNIFICANT DENT’ IN THE NATION’S HOUSING LIST

BY ROBERT WISLA

A MAJOR MIXED-USE development at the intersection of Highway 99 and Pemberton Portage Road, which will see 53 affordable housing units and six commercial spaces created in two separate buildings on Mount Currie’s Main Street, is moving forward.

On April 19, the Squamish-Lillooet Regional District (SLRD) approved a rezoning application for the Lil’wat Nation’s Main Street Development (along with a related housing agreement bylaw for the new housing units).

Lil’wat Nation chief administrative officer Kerry Mehaffey said the development will help alleviate some of the housing challenges the Nation is facing, and provide muchneeded services within walking distance to the populated centre of Mount Currie.

“The project is important first and foremost because of the housing needs in the Lil’wat community,” Mehaffey said in an email.

“There are other benefits that include the ongoing transformation of ‘downtown’ Mount Currie, which includes the new gas station, Ts’zil Learning Centre and Lil’wat Marketplace Development. These projects each serve the community in different ways. The creation of new housing is a significant

priority for the Nation.”

The development will have 36 units of affordable housing, defined as units where rent cannot exceed 30 per cent of a person’s income, and 17 units of moderate-income housing.

The 36-unit South Building will be constructed first, and will comprise 10 studio apartments; 14 one-bed units; two one-bed accessible access units; five two-bed units; and five three-bed units, along with five commercial spaces on the ground floor of the

“The Nation is generally funded to build a smaller number of units, but we are hoping that the scale of this project puts a significant dent in our housing list.”

Under the housing agreement bylaw, priority for the affordable units will go to Lil’wat Nation members first, followed by neighbouring First Nations. Following that, the units will be available to people employed in the SLRD electoral areas, and lastly, those who work in Pemberton and Whistler.

profit housing society to manage the affordable rental units, while the SLRD will maintain the administration of the housing covenant.

Under the new zoning, various businesses or services can occupy the commercial spaces, including banks, offices, restaurants, medical clinics, community halls, and libraries. According to Mehaffey, a First Nations HealthCare Centre is one of the primary services the Nation hopes to have in the development.

“Our true hope is that we are able to place a First Nations Led Primary Health Care Centre in the commercial space in partnership with the First Nations Health Authority,” Mehaffey said.

“We may also look to community entrepreneurs or our Nation-owned businesses to fill the space. We feel that there are a lot of opportunities in the area.”

development. The Lil’wat Nation is working on securing capital funding from BC Housing for the build.

The 17-unit North Building will come second, and have five live-work, onebedrooms; 12 one-bedroom units; and one commercial space. The entire development will be able to house between 100 and 120 people at complete buildout.

“The sheer number and type of units is unique for a project in the community. The majority of our housing stock is single-family homes, and this will fill a need for singles, couples and small families,” Mehaffey said.

SLRD Area C Director Russell Mack represents the Mount Currie Commercial Area, and welcomed the approved housing project, citing the need for more commercial services and addressing some of the housing challenges the Lil’wat Nation is dealing with.

“[The housing situation is] no different than anywhere else,” Mack said. “They’ve got a number of people that don’t even live on reserve; they either live in Vancouver, the Lower Mainland or wherever because there just is no housing... So I think [the development] will be really good.”

The Lil’wat Nation plans to establish a non-

The development will include a small park with a playground, a community garden for residents, and 110 parking stalls for commercial and residential users.

Whistler Mayor Jack Crompton said he is excited about the development, and praised the Lil’wat Nation for leading the charge on developing housing in Mount Currie and across the entire Sea to Sky region.

“Across the territory, I’m excited about seeing Lil’wat projects move forward. I think it’s critical. It’s important to me,” Crompton said.

A development permit will still need to be approved by the SLRD before construction begins on the project.

Find more info at slrd.bc.ca. n

STREETS AHEAD A rendering of the Lil’wat Nation’s Main Street Development.

“The creation of new housing is a significant priority for the Nation.”

- KERRY MEHAFFEY

Pemberton’s youth weigh in on OCP review

OVER-DEVELOPMENT, RISING COST OF LIVING TOP YOUTH CONCERNS IN SPUD VALLEY

BY DAVID SONG

AS THE VILLAGE of Pemberton (VOP) continues its Official Community Plan review, officials are seeking input from local children and youth—which, so far, has tended to dovetail with comments made by older Pembertonians.

Sayah DesBrisay, a Grade 8 student at Pemberton Secondary School (PSS), addressed elected representatives in person during the VOP’s April 11 council meeting. She joined planner Colin Brown in summarizing the views of her peers about difficulties facing the area in future years.

The four main topics were: overdevelopment, climate change, rising living costs and paucity of public transit.

“We are seeing a whole bunch of our bike trails and forests and stuff being taken over by housing, and that is not something that makes us happy,” DesBrisay said. “I think we need to really be mindful about that … and how we like the ‘small’ feeling of Pemberton, because

we’re all still asleep.”

Moreover, PSS students pointed out that—despite an abundance of outdoor recreation—Pemberton does not offer many activities catered specifically to youth. This factor, when combined with rising living costs, can make it hard for many to envision a future in their hometown.

DesBrisay and her fellow teens also appreciate Pemberton for many of the same reasons as other demographics: its aforementioned recreational options, natural environment and sense of community.

“It’s not a very busy town. I mean, it can feel busy, but I like the close, family feel of Pemberton,” said DesBrisay.

As of early April, the VOP has engaged 402 local students by liaising with School Districts No. 48 and No. 93. Two hundred and eighty one of these students attend Signal Hill Elementary, 76 go to École La Vallée and 45 are educated at PSS.

Youngsters in Kindergarten through Grade 4 took part in simple exercises, drawing out their favourite parts of Pemberton or identifying

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everyone knows each other.

“Yes, Pemberton’s going to grow, but maybe [we should] keep it contained a little bit.”

Although housing remains a major area of need, the students’ concerns reflect those of other locals to a degree. Thirty-three comments generated by the VOP’s Kitchen Table Discussions from Jan. 16 to March 10 identified growth management and preserving Spud Valley’s uniqueness as a priority.

In addition to that, DesBrisay and her classmates are worried about the effects of climate change, citing several flooding scares over the last few years. They also expressed their struggle with affordability and a relative lack of jobs in Pemberton.

Unsurprisingly, the teens voiced a desire for more robust regional transit as well.

“I would like to see more frequency in the bus schedule from Pemberton to Whistler, because I think independence is a great thing amongst youth,” DesBrisay said. “When the bus is only going in at 8:20 in the morning,

them on a photo collage. Intermediate-aged pupils in Grades 5 to 7 expressed similar sentiments with maps, or used Lego to build their future hopes for the village.

Student artwork included many overlapping themes, but most highlighted Pemberton’s existing social spaces and activities. Two hundred and twenty two depicted economic or commercial elements like restaurants and the community centre, while 220 involved various forms of outdoor recreation. Other large categories include parks and open spaces (179) and the environment (154).

Concurring with DesBrisay’s view of Pemberton as a close-knit municipality, Brown was encouraged to see that many children are not reliant on motor vehicles to go to school. One hundred and fifty students said that they walk, and another 71 get around via bicycle or scooter at least some of the time. One hundred and thirty six others do ride in private vehicles, while 87 take the bus.  n

RUMMAGE AND PLANT SALE FUNDRAISER

Saturday, May 13th • 10am - 3pm

Please help us support our refugee family from Eritrea

We are continuing to raise funds for their first-year introduction to a new community and new countr y. Donations of gently used goods may be dropped off at the church on Friday, May 12th between 2pm and 6pm. 7226 Fitzsimmons Road, North

NO BOOKS PLEASE

“We are seeing a whole bunch of our bike trails and forests and stuff being taken over by housing, and that is not something that makes us happy. I think we need to really be mindful of that...”

- SAYAH DESBRISAY

And the Couloir Cowboy Award for 202223 goes to…

TRIP REPORTS HAVE BEEN a staple of the ski-touring community for the last couple of decades, an avenue for sharing helpful information on how to navigate the mountains and the experiences they bring. Online forums such as peakbagger.com and blogs like UBC’s Varsity Outdoor Club have been growing since

BY VINCE SHULEY

the internet became a household utility. In the mid-2000s, when I began exploring backcountry mountains in the region, there was usually a blog post kicking around by Sea to Sky veterans Lee Lau, Matt Gunn and others that gave some insight on what to expect on certain backcountry routes. Now that GPX tracks are available on more detailed mapping platforms such as Fat Maps, blog-style trip reports serve more as a photographic chronicling of weekend adventures than a resource.

Two weeks ago, Pique published a news story account of Tareef Dedhar’s deathdefying experience of tumbling down a cliff after trying to enter Wedge Mountain’s Northwest Couloir on skis. For anyone not familiar, Wedge Mountain is the highest peak

in the Garibaldi Ranges. Climbing it in any season is serious business, as is descending its wonderfully aesthetic couloir. A ski guide in the region messaged me to ask if my column that same week, titled “No Time For Couloir Cowboys,” was in response to Dedhar’s incident. It wasn’t; that incident happened a few days after I filed the story. The same week, photos circulated of a team bootpacking straight up the slide path of the Poop Chutes, and a skin track zig-zagging straight up the frequently skied 9th Hole run on Decker Mountain—a route constantly exposed to ripe and looming overhead cornice hazards. I’m struggling to process the level of objective-obsessed cowboy behaviour that has permeated the ski-touring community in the Sea to Sky.

After I read Pique’s news story, I decided to read Dedhar’s first-hand account of the day (all 4,915 words of it) on his aptly named trip report blog, “Tareef’s Mountain Misadventures,” which has the following disclaimer from the author: “I in no way warrant the routes I take, the methods I use on them, or in any way recommend or guarantee their safety or efficacy. These activities are inherently dangerous, and I by no means am an ambassador for the safest techniques. You should always act within your skill, comfort, and risk tolerances.”

I’ll pause there and let you take in the irony of the last sentence of that disclaimer.

After posting the full account on the South Coast Touring Facebook group, more than a few experienced ski tourers (including a ski guide) promptly gave Dedhar a courteous dressing down, not only about his episode on

Wedge, but about the questionable decisions and resulting experiences in his trip reports. The more I dug into the various hiking and touring groups, the more instances I found of the same exact thing happening on other mountains at different times of the year.

I took a look at a few of Dedhar’s other blog posts, and I can honestly say I would never, ever ski with this guy. Summit Fever (a mountaineering term that describes the drive or compulsion of a climber to reach the summit of a mountain no matter what the cost) doesn’t even begin to describe the decision-making at play here.

But it’s a free country, right? If you want to publish accounts of reckless attempts at mountaineering and ski-touring goals, then post online and valiantly defend your decisions in the comments—no one is going to censor you. The issue that many folks in the ski-touring community have (many of them a silent majority) is how this behaviour— amplified by granular trip reports and social media—is normalizing these sort of cowboy tactics in the backcountry. Seeing skin tracks and bootpacks straight up avalanche slopes is already worrisome. Reading an account of someone’s partner falling multiple times while climbing up a series of icy, exposed couloirs towards a summit when there’s a perfectly safe ridge access, all to accentuate the “cool” factor, is another thing entirely. Wedge was not Dedhar’s first incident involving Whistler Search and Rescue. The number of close calls he’s had is much higher, with accountability for group management and dynamics somewhere in the wind.

Our mountain communities in North

America don’t quite have the indifference you find in the European Alps. Over there, you’re welcome to get yourself maimed or killed on the side of the mountain and no one bats an eyelid. But the Alps also has a very respected culture of backcountry guiding, meaning if you’re ski touring for your first couple of seasons or you’re trying new routes that border on your ability, it’s normal to hire a guide.

While not as culturally popular yet, those guiding services are available here. Mountain Skills Academy & Adventures Powder Punch Card and the Aurora Backcountry Pass are just two of the guiding programs that now offer season-long drop-in group ski touring days with an ACMG guide. If you’ve got a season or two under your belt and don’t have the mentor or partner(s) to ski with (and/or learn from yet), these outfitters are a great way to gain experience with people who know what they’re doing. Trips originating from firsttime meetups at trailhead parking lots with no real plan in place have a tendency to occupy search-and-rescue time and resources.

Choose your ski-touring partners wisely. Like a climbing partner, there can come a time when your life is in their hands.

