FACES OF WHISTLER: Growing Old with Whistler

GROWING OLD WITH WHISTLER

MEET THREE LONG-TIME WHISTLER LOCALS WHO SHARE THE SECRETS TO LONGEVITY IN THE MOUNTAINS

STORY BY MEGAN LALONDE | PHOTOS BY DAVID BUZZARD

Whistler is a young town, by most measures.

It was incorporated as a resort municipality 47 years ago, less than a decade after chairlifts started spinning on Whistler Mountain.

The average age of Whistler’s population was 37.9 in 2021, per Statistics Canada’s most recent census—a full 3.8 years younger than the national average.

According to that census data, only 10 locals living in Whistler had celebrated their 90th birthday. Isobel MacLaurin is one iconic Whistlerite who can claim that honour—she turned 91 this past June.

Not that you’d know by meeting her. She still skis her favourite run, Dave Murray Downhill (though only in fair weather, and only once last season), drives her car, is a fixture on the dance floor at community events and is quick with a sharp-witted joke and bright, mischievous smile.

She’s a prime example of the locals who embody Whistler’s youthfulness in their spirit rather than the number of candles they blow out.

MacLaurin, an artist, and her late husband, Don first visited Whistler—or Alta Lake, as it was then known—in 1961. They found a plot of land and built a lakeside cabin where they spent weekends and summers. They moved in full-time once their four kids finished school in the Lower Mainland, and never left. Aside from the travels that took the couple to countless destinations up, down and across the globe, that is.

Most recently, in December 2019, MacLaurin and her daughter took an expedition ship to Antarctica, followed by a trip to New York City. This Christmas, MacLaurin is heading to Nicaragua where her son lives, and bringing along the children and grandchildren who live all over the globe.

But it’s perched on a wicker bench swing in the sunroom of her treasure-filled cabin where MacLaurin engages in her regular afternoon ritual: brie cheese, crackers and a dry apple cider, enjoyed with a good magazine.

Ask MacLaurin what her secrets to longevity are, and she’ll say “Eating what I did when I was young—lots of cream,” she says with a laugh. “I love cream … And always eating a good breakfast.”

Spend more than a few minutes with her, and it becomes apparent that avoiding the internet, finding humour in every possible situation (she and her husband once hosted a living wake, complete with coffins she painted) and generally living by her own rules, can also be added to that list.

“Nobody in Whistler ever wants to be old,” MacLaurin says. “I revel in the fact that I am old! Good lord, look what I get away with.”

TERRY ‘TOULOUSE’ SPENCE WITH HIS COLLECTION OF SKI RACING MEMORABILIA.

“I was a Peter Pan — I didn't get married until I was 46 years old.”

– TERRY SPENCE

TERRY SPENCE, known to many in Whistler as “Toulouse,” concurs with MacLaurin that nutrition has a role to play in longevity. In the Spence household, that looks like plant-based meals interspersed with an occasional cut of elk from a friend’s hunting trip or piece of salmon.

But first and foremost, “start out with good DNA,” he says.

Spence left his northwestern Ontario hometown of Fort William for Whistler in 1971 on the recommendation of his brother. Like countless locals past and present, he arrived intending to ski “for a month or a couple of weeks, or maybe even a season.” That was five decades ago.

The move west swept the now 80-year old onto a wild ride that began in an abandoned lumber camp, bartending at the once-iconic and now defunct Boot Pub and posing for the infamous Toad Hall poster, a 1973 snapshot in time that perfectly captured Whistler’s wild and carefree hippie days.

Later, it included living out of a suitcase as a masseur and start coach for Canada’s World Cup downhill team at the height of the Crazy Canuck era, when the alpine race team captured the world’s imagination with their speed and daring.

As Spence demonstrates, longevity isn’t synonymous with maintaining the fast-paced lifestyle of your 20s, 30s or 40s. After meeting his wife, Ann, and welcoming their two kids, “My wife said to me, ‘Look, these kids need a dad, you can’t be travelling all over the world,’” Spence recalls. “I was a Peter Pan — I didn't get married until I was 46 years old.”

Plus, “I had bad knees, bad ankles. I was taking four Naproxens in the morning just to go to work.”

He eventually focused his coaching more locally—he was tapped to guide King Charles III and his sons when they visited Whistler in 1997—before leaving ski school and focusing solely on the B&B he and Ann operated in Tapley’s Farm from 1987 up until the pandemic.

You can still find Spence on the slopes a few days each season, though these days, he tends to spend more time ripping through Whistler trails on his crosscountry skis or e-bike, with his dog, a springer spaniel named Frankie, in tow.

A dog is the first sight you’ll likely notice walking into TRUDY ALDER’s home. Specifically, a waist-high Leonberger named Kela trotting over with her tail wagging.

Playing in the bushes that separate Alder’s back lawn from Green Lake, Kela herself could be the definition of longevity: the bouncy seven-yearold could easily be mistaken for an overgrown puppy if not for the sprinkling of grey on her snout.

Longevity, however, is a term Kela’s 83-year-old owner seems reluctant to associate with herself lately.

Alder arrived in Whistler in 1967, one year after immigrating to Vancouver from the small Austrian town where she grew up and learned to ski.

“I wanted to feel and experience the distance,” she remembers, “so I took the train to Vienna from my hometown, then the train to Rotterdam, then the ship from Rotterdam to Montreal. We were supposed to be on the boat for seven days and we were on the way for 11 days, because there was a storm … yep, I felt that distance.”

She immigrated with her husband, Helmut Salmhofer. The pair managed the Tyrol Lodge on Alta Lake Road, with Alder also ski instructing, before moving on to building and selling chalets throughout the valley. Though Alder found opportunity, community, love and some pretty decent skiing in the Valley, her decades in Whistler haven’t been free of hardship.

Her first husband died of cancer a few years after the couple arrived in B.C. Since, she’s battled cancer herself, as well as undergone two back surgeries— needed after sustaining a climbing injury shortly after moving to Vancouver—two knee replacements, and more recently, suffered a broken shoulder.

Each time she pushed through the arduous recoveries and found a way back to her usual routines: daily paddles around Green Lake, ocean kayaking trips, cross-country skiing with her dogs, ski touring, smashing out back-to-back laps

TRUDY ALDER IN FRONT OF HER HOUSE AT TRUDY’S LANDING, A STREET NAMED AFTER HER.

of Peak to Creek while training for Peak to Valley ski races, helping with construction projects and chopping firewood for the winter. “I was happy to do physical work … I worked hard and loved it,” she says.

But some blows are more difficult to recover from. Alder lost her husband of 40 years, Peter, in July 2021.

“Peter and I were a very good couple,” she says of the legendary ski area manager and builder she married in the Whistler Skiers’ Chapel. “I miss him terribly.”

Add in the ongoing shoulder struggles that keep Alder out of her kayak, coupled with a few as-yetundiagnosed health concerns that make skiing more challenging than it used to be, Alder admits finding the motivation to revisit those once-regular activities isn’t always easy.

But longevity, even in the context of the unforgiving mountains, doesn’t have to mean keeping up with the crowds on the slopes. As Alder proves, it can more impressively manifest in resilience.

Once again, she is the holder of a super senior’s ski pass for this winter season, purchased at an early-bird rate of $174.50. She is determined to use it.

Her tips for other skiers who want to stay on the slopes into their ninth decade? “[Limit] accidents, so your body is… in a skiable condition, and,” she adds with a laugh, “don’t miss the early-bird. That’s all you need to do.” W