In the meantime, I’m glad Dedhar didn’t make himself into a statistic, and I congratulate him on receiving the first-ever Couloir Cowboy Award. May we all learn something from his misadventures.

Vince Shuley believes cowboys belong in Spaghetti Westerns, not in the backcountry. For questions, comments or suggestions for The Outsider, email vince.shuley@gmail.com or Instagram @whis_vince. ■

GIDDYUP After digging in to some backcountry mishaps, Vince Shuley is ready to hand out the firstever Couloir Cowboy Award.

PHOTO BY DOUG BERRY / GETTY IMAGES

By Megan Lalond e

Once skies clear after a snowstorm, patrollers have thrown all the bombs, and alpine lifts start spinning, there’s arguably no better place to be in the Sea to Sky than in line for Whistler’s Peak Express.

That’s not just because Peak Chair is the gateway to some of the best lift-accessed terrain on the continent. Good skiing aside, it’s where you can usually witness one of Whistler’s favourite powder day rituals. At least, you could before Whistler Mountain closed for the season on April 16.

It all begins when the first Gore-Tex-clad figure appears on top of a ridge to looker’s right of the lift, lined up above a steep, jagged cliff face. Murmurs start and heads swivel. Anticipation grows as that person takes a deep breath, and, as a chorus of hollers and ski-pole taps rings out from the lift line, launches themselves over the edge.

You won’t see it listed next to a pair of black diamonds on Whistler Blackcomb’s official trail maps, but the terrain has a name: Air Jordan.

The specs

The famous feature consists of two consecutive cliffs, starting with an approximately 4.5-metre (15-foot) step down. It wouldn’t be particularly impressive on its own, by Whistler standards, but upping the ante is the steep patch of snow underneath, where riders usually have about six metres of runway to get their bearings on the 47-degree slope before sending it over the main event: an

AIRJORDAN

approximately 18-m cliff.

An optional drop near the bottom of the slope, called the third step, rounds out the cliff sequence.

Underneath and to skier’s right of Air Jordan are the almost-as-impressive, 12-metre Waterfall cliffs.

Air Jordan’s magic stems more from its location than its considerable difficulty. Directly in view of Peak Chair, a good snow day usually means a captive audience of hundreds collectively losing their minds as skier after skier drops into the amphitheatre. These days, Air Jordan’s audience extends far beyond the lift line, as cellphone footage of stomped runs and big crashes inevitably makes its way to social media.

The feats and failed attempts that turned a notso-simple cliff sequence into Whistler s favourite Spectacle ’

It’s a unique combination of factors that has created “one of the biggest spectacles in skiing,” says pro freeskier, filmmaker and perennial Favourite Whistlerite Mike Douglas.

With the hyped-up crowd, “it’s a bit more of a Hollywood cliff,” says pro freeskier, backflip specialist and former World Cup ski-cross athlete Stan Rey. “There are definitely better cliffs with better landings on the mountain, but it is kind of a staple in Whistler.

“All the freeride kids … want to hit Air Jordan. That’s what they work up to.”

That’s true, confirms 18-year-old Whistler Freeride Club alum Marcus Goguen. “Growing up in Whistler, looking at it every day since I was six, watching people hit it, lining up for Peak Chair and just the vibe of everything, it definitely made it a goal of mine,” he says.

The crowd “adds a lot more stoke” to the experience, says

Goguen, but it also makes it near impossible to chicken out.

“If you get there and it’s not great, you’re almost fully committed once those people see you on top of Jordan and you hear them cheering. There’s no backing out,” he says with a laugh. There is, however, “a lot of shame in climbing back up,” he adds.

The best part? “Every powder day, being in the Peak Chair lineup and watching [the show], everybody’s a part of it, whether you’re skiing it or just watching,” says Goguen. “That’s the cool aspect of it.”

Humble beginnings

Yes, the feature shares a name with Nike’s iconic sneaker line, created in the ’80s for a particularly legendary Hall of Fame NBA player. For sure, riders launching themselves over the cliffs do

Current Alpine Canada coach Jordan Williams is recognized as the first skier to hit Air Jordan, in 1986 on a pair of 210-cm GS race skis. PHOTO SUBMITTED Julien Carr clearing both cliffs with a single front flip in 2013 during filming of Into the Mind by Sherpas Cinema . PHOTO SUBMITTED

get more airtime than Michael Jordan dunking a basketball. But that’s not how the line earned its moniker.

It’s named after Jordan Williams, a longtime Whistler Mountain Ski Club coach who graduated to Alpine Canada’s ski-cross program six years ago. Legend has it Williams was first to descend the cliffs, on a pair of skinny race skis in the mid-’80s.

Specifically, it was in 1986, on a pair of 210-centimetre GS planks, he confirms.

“I’d been looking at doing that since I was about 12 years old, riding the old Red Chair,” he says.

That was about a decade before he found himself on top of the line he’d spent years mapping out in his mind. It was Williams’ second year coaching, and his first since retiring from ski racing, which meant more time for freeskiing before shifts at Citta’s. A film crew was in town, according to Williams’ friend Steve Miller. Did Williams want to ski? “I said ‘Sure, why not?’” Williams recalls. “It was a day off.”

Williams was more concerned about skiing the feature than airing it. His plan was three turns in, three turns on, three turns out. “The first time I did it, I screwed up on that,” he says.

Williams’ second turn on the second pitch took him further right than he hoped. “I didn’t land clean,” he says.

He ended up climbing out, still high enough on the slope to traverse skier’s right for some redemption. “I was so mad that I didn’t [land] it well that I went a little too hot off the Waterfall and almost hit flat,” he says. “That was pretty heavy. I just remember my goggles were on and then when I stood up, my goggles were on my forehead. I’m just glad my knee went beside my head instead of into it.”

A couple of days later, Williams grabbed his 205-cm slalom skis and headed back uphill to try again. “It worked way better,” he says. “I got it done the way I wanted to. I felt that I’d accomplished that bit of a thing I’d been looking at forever.”

About a year passed before Williams’ buddies started referring to the cliffs as Air Jordan. The name caught on, and stuck.

So much so that, years later, after friends named their sons after Williams, those Jordans (Chew and Ling, respectively) came to him asking for permission to hit the cliff themselves. “It was kind of like a namesake for them that they felt they had to achieve,” says Williams. “I hope no one hurts themselves because they feel they need to do it, just because they got that name. But it was kind of a neat little thing attached to it.”

It’s “really nice having those connections with such good skiers that always challenged themselves,” he adds.

Williams’ first drop took place around the same time a teenaged Douglas started making trips to the resort from Vancouver Island, and the same year Whistler installed the first Peak Chair, a 1,000-metre-long triple chairlift.

“I remember hitting some of those cliffs, as well,” Douglas says. “People would talk about that whole Waterfall area, like,

‘That guy went and hit that cliff two months ago.’ These weren’t things that got done all the time, they just got done once in a while by what were viewed as pretty crazy people—which was me when I was 16, for sure.”

Peak Chair changed the game in terms of providing easy access to those cliffs and the rest of Whistler’s high alpine, but that nearly wasn’t the case. “The original plans for the Peak Chair were that it was just going to go to the first bump,” not the summit, Douglas explains. “They thought it was too

aggressive to put people up there, over those big cliffs.”

Until Whistler officials learned their rivals over on Blackcomb were installing a T-bar to the top of 7th Heaven in 1985. “They quickly redrew the plans and said, ‘Well, they’ve gone to the top, so we have to go to the top,’” says Douglas. “Which was a blessing, because they would have just had to rip that thing out and put it to the top anyways.”

According to Douglas, it wasn’t until the late-’90s or early-’00s—when freeskiing and big-mountain snowboarding started taking off—that powder days became a race for features like Air Jordan.

“It became, ‘You’ve got to get there and you’ve got to get there first, otherwise you’re going to have tracks,’” he says.

In those days, as a member of the Whistler Mountain Ski Club, Rey spent more time between gates than dropping cliffs. Still, every once in a while, his coaches—including Williams— would let their charges loose to enjoy a fresh snowfall away from the groomers.

It was on one of those occasions when Rey learned the double cliff he’d been eyeing wasn’t, in fact, named after a basketball player. Rey still remembers Williams’ response when he told his coach how much he’d love to hit Air Jordan while the pair were freeskiing. “He’s like ‘Ah, I hit that all the time, it’s named after me,’” Rey recalls.

“I thought he was joking at first,” he adds. “And he wasn’t.” Rey already had plenty of respect for his coach, but this particular distinction “made him seem a little bit more of a badass,” he admits.

Still, Williams insists he deserves “no recognition, claim to fame or anything.”

Timing and Williams’ progress on skis just happened to line up. “We just skied off that sucker, and then my friends started doing it … and then next thing you know, a lot of people were giving it a shot,” he says.

The feats

It took a few years, but Rey eventually found himself standing on top of the cliffs for the first time in March 2013.

The Whistlerite’s Air Jordan debut coincided with what’s still widely considered the most iconic stunt ever thrown off the feature, even a decade later.

Rey skied the line alongside world record-holding cliffjumper and big-mountain skier Julian Carr, who that day decided to ignore the landing pad in between steps. With blue skies above and 120 cm of untracked snow below, Carr launched over the entire feature to land what ended up being a more-than-55-m (or 185-ft) jump. He also laid out a swan-

divey front flip, just for fun. Underneath, Rey sent it off Jordan the usual way, tossing in a backflip off the second step, while a crew of extras made their way down the surrounding slope. The feat was captured by Whistler’s Sherpas Cinema for its iconic 2013 ski film, Into The Mind

“A few times I’ve been up to Whistler I’ve glanced at the idea from the back of my mind—the kind of glance that is fleeting and more of a brief fantasy than a real idea,” Utahborn Carr told Pique’s Andrew Mitchell in 2013, shortly after the jump. “The idea came about a week ago when Stan Rey mentioned there was a beautiful platform up there and I could send the whole thing from it. Stan mentioned it fleetingly as well; I don’t think he knew that I was listening intently!”

At the time, Carr called it his “rowdiest move to date.”

Carr’s clearing all of Air Jordan in one go might be the bestknown attempt, but it wasn’t the first. That title apparently belongs to the late Dave Treadway, the pro skier who passed away in the Pemberton backcountry in April 2019.

Treadway “was the first that I am aware of that single-staged Air Jordan,” says Douglas. “It wasn’t for a big film shoot or anything, so I think it’s something lots of people don’t know.”

As Rey remembers it, the feature “is pretty intimidating, especially on your first time. It’s a fairly steep shelf and then the second drop, depending on the year, can be fairly big and the landing is kind of flat.” Still, during the March 2013 Sherpas shoot, “I was more scared for Julian Carr than I was for myself, because what he was doing was pretty insane.”

The backflip “probably wasn’t the best thing to try and do” on his first time off Jordan, Rey admits with a laugh. “I landed pretty far back … but it ended up working because the shot was so wide.”

Rey’s second Air Jordan attempt—and every attempt since—was for another film project, Whistler Blackcomb’s Magnetic in 2017. It was the first full-length ski and snowboard movie filmed entirely within a single resort. In his clip, Rey skis an action-packed, top-to-bottom Whistler lap that includes a 360 off Air Jordan and an enormous double-backflip off the third step.

“I did it the first time and I thought I did it pretty good, but my filmer Jeff Thomas thought I could do it better. So, I went up and did it again and again—not in the same day, but I think I hit it six times for Magnetic.” (The footage used in the final cut was from Rey’s first run.)

Jordan’s Next Gen

“It’s actually kind of funny that I’ve only hit Jordan when filming—I’ve never hit it on my own,” says Rey.

Pro freeskier Stan Rey peeks over the edge while filming for Origin and Whistler Blackcomb’s 2017 ski and snowboard film Magnetic SCREENSHOT

Rey on top of Air Jordan during one of the six times he dropped in for Magnetic JOHN ENTWISTLE

And he doesn’t plan to. At 35, Rey’s getting older, and Jordan’s landing isn’t getting any softer. Instead, he’s leaving it to the next generation of Whistler freeriders, like Goguen.

Two years ago, footage of the then-16-year-old Whistler Freeride Club athlete hucking Jordan made its way around the internet before it was eventually posted by skiing forum Newschoolers. The video shows Goguen sending a mindblowing, massive backflip off Jordan’s main cliff and a just-as-huge second backflip off the third step, capped off with an exceptionally filthy landing. It won clip of the year in Newschoolers’ Best of 2021 contest.

“It was definitely a steppingstone in my career, that clip,” says Goguen.

The 18-year-old won the Freeride Junior World Championships this past January before taking second place in his Freeride World Tour (FWT) debut one month later. He finished the FWT season in ninth to become the top-ranked Canadian man on tour.

The backstory behind the clip makes Goguen’s backflipto-backflip sequence even more impressive. “I was actually coming up from school, after an exam,” he remembers. “It was midday, and I rushed up because I saw it was firing on the mountain. I still decided to go to Jordan after, I think, like 10 or 15 people had hit it.”

Snow conditions on the landing were “absolutely terrible,” Goguen recalls. “But I was a young, stupid kid—I still am—so I decided to go for it.”

He’s glad he did, but he probably wouldn’t make the same decision in the same conditions today. Goguen estimates it was one of five or six times he’s skied down Air Jordan since first dropping into the famous cliffs when he was still in elementary school. “I was probably 10 or 11,” he says. That could very well make Goguen the youngest skier to drop into Jordan, but he can’t say for sure.

For many skiers, the feature is “sort of a rite of passage,” as Goguen describes it. “It’s a way to prove yourself in the freeride industry, and just locally, mostly.”

That rite of passage’s namesake says he’s “amazed” by every line he’s seen Goguen stomp on the feature.

“They’re always very creative and landed perfect, just in time,” says Williams, adding, “It’s beautiful to watch what he can do and how well he can do it.”

Still, Goguen isn’t done pushing the limits of what’s possible on Jordan. “I definitely have a couple more tricks I want to cross off on it,” he says.

That might include a 360 off the first step on a super-deep powder day, or the same high-flying Cork 720 his buddy Jérémie Paquette’s been attempting to land off the second step this winter. Or maybe Goguen will throw that trick off the third step instead.

A Cork 720—an off-axis spin with two full rotations—off the last cliff  “is actually what I was aiming to do when I did that first backflip-to-backflip run, but just in the moment decided to hit a backflip instead,” Goguen says.

To Douglas, the ultimate Jordan attempt would include tricking all three drops. “I don’t think it’s been done yet,” he says.

Goguen has two out of the three down, but “it is very, very difficult to do a trick on the way into the upper step of Air Jordan, because of the weird takeoff,” Douglas adds.

But the freeskiing legend says he wouldn’t put it past the younger generation.

“They seem to do things that I say, ‘Oh, no, you can’t do that,’ and they’re like, ‘OK, watch this.’”

The fails

Most of the time, for Rey, “the bails are more entertaining” than the clean landings. “There’s so much carnage on there,” he says. “I’ve seen people lose skis, drop poles up there, and they get stuck on the shelf.”

Usually, those skiers will need to head back to Jordan another day to retrieve their equipment. Usually. In his first of six attempts skiing the line for Magnetic, Rey did one unknown skier a favour after hitting a ski buried on that shelf, knocking it down as he launched into a 360.

“It fell off the cliff behind me. I didn’t really notice it—I thought I tagged a rock—but then there was a rumour that I did, like, a hand-drag three and grabbed that ski and threw it off

while I was doing the 360,” Rey laughs. “Which is a complete lie.”

Some falls, like the one then-18-year-old Jaden Legate suffered last April during his first-ever attempt dropping Jordan, are even more memorable than the successful runs. The hundreds of people in line for Peak Chair that day watched as the lifelong Whistler local hucked himself off the first step, double-ejected out of his skis, and ran forward off the second step, not unlike a stuntman jumping out of a building, engulfed in flames. The crowd’s concern turned to cheers when Legate, luckily, emerged from the tumble unscathed. Footage of the fall went viral, even landing a spot on @jerryoftheday’s Instagram feed.

“I could tell that the landing was pretty firm when I was going to go, and I kind of went for it anyways, so that may have played a factor in why I fell,” Legate told Pique last year following his brush with internet fame.

“If you’re not fully confident, don’t do it and just wait for the right conditions, because you can always wait,” he added wisely. “It’s not worth risking your life over; it’s just a cliff.”

Rarely, the spectacle can turn from ski film to horror movie in an instant. That was the case in February, when a friend of Goguen’s crashed off the cliff and landed on exposed rocks. The fall earned the local teenager a broken back and a helicopter ride off the slopes.

“It was not a good scene,” Goguen recalls. But there is good news: the skier healed “super quick,” and, as of April, was already back on snow.

The key to avoiding those falls “is to land balanced off the first step,” says Douglas. “The mistakes I most often see is people don’t land the first step well, and then they’re in a bad position as they take off the second step and then they end up floundering.”

Fortunately, “there’s definitely a lot worse [landings] out there” than Air Jordan’s, Douglas adds. “The fall ratio on it is pretty high, but the injury ratio on it seems to be pretty low.”

What about the boarders?

Snowboarders don’t have to worry about leaving their equipment behind the same way skiers do, but the qualities that make Air Jordan challenging to land with four edges make it even more difficult for riders operating on two.

It’s why boarders don’t hit Air Jordan nearly as often as skiers, Douglas reasons. “In the early 2000s, late-’90s, there were some snowboarders who did some pretty cool stuff on the Waterfall just below there—Greg Daniels and Matt Domanski come to mind— but I think it’s just that you’ve got to kind of land on edge, and that’s trickier on a snowboard,” he says. “Especially if you’re not the first one in there.”

Working with one edge “makes it almost impossible to stop or even slow yourself down enough to change direction or set a different line—you have to really commit to jumping straight,” agrees Whistler snowboarder Jay Baumann.

A local named Rich Carlson claims to be the first-ever snowboarder to drop into Jordan, but Baumann is among just a handful to hit it within the last few years. He’s made five attempts in the decade he’s called Whistler home, three of which he counts as successful.

Baumann, who volunteers as a coach with the Indigenous Sport Life Academy, started directing more energy towards bigmountain riding as he transitioned out of freestyle snowboarding after the pandemic. Last winter, he ranked 10th in Canada in the FWT qualifiers.

Baumann says he only knows of two other snowboarders who have ridden Jordan in the last three or four years—both “just got washed over the cliff,” he says—but he’s watched enough skiers stomp the landing that the feature became as much of a rite of passage for him as it is for freeskiers like Goguen. “I [thought], ‘If the skiers could do it, I can do it as well,’” he says.

“You can’t really say you’ve done it all until you’ve checked off Air Jordan successfully. I think it’s nice to have something that brings together a lot of the locals that are left, because everyone knows that it’s always that grand show at Peak Chair. It’s nice to still have those little things that bring everyone together and still have that true ski-bum soul that used to be running rampant in Whistler.”

Baumann filmed a couple of those Jordan drops and posted the footage to TikTok earlier this year. In one P.O.V. clip that has so far garnered more than 330,000 views, Baumann hits a rock on the landing pad, but manages to regroup before launching off the second cliff, landing on his feet and riding out.

“I feel like freeride doesn’t really get the same amount of exposure as park riding does,” says Baumann. “There’s a lot of videos out there of people riding these gnarly lines on skis, so I thought it would be good to put out a bit of inspiration for other snowboarders out there, to show that it is possible for us to do the same things.”

His tips for any other boarders looking to put their skills to the test on Whistler’s biggest stage? Work up to the feature by riding more intense terrain around the resort. “Making sure you can ride all of the Waterfalls, from all of the different angles, is a good one,” he says. “Anything that has a mandatory air is good practice.”

Then, when you’re ready, “Make sure you’re one of the first people to hit it and just commit to it 110 per cent,” he adds. “Hang on, because it’s a bit of a wild ride until you get to the bottom.” n

Australian snowboarder Jay Baumann has hit Air Jordan a handful of times in the decade he’s called Whistler home. GoPro footage of one of those attempts is below. PHOTO SUBMITTED

Five Whistler Freeride skiers crack North America’s top 15

HEAD COACH DEREK FOOSE SAYS THAT THE SKILL LEVEL AMONG CLUB MEMBERS IS ‘THE HIGHEST IT’S EVER BEEN’

BY DAVID SONG

IN 2001, DEREK FOOSE founded the Whistler Freeride Club (WFC). His goal was to bring his passion to the Sea to Sky corridor, as well as give back to the ski community by coaching future generations.

Foose started out with just six pupils. He and his organization have experienced exponential growth on all fronts since then.

“We have definitely seen a massive increase in interest and popularity, and the overall skill level in the junior freeride community,” Foose said. “That’s kind of spilled over to the adult ranks as well.”

SAFETY, FUN, LEARNING

WFC alumni have certainly been making waves as of late. Marcus Goguen claimed the Freeride Junior World Championships (FJWC) crown in January, while Wei Tien Ho and Jackson Bathgate recently earned their spots on the Freeride World Tour (FWT).

The pipeline behind them remains strong, as five WFC athletes concluded the 2023

season ranked top-15 or better in the IFSA’s North America standings.

Lukas Bennett led the way for boys aged 15 to 18 as the continent’s fourth-highest rated freerider. Kane Gascoigne was close behind in sixth, and Kieren Ferguson ended up 14th.

Among girls in that same age bracket, no WFC member stood out more than Drea Dimma, who earned a fifth-place ranking.

Last but not least, Carden Tomic is the top-ranked North American in the boys’ age 12 to 14 category.

“I’m extremely proud of all of the kids as a group, and individually,” Foose said. “It’s an individual sport … but we still try to take a real team approach to it, recognizing that there’s a big group of kids, a whole team of coaches and even parents that are all really supportive of each kid’s individual effort.”

WFC parents indeed form a lively community that celebrates the achievements of all club members.

“Every year, we send kids to the [FJWC], and next year, we’re going to send a whole new crew,” said Kane’s father, Adam Gascoigne. “And kids like Carden … oh my gosh, the level coming up underneath is huge.”

“The club has a lot of really good skiers, and that’s just who our kids are skiing with all the time,” added Heather Ferguson, Kieren’s mother.

Why do so many WFC athletes take to the snow so well? It has much to do with the club’s pillars of development: safety, fun, and

learning, in that order.

“The kids need to be returned to their parents at the end of each day, intact, but if they’re going to give us their free time—that’s one of a teenager’s most valuable currencies— we have a responsibility to make their time with us awesome,” explained Foose.

“We are working hard on skill development and acquisition with them, but if it’s just hard work all the time, then it’s not fun,” he continued. “And if it’s not fun, they’re not going to stick around.”

ROLE MODELS

A robust culture of mentorship across generations has also contributed to the WFC’s momentum. Connor Warnock, Carlene Loughlin, Ryder Bulfone, Meghan Platt and Cooper Bathgate (Jackson’s twin brother) are all alumni who returned to the club as coaches. Warnock is the longest-tenured of the bunch, having worked as a trainer for more than eight years.

Moreover, Foose praised his experienced athletes for stepping up as role models.

“Seeing the older kids recognize their value to the younger kids by seeing themselves four or five years ago in those younger kids is honestly one of my favourite parts [of freeride],” he said. “I mean, coaches are important, but there’s nobody cooler to a young kid than an older kid doing the same sport who’s excelling at it.”

Parental engagement is likewise

invaluable to the WFC. After all, moms and dads are responsible for driving their children to practices and contests across the province. They are the ones who cheer in the cold. Foose and his team do all they can to keep the parents’ trust by being as open and as accommodating as possible.

“The parents are truly like the glue that binds us all together,” he explained. “We do our best to communicate with them, and to make sure that they have what they need in terms of info to support their kids. We’ve got a great crop of parents that are making a huge, huge difference in what the kids are doing.”

In return, WFC parents trust the process that their youngsters are undergoing. Those like Adam and Heather are actually more nervous about their sons driving the Sea to Sky highway than their high-flying exploits on powder.

Exciting new things are on the horizon. According to Foose, there is a good chance that Whistler athletes will comprise the entirety of the six-person Canadian team at the 2024 FJWC. In the past, Canada has always been represented at that marquee event by a mix of Whistler skiers and those from other organizations like Fernie, Lake Louise and the Whitewater Freeride Team.

Official FJWC invitations won’t go out until November, but Foose and his gang could be on the cusp of history.

“The level of technical skiing in our club is the highest it’s ever been,” he said. n

UP TOP Whistler Freeride Club coach Dan Elgar with athlete Lochlan Harvey.

PHOTO COURTESY OF THE WFC

Whistler Freeride athlete Drea Dimma has sights set on redemption

CANADA’S TOP-RANKED YOUTH FREERIDE SKIER LOOKS TO STAY HEALTHY GOING INTO HER SECOND FREERIDE JUNIOR WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP

BY DAVID SONG

WHEN DREA DIMMA participated in her first freeride ski contest at 11 years of age, she didn’t have many other girls to shred with. Hers was once a male-dominated sport, but that fact didn’t hold her back.

“When I first started competing in freeride competitions, I remember the 15 to 18 girls category was very small,” Dimma recalls. “Sometimes, there would be as few as four girls in the category for a competition.”

Fast forward six years, and the landscape has changed. Women’s freeride is growing steadily, as evidenced by former Olympic gold medallists like Justine Dufour-Lapointe making the jump from freestyle to the Freeride World Tour (FWT). In 2023, the IFSA’s age 15-18 bracket for girls consistently brimmed with talent, with up to 36 athletes in the mix at February’s Red Mountain National.

“As the numbers have increased in all age categories, so has the calibre of skiing, making for some tough competition,” said Dimma. “It’s so cool to be a part of this progression and watch the younger girls encourage and push each other.”

‘DETERMINATION AND DEDICATION’

Dimma has certainly been doing her part: at 17 years old, the Pembertonian is Canada’s best youth freerider, according to IFSA standings. In fact, her 3,751 points make her the fifth-highest ranked female youth freerider in all of North America. Dimma was especially dominant on home snow, winning both the regional and national events in Whistler.

She has punched her ticket to the 2024 Freeride Junior World Championships (FJWC) in Austria—a second chance she intends to make good on.

“Last season, I qualified for the [FJWC], which was held in January. I injured my knee at a soccer game the week before I went to Austria, so I was not 100 per cent for the competition,” Dimma explained. “I ended up hitting a rock and blowing a ski.

“I was determined this season to work on my knee and get as strong as possible for some redemption in Austria, and all the hard work paid off.”

Dimma finished her campaign strong earlier this month with a silver-medal effort at the North American Championships at Kicking Horse. Her 64.67 points landed her just behind Indy Boyer from California (65.20) but ahead of Colorado resident Tia Schenk (64.60).

“The North American Championships is definitely the most nerve-racking competition of the year,” Dimma admitted. “I was competing against the top-ranked girls in North America, so I had to make sure I was focused and on my A-game. I skied two solid runs in qualifying and the finals, which landed me in second place. The snow conditions were great, and I was really happy

Paul Burrows

April 7, 1937 – March 10, 2023

Whistler's first newsman profoundly shaped the resor t

Paul Desmond Burrows was born in York, England, to Dr John Desmond Burrows, an adventurer and accomplished medical practitioner, and Nancy Burrows, a nurse and writer His Irish roots ran deep A key catalyst at Whistler, Paul passed away in Salmon Arm, B C He was 85

Whistler Question in their A-frame cabin It evolved into a trusted, well-respected newspaper

In 2000, when Whistler became less of a place in which to grow old, Paul and Jane moved to Salmon Arm. They continued travelling worldwide In 2012, Jane was diagnosed with Familial Alzheimer’s Disease Paul became her dedicated caregiver until her death in 2018.

with my performance.”

“Drea is a very driven and competitive girl,” added Dimma’s mother, Valeinna. “She has had the best years of her life skiing with the Whistler Freeride Club. I am so proud of her positive attitude, determination and dedication to the sport.”

‘NOTHING BETTER’

Like many other young Whistlerites, Dimma is not a one-trick pony. She plays competitive soccer and volleyball in addition to skiing, and travels across the province for games. Participating in multiple sports is a benefit to both her physical and mental health.

“I am very fortunate to live in a place where I can take part in so many different sports,” Dimma said. “Most sports I play are seasonal, which helps with keeping up my fitness when rolling into ski season or soccer season.

“I think playing multiple sports prevents burnout in one sport, and I always look forward to the change in the seasons. As much as I love skiing, after a long winter it’s nice to take a break, put on the soccer cleats and connect with my teammates again.”

These yearly changes of pace, as well as healthy mentorship from her Whistler Freeride Club (WFC) coaches, have helped Dimma become a confident freerider who is resilient enough to overcome adversity. With high school graduation around the corner, she plans to take a gap year and ski as much as possible. The Pembertonian will always be close to her WFC community—in fact, they are all close enough to view each other as family.

“There is nothing better than skiing Peak Chair [on Whistler Blackcomb] on a powder day with all my friends and coaches,” Dimma said.

“She has developed lifelong friendships with her teammates and has had the opportunity to travel to so many incredible mountains for competitions,” added Valeinna.

“Although Drea has learned how to be humble and gracious in victory, I think one of the most important—and difficult—lessons she has learned from her coaches is how to lose gracefully and accept disappointment.”

Equipped with eyebrow-raising technical skills and the mentality of a champion, look for Dimma to throw down a resurgent performance next year in Austria. n

Paul was an extraordinar y force of nature who profoundly shaped the trajector y of the resort he started Whistl er ' s first newspaper; sat on council for years; led the first ski patrol; and helped start Whistler Search and Rescue and so many other community organizations that his personal stor y mirrors that of Whistler itself

He lived in England, Ireland, Rhodesia and South Africa before landing in Vancouver and then Alta Lake (now Whistler), where he met his wife, Doris Jane Archer one of Whistler's first teachers

After an unsuccessful bid to become Whistler’s first mayor, in 1976 Pau l and Jane started the

Paul will always be remembered as an honest, caring, fun-loving man; a community leader seldom at a loss for words.

A private graveside ser vice will be held 11:00 a.m., Saturday, May 13, when Paul will be placed alongside his dear Jane A celebration of life will follow at 2:00 p.m. (PDT) in the Millar Room, Myrtle Philip School, 6195 Lorimer Road, Whistler Starting at 1:30 p.m. you can connect via Zoom at https://whistlermuseum.org/burrows/

Paul's preferred recipient for donations is Whistler Museum & Archives.

Messages of condolence can be left at www.bowersfuneralser vice.com

Whistler Cemeter y Master Plan

Do your end-of-life plans include the Whistler Cemeter y?

The RMOW is gathering feedback to under stand the community’s future need, inter nment and memorialization preferences for the Whistler Cemeter y. Your input is impor tant as it will directly shape the Whistler Cemeter y Master Plan, and it helps us plan so those who are connected to Whistler can have a resting place within the community

Share your input at whistler.ca/engage

Scan the QR code to:

• Learn about the Cemeter y Master Planning process

• Complete the online sur vey

LET IT RIDE Whistler Freeride Club skier Drea Dimma in action at the 2023 Freeride Whistler regional age 15-18 qualifiers.

PHOTO BY JAYDEN INNIS

home Board of Directors

Whistler Housing Authority (WHA) is seeking a qualified individual to join the WHA Board of Directors

Local skier Lukas Bennett finds his groove in milestone year

THE WHISTLER FREERIDE CLUB ATHLETE FINISHED HIS SEASON RANKED NO. 4 IN NORTH AMERICA

BY DAVID SONG

The WHA Board of Directors provides a governance role and oversight of Whistler’s Employee Housing Programs. Directors make an important contribution to the organization and community in this volunteer capacity. The Board is comprised of nine resident community members with expertise in the housing sector, finance, strategic planning, communications and ethics. We are currently seeking to fill two opportunities on the Board for one 2-year and one 3-year term.

athletes love halfpipes and moguls to death, he was instead captivated by the freedom and variety of terrain in freeride.

The WHA Board of Directors provides a governance role for the Whistler Housing Authority. Participation as a WHA Director is an opportunity to make an important contribution to Whistler’s Employee Restricted Housing Program and to the overall Whistler community.

Relevant qualifications for WHA Directors include knowledge and enthusiasm about the Employee Housing inventory and initiatives; housing and development experience; competence in reviewing budgets, financial statements and strategic planning; and the ability to commit to a 3-year term including attending approximately 8 Board meetings per annum in Whistler.

Meetings are typically held bi-monthly at RMOW Municipal Hall, and the Board receives reading material in advance of the scheduled meetings to review. Attendance is mandatory, and virtual attendance can be accommodated.

LUKAS BENNETT’S FRIENDS, family members and coaches have witnessed his skiing ability evolve first-hand over time. Freeride is his passion, and he usually carves down mountainsides with gusto. However, Lukas has dealt with a mental block for years, being perennially unable to perform up to his own standard in official competitions.

All of that changed in 2023.

Meanwhile, Emeline discovered her passion in ski racing. The siblings have always been close—though not without an element of rivalry.

“I always wanted to be like [my sister],” said Lukas. “We’d go out on family ski days, and she would be critiquing my skiing and I would hate it, but I think probably that made me a better skier.”

Based on the composition of the existing WHA Board and the workplan ahead for the next 3 years, it has been identified as important for the candidates to have a background in the housing sector as the WHA continues providing more housing options for the community.

Please read the detailed Call for Expression of Interest for Candidates to WHA Board of Directors and the WHA Board Candidate Application Form found at www.whistlerhousing.ca.

The 17-year-old finally put together a rock-solid campaign from start to finish. With 3,609 points, he can call himself the fourthhighest ranked IFSA Junior freerider in all of North America—a far cry from last year when he wiped out in most of his contests.

Over time, though, Lukas realized that his dynamic with Emeline is more constructive than that between some siblings—rather than constantly engage in one-upmanship, they try to make each other better. Nowadays, the duo finds that pursuing different disciplines at a high level is bringing them even closer.

Interested candidates are asked to email a completed Application Form to: jessica@whistlerhousing.ca by May 17, 2021.

For further information, please consult: whistlerhousing.ca and any questions may be directed via email to: meredith@whistlerhousing.ca. Applications will be received until May 7, 2023.

“I felt like I could always perform, but I just wasn’t able to do it in competition. I was never able to figure it out—it was just the nerves getting to me,” Lukas admitted.

Then, he altered his mindset. After talking with his Whistler Freeride Club (WFC) coaches Dan Elgar and Derek Foose, Lukas stopped fixating on the fact that he’d be skiing in front of judges. Instead, he viewed every contest run like something he could pull off among his friends, nine times out of 10.

“He seemed to be in the right headspace, he has skied amazing all year and has been having the most fun too,” said Lukas’ mother, Geraldine Zinsli.

His older sister, Emeline Bennett—herself a Junior World Champion in ski cross—agrees wholeheartedly.

“I think Lukie finally put together a season where he was himself,” she remarked. “He found his style and his flow, and he was always present. It seemed like he never let the other aspects of his life take over and he could just ski like he knew he could—competition after competition.

“He stayed humble and stuck to his style, and believe me, I am so, so proud of his results— but I think more than anything, he just had a great season where he could take every day and every competition for everything it was worth and be proud of himself.”

Indeed, Lukas’ victories this year at the Red Mountain National, Whistler Regional and Revelstoke Regional events are feats to take pride in.

A FAMILY BUSINESS

As the son of two avid skiers—including a ski-racing mom—Lukas’ introduction to fresh powder and majestic mountains was inevitable. Like many young Whistlerites, he first got onto skis as a toddler and joined the local ski school as soon as he was able.

Unlike many, however, Lukas’ early experiences were less than idyllic.

“I actually hated it,” he remembers. “I would cry every single time.”

Yet the Bennetts didn’t give up, and eventually Lukas came around. While some

“Lukas and I always had the same interests, played the same sports and were into the same things. It was never in a competitive way; we didn’t fight about which of us was better,” Emeline said. “We both know the pressures of competition; we want to challenge and push ourselves but also hold ourselves to such a high standard. It’s the most rewarding and the most stressful part of our lives.”

PAYING IT FORWARD

Lukas’ days with the WFC are coming to an end, at least for now. The last seven years have blown by, and he remembers them being full of fun and fellowship with like-minded people. Above all, he praises his trainers for always making him feel comfortable, even when he struggled at contest after contest.

“I’d like to shout out all the coaches of the Whistler Freeride Club, because they’ve definitely been a huge part of my life,” Lukas said. “I definitely could not imagine my life without freeride.”

The Whistlerite has at least one more hurrah as a junior skier: the 2024 Freeride Junior World Championships. As Canada’s top-ranked youth freerider, he has a golden opportunity to don the Maple Leaf at one of his sport’s biggest competitions. After that, he plans to pursue an engineering degree at the University of British Columbia (UBC), an endeavour that is sure to demand the bulk of his time.

Nonetheless, Lukas also wants to get into coaching—hopefully alongside Elgar and company at the WFC—because of how gracious fellow club members have been to him.

Not every sport or team has upperclassmen willing to mentor kids on the cusp of adolescence, but seasoned WFC athletes have always treated their younger counterparts with care. Lukas remembers the impact they’ve had on him and wishes to pay it forward.

“I still haven’t really realized it, but it’s kind of crazy to think about [the fact that] me and my friends are the older kids now, and some of the younger kids might look up to us,” he said. “So, I’m trying to return that sense of community to them as much as I can.” n

helping to make Whistler the place you call

The Whistler Housing Authority (WHA) is seeking interest from qualified individuals

SVAVA TERGESEN

April 1 - June 11, 2023

Ornamental Cookery

This exhibition is a co-production of the Audain Art Museum and Capture Photography Festival. Presenting Sponsor

Svava Tergesen, Granny Smith, Arctic Char (detail), 2022

LOL. Get slutty. Hit a home run

FINDING THE SWEET SPOTS TO CHANGE BEHAVIOUR BEYOND EARTH DAY

MY PAL WHO USED to run Whistler’s print shop turned off all her lights for an hour. I picked up garbage blowing around the streets and chose vegetarian pizza.

It’s hard to say how many people marked Earth Day this year. Besides the Resort Municipality of Whistler’s annual Earth Day clean-up, do you know anyone who actually

BY GLENDA BARTOSH

did anything Earth-ish April 22?

Even the traditional Earth Hour barely registered. For years, it was an easy-butpotent gesture of “lights out” from 8:30 to 9:30 p.m. that started in Sydney, Australia, and once scored big time around the world.

Sure, the Eiffel Tower still went dark for an hour this year, but was anyone in a restaurant and the lights went off so you only had candlelight to dine by? We used to enjoy that simple gesture, which harkened back to gentler, more innocent— some might say, more deluded—times, when all seemed well and we thought we could do anything without a reckoning.

In 2008, the first year Earth Hour went international, British Columbians were great!

In one tiny hour, we saved some two per cent of the overall provincial power load—the equivalent of some 2.8 million lights out. By 2014, that figure dropped by about half. Still, Whistler led the way for Earth Hour that year, with a six-per-cent power reduction. Nice.

But all that was long ago and, oh, how things do change.

In 2018, after years of declining decliningpower-use for Earth Hour, BC Hydro noted that we British Columbians, who often like to colour ourselves “green,” actually used more power during Earth Hour! The reversal also spurred Hydro to write a report. Bottom line: most British Columbians still thought Earth Hour is important, despite years of declining participation. We just do bugger all about it.

By 2019, Earth Hour participation was so low, BC Hydro stopped tracking it, period. And isn’t that the way of it these days when it comes to environmental action?

There’s a strange and bewildering irony afoot: Just as we gain more and more awareness and science-based confirmation that we’re all in deep doo-doo—biodiversity fading; species extinctions higher than ever; record-shattering temperatures; drought and storm systems that blow huge swaths of everything right off the map and uproot millions of climate refugees—it seems most of us simply twinkle our toes, fan our brows and go shopping. Literally.

Not trying to shame or scare anyone here, but let’s think for a minute... Know anyone who even considered buying carbon offsets for the last flight they took?

To that end, some people, mostly young people, but far too few people are now desperately, wisely, cheekily looking for ways

to get people’s attention to do something, anything, deep and urgent and meaningful to turn the ship around.

The Utopia Bureau—created by Benrik, two authors and former ad guys, Ben Carey, and Henrik Delehag, who collaborate with the likes of Extinction Rebellion and Climate 2025—pairs up climate scientists with comedians to try and break through to us. “That’s the sad truth of our times and that’s the human truth. We listen to jokes more than we listen to lectures,” Carey told the CBC.

Here’s comedian Mark Maron: “On a deeper level, the reason we’re not more upset about the world ending environmentally is I think, you know, all of us in our hearts really know that we did everything we could … I mean, think about it. We brought our own bags to the supermarket.”

ARE YOU LAUGHING?

If that doesn’t grab you, maybe the Slutty Vegan will. This burger chain, make that vegan burger chain, was started in Atlanta by Pinky Cole, one smart, entrepreneurial woman, who, according to The New Yorker, once bought McChickens for a buck then sold them for two to her high school classmates. Here’s the trick today: Customers are mostly meat-eaters, and they literally line up under a sign proclaiming “EAT PLANTS YA SLUT” while a DJ cranks out Drake and more at ear-splitting decibels.

The smart, sassy company putting “pizzazz” and “party” into plant-based eating by acknowledging that sex sells juxtaposes the seeming restraint of veganism with the “I’ll do what I want” attitude of sluttery. Now valued

at US$100 million, Slutty Vegan is expanding (wouldn’t it be perfect for Whistler?), with multiple outlets offering no-meat burgers like the Fussy Hussy (with caramelized onions and vegan cheese) and Ménage à Trois (with vegan bacon and vegan shrimp). People who never thought they would be are gobbling up vegan fare and lovin’ it.

Meanwhile, over on the baseball diamond, some fans are excited that a study proving batters are hitting more home runs due to the warmer, thinner air caused by global warming might open up some eyes to the climate crisis than otherwise would be.

The study, done by researchers at Dartmouth College, tracked 100,000 games and 220,000 batted balls over decades, and found that more than 500 home runs since 2010 were attributable to climate change. On average, a 1 C-increase in air temperature means a two-percent increase in home runs per game.

While the climate crisis is affecting all kinds of sports—and way more in more dramatic ways—one climate scientist believes that since the study proves how pervasive the impacts are, maybe some baseball fans who otherwise would never give the climate crisis a second thought might now sit up and take notice. Ya never know.

Like they say in the environmental movement, Extinction Rebellion: Tell the truth. Act now. Go beyond politics. And don’t forget to apply some wit and sassy humour, and your best baseball stats, to effect real change.

was this year. n

Glenda Bartosh is an award-winning journalist who couldn’t believe how hollowed out Earth Day

GOING DARK Paris’ famed Eiffel Tower went dark for an hour again this Earth Day—but is the annual event losing its lustre?

PHOTO BY FABIEN LE BOEDEC

MEADOW PARK SPORTS CENTRE SWIM • SKATE • SWEAT • SQUASH

OPEN DAILY: 6 a.m. to 9 p.m.

F FLEXIBLE REGISTRATION

Flex-reg’ classes have a  separate fee and allow you to register for classes on the days that fit your schedule.

R REGISTERED 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.

I INCLUDED FITNESS

These classes are included  with your price of admission for no extra charge.

ARENA SCHEDULE

Please see whistler.ca/recreation for the daily arena hours or call 604-935- PLAY (7529)

Crabapple Hits Music aims to diversify Whistler stages

WHISTLER BAND INTRODUCE WOLVES UNVEIL NEW MUSIC COMPANY WITH MAY 5 SHOW AT APRÈS APRÈS

BY ALYSSA NOEL

MEMBERS OF WHISTLER rock outfit

Introduce Wolves have been playing music together in various projects for more than six years now.

And, in that time, they’ve picked up more than a few valuable lessons.

“We’ve done a lot of things the right way and the wrong way,” says bassist Liam McCook. “We’d like to be able to use that experience and knowledge to put on other events and gigs.” In that vein, they officially launched Crabapple Hits Music last month.

Named after the biggest jump line in the Whistler Bike Park, the new music company will offer artist management and booking services, as well as serve as a production company.

“It was the right time, and the people we spoke to believed in us and what we were doing with our band,” says Rory Malkin, guitarist and vocalist with the band. “Rather than branding [shows] as ‘Introduce Wolves with some bands,’ we thought if we brand it

with this other thing—Crabapple Hits Music— it gives us lots of options for the future.”

To start, they’ve organized their first concert, set for Friday, May 5, at Après Après. Introduce Wolves (who are in the middle of recording a new EP, due out later this year) will headline, along with Vancouver rockers Sleepcircle and Whistler punk band Last Reminisced Heroes.

“The venue thing was always the biggest challenge. In various bands, we’ve played the usual places, but we’ve never had artistic license,” Malkin says.

That said, they understand bars are businesses that need to make money and, in the resort, that usually means playing crowdpleasing covers. But they also feel motivated

to the venue with me and figure out what we need,” Malkin adds. “Based on how stoked the people are that offered help, I think everyone else will be into it.”

The goal, ultimately, is to put on future shows, with or without Introduce Wolves, featuring bands of all genres from across the Sea to Sky and Vancouver.

“Every single Vancouver band we’ve played with at least once has said to us, ‘When can we come up to play Whistler?’” McCook says. “A lot of them are familiar with Whistler, the town. It’s a fun place to be. They want to hang out and party.”

Beyond shows, they’ve also fielded some questions from local musicians looking to take their efforts to the next level.

Their advice ranges from practical— staying on top of to-do lists and getting organized—to conceptual.

“This is the first testing-of-the-water—the first thing Crabapple Hits Music is doing at all,” McCook says. “We’re doing everything in our power to make it a roaring success so we can do it again in the future. When we have that wheel in motion, we can move on to the production and management.”

One of the biggest barriers to organizing a show was finding a venue that was open to three bands playing 45 minutes to an hour of mostly original music.

to prove audiences might be open to more.

“We really feel this pressure to make [the May 5 show] such a success … to show venues and promoters there’s a market for it—and it’s a money-making venture,” McCook says. “These venues are businesses and they need to make money.”

To that end, they’ve had plenty of friends in the industry step up to offer help—ranging from lighting technicians to sound engineers.

“Those guys have taken time out to come

“This is a huge one: only you are responsible for your success and failures,” Malkin says. “It’s really easy. It would’ve been easy for us in our position three or four years ago to just blame the music scene in Whistler or the fact that we can’t do what we want. I see it happen a lot. I get it, it’s hard. It’s not easy. But you are responsible for making something happen for yourself. No one is going to just give you something.”

Tickets for the May 5 show are $15 in advance at tinyurl.com/4b3wpz5v or $20 at the door. n

HIT IT Whistler rockers Introduce Wolves are playing a show alongside Sleepcircle and Last Reminisced Heroes on Friday, May 5.

PHOTO SUBMITTED

“We’ve done a lot of things the right and the wrong way. We’d like to be able to use that experience and knowledge to put on other events and gigs.”

- LIAM MCCOOK

Illuminate Gala tallies record-breaking total

ARTS NEWS: TICKETS FOR KYTAMI AND PHONIK OPS ON SALE NOW; THE POINT’S ANNUAL FUNDRAISER TO FEATURE JILL BARBER

BY ALYSSA NOEL

THE AUDAIN ART MUSEUM’S Illuminate Gala broke its own record last weekend, raising more than $967,000 for the museum’s exhibits and programs.

In 2022, the event brought in $920,000, which, at the time, was the highest amount the gala had raised.

“Funds raised allow the museum to continue to showcase beautifully curated exhibitions and innovative engagement activities for children and adults alike,” the gala website says. “Several touchpoints throughout the night provide guests with opportunities to support museum programming.”

Held on Saturday, April 22 at the Fairmont Chateau Whistler, the black-tie optional evening featured a cocktail reception, dinner, entertainment, a live auction and, of course, an afterparty.

KYTAMI AND PHONIK OPS PLAY AWL!

Looking to check out a show that offers something unique? Look no further than B.C.’s own Kytami and Phonik Ops.

The pair, made up of a violinist and DJ/ producer, respectively, first met at a music festival and have since teamed up to produce a show with “live instrumentation, high energy, and gritty bass.”

Combining their love of drum ’n’ bass, hip hop, punk, and bass-heavy dance music, they will perform at the Maury Young Arts Centre as part of the Arts Whistler Live! Concert series on Friday, May 5.

Tickets are $20 to $25 at showpass.com/ aw-live-kytami/ and the show starts at 8 p.m.

THE POINT HOSTS ANNUAL FUNDRAISER

The Point Artist-Run Centre (PARC) is gearing up for its annual fundraiser, set for Saturday, May 6.

The event will feature an intimate concert—and rare solo set—with Junonominated singer-songwriter Jill Barber. But first, Red Seal Chef Frédéric Royer will prepare dinner, along with wine pairings selected by Scott Serfas, “The Whistler Wine Guy.”

There will also be a silent auction and live art auction that will support The Point’s summer children’s theatre, music and art camps, and the Flag Stop Theatre and Arts Festival.

Tickets are $75 with an annual membership to PARC.

Get them at thepointartists.com/ events/2023-annual-fundraiser.

Speaking of The Point’s summer camps, parents have a few more days to sign up at earlybird prices before the May 1 deadline.

On offer are Improv and Acting Camps with Ira Pettle, Into the Groove Band Camps with Papa Josh, Creative Art Camp with Aude Ray, and Kids Creative Music Camp, also with Ray.

For more on that, visit thepointartists. com/camps.

Another looming deadline at The Point: submissions for the 2023 Indigenous Artisan Showcase are due by May 15. Accepting both two- and three-dimensional work, the selected artists will feature in a show at The Point that starts on Friday, June 23.

The complete set of rules and a submission form is available at thepointartists.com/ events/the-point-artist-run-centres-2023indigenous-artisan-showcase. n

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Watch

THANK YOU!

The

33rd ANNUAL PITCH-IN DAY

Together, 500+ volunteers collected over 1105 kilograms (and counting!) of trash and recycling from Whistler ’s ditches, forests, and streams

A big thank you to Whistler Fire Rescue Service for hosting our volunteer appreciation BBQ , and to the following for their continued support

RECORD SETTER The Audain Art Museum’s Illuminate Gala, which took place on Saturday, April 22, at the Fairmont Chateau Whistler, featured a live art auction.

PHOTO BY  JAMIE-LEE FUOCO

����� �� �������� Zoning Amendment Bylaw - No Public Hearing to be Held

Zoning Amendment Bylaw (4204 Village SquareGaribaldi Professional Building) No. 2380, 2023 (the “proposed Bylaw ”)

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ZERO CEILING FIRESIDE AGM

This session is designed for all levels of meditator— beginners are welcome!

APR28-MAY 05

COMMUNITY

ZERO CEILING WHISTLER – FIRESIDE AGM

Join Zero Ceiling at the Squamish Lil’wat Cultural Centre in Whistler as they bring together our community to get to know the people behind the work to end youth homelessness.

Come gather round a fire beneath the towering cedars and enjoy dinner together. Hear from guest speakers, learn more about the seeds Zero Ceiling Whistler is planting to create change in our community, and join a conversation to learn how you can make an impact on this issue.

For more information and to confirm your attendance, please visit zeroceiling.org/fireside-agm.

> May 5, 4 to 6 p.m.

> Squamish Lil’wat Cultural Centre

> Free

GIVE YOUR BODY A BREAK: MEDITATION TOOLS FOR PHYSICAL WELL-BEING

Grappling with injuries, pain, or other ongoing physical conditions? You’re not alone, and mindfulness tools can help.

In this one-hour workshop, you’ll learn to apply both traditional and science-backed mindfulness techniques to support your well-being as you navigate physical challenges.

This session is intended as an addition to your wellness toolkit, and is not intended to replace other forms of professional support.

Registration is required! Email publicservices@ whistlerlibrary.ca to sign up. This program is for adults.

> May 2, 7 to 8 p.m.

> Whistler Public Library

> Free

SPRING YOGA AT THE AUDAIN ART MUSEUM

Join registered yoga instructor, Amanda Drage, amidst the stunning architecture of the Audain Art Museum for a calming Hatha practice that will expose you to a variety of poses at an easygoing pace.

The classes will emphasize breathing, alignment, and ease as you stretch and strengthen your body and mind.

Registration includes access to the museum galleries on the day of the yoga session from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Bring your own mat and enjoy some mind and body wellness!

> May 4, 9:30 to 10:30 a.m.

> Audain Art Museum

> $5 for museum members, $20 for nonmembers at tinyurl.com/3mtx74x8

WHISTLER ONE DAY WRITING RETREATS

Join us for a full-day writers’ retreat at The Point Artist-Run Centre on the shores of beautiful Alta Lake. The Point provides the perfect venue with views to inspire and some solitude to focus on your work. There will be opportunities to connect with other local writers, or lock yourself away for the whole day and get your word count in.

> April 30, 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.

> The Point Artist-Run Centre

> $40 at whistlerwritersfest.com/programs/ whistler-one-day-writing-retreat

PHOTO BY DESTINATION CANADA / COURTESY OF TOURISM WHISTLER

AROUND A fresh foal spotted among a herd of free-roaming horses in Mount Currie this April sticks close to its mom. PHOTO BY SANDRA LAVOIE 2 BASE TAN Three aspiring models took advantage of a closed Whistler Mountain to work on their base tans near the Dusty’s patio in Creekside, before temperatures spike this weekend. PHOTO SUBMITTED 3 PITCH PLEASE Grades 4-7 students at Whistler’s École La Passerelle show off the result of their hard work cleaning up school grounds as part this year’s Pitch-in Day. The clean-up was conducted in collaboration with Spring Creek’s students and staff. PHOTO SUBMITTED 4 ANONYMOUS ART A buyer checks out a sushi-themed masterpiece during Arts Whistler’s Anonymous Art Show buying night on April 14. PHOTO BY OISIN MCHUGH COURTESY OF ARTS WHISTLER 5 WEATHER CHECK Reagan McKinney, a UBC meteorology consultant, pictured with the Weatherhood station that was installed on April 20 on top of Coast Mountain Excavation’s Whistler headquarters. The weather monitoring mechanism is one of approximately 40 devices that have been installed so far. The Weatherhood network is expected to go live this coming summer through Pique’s parent company Glacier Media. PHOTO SUBMITTED 6 ILLUMINATION STATION Performers from Circus West entertain the crowd at the Audain Art Museum’s annual Illuminate Gala, held on Saturday night, April 22 at the Fairmont Chateau Whistler. The gala raised a record-breaking $967,000 in support of the museum. PHOTO BY JAMIE-LEE FUOCO / FUOCO PHOTOGRAPHY, COURTESY OF THE AUDAIN ART MUSEUM

Creating Whistler’s parks

BY JILLIAN ROBERTS

MUCH OF WHISTLER’S MAGIC comes from the swathe of recreational green space that we enjoy within municipal boundaries. For this, we can thank the visionary thinking that started a Recreation Plan for Whistler, before Whistler Village even existed.

The value of recreational green space was not underestimated in Whistler even before the municipality was created. A community study by W.J. Blakely in 1973 stated, “The acquisition, either through direct purchase or as a condition of approval of development, of public open space and lakefront land for community recreation should be undertaken as soon as possible on behalf of any new municipality incorporated.”

The Resort Municipality of Whistler (RMOW) was incorporated in September 1975, and despite the many tasks facing resort officials, a provisional Recreation Plan was written by 1976. “Recreation and Open Space Considerations for Community Planning” was prepared for the RMOW by Norm Paterson representing the Whistler Developers Association, Paul Burrows representing the Alta Lake Rate Payers Association, Paul Mathews from the Advisory Planning Commission and Councillor Al Raine.

This report recognized that, “Recreation is the primary resource of the Whistler Community and this important asset must be protected and optimized for the benefit of the Whistler Community.” The report also noted that, while the ski season was the prime driver of the economy in Whistler, the summer economy should not be overlooked.

Analyzing recreational potential in Whistler, the report recommended investment into most recreational opportunities except for hunting, target shooting and ski-jumping. Hunting and target shooting were recognized as too noisy and in conflict with Whistler’s other recreational opportunities, while skijumping was not an economically viable investment for the RMOW, although private investment would be supported.

In the 1970s, Wayside Park on Alta Lake was one of the few designated parks in Whistler, as it had previously been a provincial park. Apart from this, public access

to Whistler’s lakes was limited. “The areas of active water-related recreation should be developed as quickly as possible,” the report noted. “The present priority would appear to be public beach access to Alta Lake and boat launching areas. The development of Lost Lake is also important.”

In his copy of the planning document, Trevor Roote, who became the chair of the Advisory Parks and Recreation Commission (APRC), circled this paragraph and wrote “agreed.”

Roote and the APRC expanded on this preliminary planning document to create the original Recreation Master Plan. The plan was constructed largely by volunteers before there was a recreation department at municipal hall. It proposed locations for parks with a linear spine of trails to connect them. Doug Wiley, municipal engineer in the days when the parks person came under engineering, remembered volunteer Roote standing by his desk for hours going over their proposal.

The plan was detailed and thorough. It is quite incredible comparing the highlighted and hand-drawn maps from more than 40 years ago to the system of parks and trails we enjoy today. There are a few linkages still to be connected in Whistler’s Valley Trail system, notably between Alpha Lake Park and Function Junction, and from Mons to Whistler Cay. Other proposals that were not realized include the trail following the railway tracks on the west side of Alta Lake, south of Rainbow Park. On this section today, pedestrians and cyclists are required to share the road with vehicles often speeding along Alta Lake Road. Apart from that, development has stayed surprisingly close to the original plan.

Following the creation of the Master Plan, the land still needed to be acquired and the parks and trails developed. Whistler saw a period of rapid recreational development in the early 1980s. Lost Lake came first, followed by Meadow Park, Lakeside Park and Alpha Lake Park. This is not to mention many smaller local parks and facilities.

The Whistler Museum will explore many interesting stories this spring through its series, Creating Whistler’s Parks. Keep an eye out for these to hear about the municipality’s longest lawsuit, and how the Emerald Forest is related to hotels in the Blackcomb Benchlands. n

PARK IT Wayside Park in July 1979. At the time, the park was the only public access to Alta Lake.

WHISTLER QUESTION COLLECTION

Free Will Astrology

WEEK OF APRIL 28

ARIES (March 21-April 19): According to a study by Newsweek magazine, 58 per cent of us yearn to experience spiritual growth; 33 per cent report having had a mystical or spiritual experience; 20 per cent of us say we have had a revelation from God in the last year; and 13 per cent have been in the presence of an angel. Given the astrological omens currently in play for you Aries, I suspect you will exceed all those percentages in the coming weeks. I hope you will make excellent use of your sacred encounters. What two areas of your life could most benefit from a dose of divine assistance or intervention? There’s never been a better time than now to seek a Deus ex machina. (More info: tinyurl.com/GodIntercession)

TAURUS (April 20-May 20): After the fall of the Roman Empire, political cohesion in its old territories was scarce for hundreds of years. Then a leader named Charlemagne (747–814) came along and united much of what we now call Western Europe. He was unusual in many respects. For example, he sought to master the arts of reading and writing. Most other rulers of his time regarded those as paltry skills that were beneath their dignity. I mention this fact, Taurus, because I suspect it’s a propitious time to consider learning things you have previously regarded as unnecessary or irrelevant or outside your purview. What might these abilities be?

GEMINI (May 21-June 20): I’m turning this horoscope over to Nigerian poet Ijeoma Umebinyuo. She has three messages that are just what you need to hear right now. 1. “Start now. Start where you are. Start with fear. Start with pain. Start with doubt. Start with hands shaking. Start with voice trembling but start. Start and don’t stop. Start where you are, with what you have.” 2. “You must let the pain visit. You must allow it to teach you. But you must not allow it to overstay.” 3. “Write a poem for your 14-year-old self. Forgive her. Heal her. Free her.”

CANCER (June 21-July 22): Historical records tell us that Chinese Emperor Hungwu (1328–1398) periodically dealt with overwhelming amounts of decision-making. During one 10-day phase of his reign, for example, he was called on to approve 1,660 documents concerning 3,391 separate issues. Based on my interpretation of the planetary omens, I suspect you may soon be called on to deal with a similar outpouring. This might tempt you toward over-stressed reactions like irritation and selfmedication. But I hope you’ll strive to handle it all with dignity and grace. In fact, that’s what I predict you will do. In my estimation, you will be able to summon the extra poise and patience to manage the intensity.

LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): Is it even possible for us humans to live without fear—if even for short grace periods? Could you or I or anyone else somehow manage to celebrate, say, 72 hours of freedom from all worries and anxieties and trepidations? I suspect the answer is no. We may aspire to declare our independence from dread, but 200,000 years of evolution ensures that our brains are hard-wired to be ever-alert for danger. Having provided that perspective, however, I will speculate that if anyone could approach a state of utter dauntlessness, it will be you Leos in the next three weeks. This may be as close as you will ever come to an extended phase of bold, plucky audacity.

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): “Dear Sunny Bright Cheery

Upbeat Astrologer: You give us too many sunny, bright, cheery, upbeat predictions. They lift my mood when I first read them, but later I’m like, “What the hell?”

Because yeah, they come true, but they usually cause some complications I didn’t foresee. Maybe you should try offering predictions that bum me out, since then I won’t have to deal with making such big adjustments. —Virgo

Who is Weary of Rosy Hopeful Chirpy Horoscopes.” Dear Virgo: You have alluded to a key truth about reality: Good changes often require as much modification and adaptation as challenging changes. Another truth: One of my specialties is helping my readers manage those good

BY ROB BREZSNY

changes. And by the way: I predict the next two weeks will deliver a wealth of interesting and buoyant changes.

LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): Poet Pablo Neruda wrote, “Let us look for secret things somewhere in the world on the blue shores of silence.” That might serve as a good motto for you in the coming weeks. By my astrological reckoning, you’ll be wise to go in quest for what’s secret, concealed, and buried. You will generate fortuitous karma by smoking out hidden agendas and investigating the rest of the story beneath the apparent story. Be politely pushy, Libra. Charmingly but aggressively find the missing information and the shrouded rationales. Dig as deep as you need to go to explore the truth’s roots.

SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): We’ve all done things that make perfect sense to us, though they might look nonsensical or inexplicable to an outside observer. Keep this fact in your awareness during the next two weeks, Scorpio. Just as you wouldn’t want to be judged by uninformed people who don’t know the context of your actions, you should extend this same courtesy to others, especially now. At least some of what may appear nonsensical or inexplicable will be serving a valuable purpose. Be slow to judge. Be inclined to offer the benefit of the doubt.

SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): I completely understand if you feel some outrage about the lack of passion and excellence you see in the world around you. You have a right to be impatient with the laziness and carelessness of others. But I hope you will find ways to express your disapproval constructively. The best approach will be to keep criticism to a minimum and instead focus on generating improvements. For the sake of your mental health, I suggest you transmute your anger into creativity. You now have an enhanced power to reshape the environments and situations you are part of so they work better for everyone.

CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): In the 17th century, renowned Capricorn church leader James Ussher announced he had discovered when the world had been created. It was at 6 p.m. on October 22 in the year 4004 BCE. From this spectacularly wrong extrapolation, we might conclude that not all Capricorns are paragons of logic and sound analysis 100 per cent of the time. I say we regard this as a liberating thought for you in the coming weeks. According to my analysis, it will be a favourable time to indulge in wild dreams, outlandish fantasies, and imaginative speculations. Have fun, dear Capricorn, as you wander out in the places that singer Tom Petty referred to as “The Great Wide Open.”

AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): We often evaluate prospects quantitatively: how big a portion do we get, how much does something cost, how many social media friends can we add? Quantity does matter in some cases, but on other occasions may be trumped by quality. A few close, trustworthy friends may matter more than hundreds of Instagram friends we barely know. A potential house may be spacious and affordable, but be in a location we wouldn’t enjoy living in. Your project in the coming weeks, Aquarius, is to examine areas of your life that you evaluate quantitatively and determine whether there are qualitative aspects neglected in your calculations.

PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): “Dear Dr. Astrology: Help!

I want to know which way to go. Should I do the good thing or the right thing? Should I be kind and sympathetic at the risk of ignoring my selfish needs? Or should I be a pushy stickler for what’s fair and true, even if I look like a preachy grouch? Why is it so arduous to have integrity?

—Pinched Pisces.” Dear Pisces: Can you figure out how to be half-good and half-right? Half-self-interested and halfgenerous? I suspect that will generate the most gracious, constructive results.

Homework: If you could change into an animal for a day, what would you be? 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

Victoria Shilston

Murdoch+CompanyLtdJUnior

/IntermediateArchitect

JobDescription:Whatweare lookingforintheidealcandidate is;

-2-4yearsworkingexperiencein anarchitecturalfirmorrelateddesignfirm.

GoodworkingknowledgeofVectorworks,SketchUpandother CADPrograms

-Workwellinteamenvironment whileabletoworkindependently

-ExcellentEnglishverbalandwrittencommunicationskills

-Goodknowledgeoflocalcodes andbuildingscience.

-Strongunderstandingofwood frameconstructionanddetailing 604-905-6992murdoch@telus.net

WhistlerMountainSkiCubEvents& SponsorshipCoodinator

TheWhistlerMountainskiclubishiring afulltimepositionasourEvent,sponsorshipandpartnerCoordinator.Ifyou arekeenabouteventsandmarketing andenthusiasticaboutyouthsport, pleasesendCVsto mjanyk@wmsc.info604-932-4644 mjanyk@wmsc.infowww.wmsc.info

WhistlerPersonnelSolutions

Full-time,part-time&tempjobs. Nocost,nostrings.604-905-4194 www.whistler-jobs.com

Fairmont Chateau

Whistler Resort is growing its Housing portfolio and sourcing additional Chalet and Condo Rental contracts for our Hotel Team Members. Our leaders are mature, career driven drivers that know the word respect. Contract terms for property Owners are stress free with no commissions and includes representation from our 4 person fulltime Housing Department working with you 24/7; maintaining all aspects of the tenancy including quarterly inspections.

A great next move for Whistler property Owners that have tired with the Airbnb game or Property Fees. Let’s see if we can make a match and develop a long-term relationship here. General inquiries please email mark.munn@fairmont.com

Building Official (Regular, Full-time)

Looking to contribute to your local community? Consider a career in local government. Join the SLRD’s team of dedicated staff who work together to make a difference in the region. Headquartered in Pemberton, the Squamish-Lillooet Regional District (SLRD) delivers a wide range of regional, sub-regional and local services to its residents. The SLRD is a BC Regional District consisting of four member municipalities (Squamish, Whistler, Pemberton, Lillooet) and four electoral areas. 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 region contains some of the most spectacular forests, waterways, and mountains in the province and affords an endless range of opportunities for outdoor adventure, making it an exceptional place to live, work and play.

The SLRD is are looking for an energetic, results-oriented individual with great customer service and interpersonal skills and a can-do attitude to join the busy Building Department to assist with plan checking and building inspections. The role of the Building Official is split between the Regional District office and the field. The Building Official travels throughout the Electoral Areas of the Regional District conducting field work which includes inspecting construction to ensure that design, material, and safety features meet or exceed standards and conform to accepted plan specifications established by the BC Building Code and SLRD bylaws and regulations.

The ideal candidate is an upbeat team player with great attention to detail who possesses qualification from the Building Officials Association of BC (minimum Level 1), and a post-secondary diploma in Building Technology with related field experience. 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 (9-day fortnight), and hybrid remote work opportunities.

Interested candidates are invited to submit their cover letter and resume (preferably in pdf format) by email to careers@slrd.bc.ca. This posting will remain open until filled; Interested candidates are encouraged to submit their application on or before April 23, 2023.

We sincerely thank all applicants for their interest, however, only those shortlisted will be contacted.

• Program Leader - Myrtle Philip Community Center

• Program Leader - Myrtle Philip Community Center (Canada Summer Job)

• Utilities Chief Operator - Wastewater

• Youth Leader

We are looking to hire another member to our team at Straightline. Experience in Plumbing is required. Gas Fitting and HVAC would be preferred but not essential. Wages are based on experience, Starting between $38-$50/hr.

Part-time or Full-time positions available.

Please call 604-935-8771 or email straightlineplumbingandheating@gmail.com for more information.

The Pinnacle Hotel Whistler has the following positions available:

• ROOM ATTENDANTS

• HOUSEKEEPING SUPERVISOR

Please reply by email: parmstrong@pinnaclehotels.ca

Career Opportunities with the SLRD

Looking to contribute to your local community?

Consider a career in local government. Join the SLRD’s team of dedicated staff who work together to make a difference in the region.

Headquartered in Pemberton, the Squamish-Lillooet Regional District (SLRD) delivers a wide range of regional, sub- regional and local services to its residents. The SLRD is a BC Regional District consisting of four member municipalities (Squamish, Whistler, Pemberton, Lillooet) and four electoral areas. 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 region contains some of the most spectacular forests, waterways, and mountains in the province and affords an endless range of opportunities for outdoor adventure, making it an exceptional place to live, work and play.

The SLRD is currently accepting applications for the following positions:

• Legislative Coordinator (Regular, Full-time)

• Project and Program Coordinator (Regular, Full-time)

• IT Manager (Regular, Full-time)

• Building Official (Regular, Full-time)

The SLRD offers a competitive compensation and benefits package, participation in the Municipal Pension Plan, a compressed work week (nine-day fortnight), hybrid remote work opportunities, and learning and career development opportunities. For more information on these career opportunities, please visit www.slrd.bc.ca/ employment. To apply, please submit a cover letter and resume (preferably in pdf format) by email to careers@slrd.bc.ca

We sincerely thank all applicants for their interest, however, only those shortlisted will be contacted.

CAREER OPPORTUNITIES

Love a good challenge? Passionate about the place you call home? Tourism Whistler is looking for community-loving, mountainappreciating, environment-respecting people to join our team. Come collaborate with us. We’re hiring for the following opportunities:

• Coordinator, Assessments (Part Time, Year Round)

• Summer Visitor Surveyors (Part Time, Summer Contract)

• Maintenance Technician/Cleaner (Full Time, Year Round)*

• Coordinator, Ask Whistler (Full Time, Year Round)

*Limited housing available for Maintenance Technician/Cleaner role

What we offer: a flexible schedule offering work-life balance, a commitment to health and wellness, excellent compensation and benefits package, and a great team environment.

TO VIEW OUR CAREER OPPORTUNITIES, AND TO APPLY, VISIT US ONLINE AT WHISTLER.COM/CAREERS.

experience

beneficial. Duties will include cooking on the hotline, assisting with ordering & receiving of food products, creating specials and new menu items, organizing freezers & fridges, and ensuring kitchen staff are properly stocked and prepared for busy lunch & dinner rushes. Temporary staff housing is available. Please email resume

We’ve

JOIN OUR TEAM

We are currently hiring for the following positions

Project Coordinator Labourer

The Mallard Lounge is hiring an

Assistant Food & Beverage Manager

• Minimum 2 years food & beverage leadership experience

• University/College degree in related discipline an asset

• Thorough knowledge of wines, liqueurs and other beverages

• Sommelier designation an asset

• Ability to work well under pressure in a fast paced environment

• Assist in positioning the Mallard Lounge as one of the top dining choices in Whistler

• Have full knowledge of all restaurant and bar menus

• Create unforgettable experiences for our guests and colleagues

• Assist in achieving financial goals through revenue maximization and managing expenses

Summit Collision is looking to expand their team.

• Auto Damage Estimator

• Parts Manager

• Glass Technician

• Auto Detailer

• Customer Service Representative

• Auto Body Technician (with prior experience)

• Refinish Technician (with prior experience)

• Competitive Benefits

• Career Growth Opportunities

• Extensive Travel Perks

Come

Day Camp Counsellor

Funding through Canada Summer Jobs program:

Must be between 15 and 30 at start of employment, see additional hiring criteria on website posting

Do any of these roles interest you? We are looking to create a position that best suits the ideal candidate – because we are a small operation there is opportunity to gain experience, and certification, in numerous roles that are of most interest to you. Preference given to candidates with previous experience in the automotive industry but not required as training will be provided.

Full-time preferred but part-time will be considered. Extended Health / Dental benefits available. Training provided.

Competitive wages offered based on experience and role.

Email your resume to info@summitcollision.ca

Vacasa’s forward-thinking approach and industryleading technology help set us apart as the largest full-service vacation rental company in North America. We are seeking individuals with a passion for providing exceptional vacation experiences for our Owners and Guests.

We offer competitive wages and benefits: Travel allowance for Squamish/Pemberton-based employees OR Ski Pass/Activity allowance, Extended Medical, RRSP match, Fun & Safe Work Environment-Great Team, opportunities to grow and more.

**SIGNING BONUS** $1000 (FT)

Guest Service Agent

Night Auditor Maintenance Technician

Assistant Housekeeping Manager

Full Time all year round

Apply online today! https://www.vacasa.com/careers/positions or email: paul.globisch@vacasa.com or call to find out more details at 604-698-0520

We thank all applicants for their interest but only those selected for an interview will be contacted.

We're hiring in Whistler and Squamish Financial Controller

Civil Construction Labourer/Pipe Layer Gravel Truck Driver Heavy Equipment Operator

Lil’wat Business Group

Chief Executive Officer

Location: Lil’wat Business Group office, Mount Currie, BC.

Status: Permanent, Full Time.

Reporting to: Lil’wat Management Services Inc, Board of Directors.

Salary: $110,000.00 - $130,000.00

The Chief Executive Officer is responsible for providing the overall leadership and management of the Lil'wat Business Group. The Lil’wat Business Group is a diversified group of companies with acting operations in Forestry, Retail, Mining, Waste Management, and Land Development. The role includes the assessment of new opportunities, planning, and development, reporting, organizational design and development, general operating management, human resource management, financial management, business, and client relations, advising on business interests of title and rights negotiations, and general administrative affairs.

For more information, or to apply for this position please visit our careers page lilwatnation.easyapply.co/ or email HR@lilwat.ca

Assistant

Talent

Hiring Cooks for summer!

Part time approx. 10hr/week

Weekends Only

Set schedule Sat & Sun day shifts

Contract term May-Sept with the possibility to extend to Full time permanent position

Great team, great perks

Apply within or email resume to info@whistlerbeer.com

For

Carpenters

PERKS INCLUDE: FLEXIBLE SCHEDULE • FRIENDS & FAMILY DISCOUNTS EPIC STAFF PARTIES • FREE ACTIVITIES FOR STAFF

please submit your resume to employment@canadianwilderness.com Full job descriptions at: www.canadianwilderness.com/employment/

We are currently hiring the following positions for projects in WHISTLER.

We are currently hiring the following positions for projects in WHISTLER.

Journeymen Carpenters (5+ years)

Journeymen Carpenters (5+ years)

Skilled Labourers

Skilled Labourers

We offer competitive pay, a benefits package, company cell phone plan, interesting projects, a collaborative team environment, and a chance to improve your existing skills.

We offer competitive pay, a benefits package, company cell phone plan, interesting projects, a collaborative team environment, and a chance to improve your existing skills.

We are looking for dedicated team players who want to join a rapidly growing company and establish a long-term career in construction.

We are looking for dedicated team players who want to join a rapidly growing company and establish a long-term career in construction.

Please forward your resume to Lea@gccltd.ca

Please forward your resume to Lea@gccltd.ca

DISTRICT OF SQUAMISH

WE ARE HIRING

Bylaw

Enforcement & Animal Control

Financial Services

Facilities

• Community Patrol Officer – Casual/On-Call

• Finance Coordinator - Regular Part-Time

• Financial Services Specialist – Temporary Full-Time

• Assistant Manager of Facilities – Regular Full-Time

• Assistant Recreation Facility Maintenance Supervisor - Regular

Full-Time

• Utility Operator 1 – Wastewater Collections – Regular Full-Time

• Utility Operator 2 - Wastewater Collections - Casual/ On-Call

• Labourer 2 – Regular Full-Time

Public Works

• Utility Operator 1 – Water Distribution – Regular Full-Time

• Labourer 2 (Multiple Positions) – Temporary Full-Time

• Small Equipment Operator and Winter Truck Driver 3 – Regular

Full-Time

• Recreation Booking and Office Services Coordinator – Regular

Full-Time

• Lifeguard 1 – Regular Part-Time (20-30 hours)

• Lifeguard 1 – Regular Part-Time (4-19 hours)

Recreation

• Recreation Program Instructor 1 – Biking – Temporary Part-Time (4-19 hours) (2 Positions)

• Recreation Program Instructor 1 – Biking – Casual/On-Call (Multiple Positions)

• General Manager of Community Services – Regular Full-Time

Senior Management

• General Manager of Community Planning and Sustainability –Regular Full-Time

Family

PRESCHOOL CHILDHOOD EDUCATOR

INFANT TODDLER EDUCATOR

NCFDC is seeking On-Call: Infant Toddler, Special Needs, Early Childhood Educator, and ECE-Assistant Licensed individuals, we invite you to submit your application. The Early Childhood Educators work as team members with other child care setting staff and with all the children and families providing general support to the whole program to ensure effective inclusion of the children. The successful candidate will have demonstrated ability in:

• Ability to develop and maintain a warm, caring, responsive relationship with the child.

• Ability to establish and maintain supportive, collaborative relationships with families and staff.

• Ability to maintain confidentiality, positive, professional, nonjudgmental attitude

• Physically ability to carry out the duties of the position.

• Planning and implementing developmentally appropriate curriculum that supports community, inclusion and is culturally significant for young Aboriginal children.

• Understanding and working knowledge of Child Care Licensing regulations.

• Interpersonal, written, oral communication skills and maintaining positive communication with parents.

• Collaborating with community service providers, Self-directed and able to initiate and complete projects.

In addition, the Early Childhood Educators will have:

• A minimum of 2 years work experience in a child care setting.

• Valid Early Childhood Educator Certificate, ECE Licence to Practice or going to school to take Early Childhood Educator courses.

• Clear Criminal Records Check & Current First Aid.

• Food Safe or willingness to obtain.

• Some knowledge of curriculum and philosophies in First Nations Early Childhood settings.

Terms of Employment:

• Monday to Thursday - 8:30am - 4:30pm.

• Start Date: As soon as possible.

• Wage: (negotiable depending on experience).

Cover Letter & Resume to:

Title: Anita Patrick, Director

Agency: N’Quatqua Child and Family Development Centre

Email: anita.patrick@nquatqua.ca

Phone Number: 604-452-3584

Fax: 604-452-3280

Deadline: until position is filled

We thank all those who apply. Only those candidates selected for interview will be contacted.

For

Staff Accommodation, Perks & Benefits Manager,

Marketing & Communications

Develop and execute Whistler Olympic Park’s overall marketing strategy!

Whistler Olympic Park is a world-class destination for outdoor recreation & Nordic sports. The role increases awareness and engagement for Whistler Olympic Park, driving visitation both in winter and summer while playing an integral role within a supportive, cross-functional team delivering exceptional guest experiences.

itationbothinwinterandsummer whileplayinganintegralrolewithinasupportive,cross-functionalteam deliveringexceptionalguestexperiences.

Our ideal candidate:

Extensiveexperiencein:

Extensive experience in:

•Deliveringsuccessfulmarketing&communicationprograms

Delivering successful marketing & communication programs

•Developingcontent&communicationsforavarietyof channelsincludingwebsiteemailandsocialmedia

• Developing content & communications for a variety of channels including website, email and social media

•Managingcontractedagencies

• Managing contracted agencies

Passionforoutdoorrecreationandsport

Passion for outdoor recreation and sport

What we offer:

Competitive wage & staff housing options

Competitivewage&staffhousingoptions

Extensive benefits package & perks, incl. health & wellness options, WB season pass financing & more

Extensivebenefitspackage&perks,incl.health&wellnessoptions, WBseasonpassfinancing&more

APPLY NOW!

whistlerolympicpark.com/careers

ACROSS

DOWN

LAST WEEKS’ ANSWERS

Taking stock of Stockholm Syndrome in Whistler

“That leaves only me to blame ‘cause Mama tried.”

-Merle Haggard

MAMA ALWAYS said, “If you can’t say something nice about someone, don’t say anything.” I would be surprised if your mama or someone in your life hadn’t once said the same thing to you.

I was racking my brain to come up with something nice to say about Vail Resorts’ management of Whistler Blackcomb for this week’s piffle. I wasn’t having much success.

BY G.D. MAXWELL

I thought about thanking them for closing Whistler earlier than ever this year, covid years excepted. It made the choice of which mountain to ski easier. Saved the gas I might have burned driving to Creekside, since it became impossible to ski down to the village from the upper lots.

Then I remembered what I often told visitors when they’d ask me which I thought was the best mountain to ski. “If the hardest decision you have to make today is skiing Whistler or Blackcomb, you are leading a wonderful life.”

So that would be false praise.

I thought about thanking them for keeping at least half the washrooms open at Glacier Creek Lodge, but that seemed a stretch given the number of convenient trees on the mountain.

And then, then, I was happily shocked to read management had graciously decided to turn the bullwheel on the Blackcomb gondy for a few hours Monday. I had a warm, fuzzy feeling about that. Thought maybe they were finally taking the quality of guests’ experience to heart. I was grateful. Giddy, even. Happy to think there would be relief from the lineups at the Ex gondy.

I was momentarily mindful of the letter in Pique in late February admonishing everyone for “whining” about the “lack of this and lack of that” and reminding us to feel empathy for the locals who worked hard on the mountains and might mistake our whining about Vail’s management decisions as complaints about them.

Just to be clear, no offence, fellow travellers. I know many of you and hope you know we know it isn’t your fault. We appreciate your continued efforts and, as I used to say to guests who complained about something I had no control over during the years I worked for WB, “You understand you’re speaking to the bottom of the food chain, don’t you?”

But then, thinking about something nice to say, the penny dropped.

My warm fuzzy, my gratitude, was a classic symptom of Stockholm Syndrome.

For those of you unfamiliar with

or who’ve forgotten about Stockholm Syndrome—or for those of you who mistakenly believe the only contributions Sweden has made to popular culture are meatballs, Ikea and ABBA—let us return, briefly, to 1973.

In August of that year, a bank in Stockholm was held up by a machine gunwielding robber. What was supposed to go down as a quick capitulation of his demands turned into a six-day-long siege, during

taken away from the experience. It leaves me hesitant to say anything nice about putting something, however brief, back.

I don’t expect the Broomfieldians calling the shots to develop the kind of customerfirst attitude that defined WB in the past. But just as a courtesy, how about simply telling us the truth?

The decision to shut down the Blackcomb gondy—and the original decision to stop running Glacier Express—has nothing to do

we’ve already made all the money we’re going to make off you skiers this season, so we’re going to give you just enough to keep feeding the addiction and turn our focus on the summer sightseers.”

Of course, those of us who live here or nearby will be back next season. But what about the folks who came here from afar for a week or two of spring skiing? What about the ones I see lined up for a bus to take them to the Village because what they thought was accommodation convenient to the base of Blackcomb—Four Seasons, Chateau, Benchland condos—isn’t so convenient when the main lift up the mountain isn’t running? Or, as reported, the other-abled skiers who rely on the B gondy to get them and their equipment up. Did the website mention it wouldn’t run Monday to Friday earlier this season when they booked their accommodation?

which the four hostages came to empathize more with their captor—who extended them multiple kindnesses—than their would-be rescuers.

Okay, let’s be clear here—I’m not suggesting we’re hostages. That said, we are captives, those of us who have chosen to live here, to become part of the town, to put down roots and stay. We’re captive to a lifestyle we’ve embraced and are loathe to leave behind. We’re captive to our addiction for sliding down two of the best snowy mountains in North America.

And if we’ve been here very long, we know how much better it can be... because we’ve lived it. We know what’s been slowly

with maintenance. Glacier Express? You’ve got all summer and most of autumn to do maintenance on it. And you’ve already listed on the website May 23 to June 16, 25 days, as the time everything will be closed for maintenance. How long does it take? And why hasn’t anyone seen work being done on the lift during its closure last week?

The timing of the maintenance has nothing to do with Technical Safety BC. They just inspect your work and green-light the lift to run.

So, let’s see… that pretty much leaves saving the cost of running the lift as the prime motivation. Wouldn’t it be refreshing to just say so? Or is it too harsh to say, “Hey,

One of the many career-limiting moves I made when I worked for a large, Canadian financial institution occurred during one of their regular belt-tightening periods. Cutting costs, especially salaries, became the focus. It was the early days of personal computers, and I made a complex spreadsheet modelling the impact of cutting costs on revenue. In fact, I cut them to zero. The impact was less than desired, but without the salaries, the doors would close. Reductio ad absurdum.

Then, as now, the lesson is you can’t save your way to profitability. The surer route is to grow revenues. That ain’t going to happen by pissing off the people you depend on for that revenue. Especially when they have choices and you have competition.

Funny thing, though, they didn’t believe me. And I’m sure Vail’s management won’t either. ■

I was racking my brain to come up with something nice to say about Vail Resorts’ management of Whistler Blackcomb for this week’s piffle. I wasn’t having much success.

Happy Administrative Professionals Day

Left to right: Ron Mitchell: Managing Broker, Tama-Lynn: Assistant to Managing Broker, Julia: Senior Client Care & Marketing Coordinator, Marley: Client Care Coordinator, Lumi: Accounts, Kaitlyn: Conveyance & Office Manager, Aneta: Client Care

Tapley

Serenity

custom-built gem situated on a 2/3 acre of flat lot with a manicured yard. This 5,900 sqft house was well designed and built with the best craftmanship and finest quality materials. A true Whistler dream