Howard and Lil Goldsmid don't profess to know the secret to a long and successful marriage but they do know Whistler has played a role in keeping them together these 65 years.
The mountains, the skiing, the youthfulness, the certain joy in making the most of the outdoors, knitted the Goldsmids together early in their marriage, creating unbreakable bonds.
"The mountains have really done it for us," said Howard, warm cup of tea to his right, Lil to his left on a stool by the fire on a rainy June day.
Howard is 92 years old and still bikes and skis. Lil, also known as Nana G, is 89 and reads to local Grade 1 children. On Tuesday, July 10 they will mark their 65th wedding anniversary. And as homage to the community they love so much, they are having a party for their big day, with a catch — it's also a fundraiser for the Whistler Food Bank. The event runs from 1-4 p.m. at Dusty's and anyone who knows Howard and Lil is welcome. They in turn would welcome any monetary contribution to the food bank.
"This is a food bank fundraiser. We happen to be using our two-bit excuse for the party," said Howard with a self-deprecating wave of his hand.
Theirs is undoubtedly a love story, though they don't talk in those kinds of romantic terms. Rather, they speak like a long-married couple, prompting oft-heard stories from each other, jogging memories, smiling together at shared experiences, telling the kind of tales that wrap around you like a warm blanket on a dreary day.
Howard and Lil met during World War II, rollerskating of all things, and simply liked each other.
"And that was it," said Howard. "We just hit it off right away."
He stands with the teapot and by unspoken consent fills Lil's cup with fresh tea.
"Thank you dear," said Lil, without missing a beat.
Howard was still in the service — ground crew involved in the food service — when they met and heading back to base on the Queen Charlotte Islands.
His time on the Aleutian Islands in the Northern Pacific Ocean, which were occupied in part by Japanese forces, was over and he was tasked now with buying the best of food for the troops, anything to keep the men from going stir crazy in the final year and a half of the war.
Lil pipes in: "He's been keeping my morale up all these years!"
They were married after the war was over. Kids soon followed — Leslee and Bruce.
The Goldsmids owned seven butcher shops in Vancouver. Howard, more often than not, would leave for work by 7 a.m. and wouldn't be back home until 7 p.m.
Lil always made sure he had a warm dinner to come home to, though that meant cooking twice every night.
When she said, "I do" back in 1947 she never imagined she would be saying "I do" to 65 years of making dinner, joked Lil.
Both spent many hours standing on their feet behind the counter at the butcher shops, serving customers with a smile.
Even now, every Christmas Howard still de-bones seven or eight turkeys for a select list of Whistler friends, said son Bruce.
"You can't get on the list anymore," he laughed.
Friend Bob Calladine remembers cycling over to the shop in Kerrisdale as a teenager, not only to buy meat but also to have a yarn with the Goldsmids who, like himself, were heavily involved in the Vancouver ski racing community.
But it's not the ski racing, or the butcher shops that Calladine talks about when asked about Howard and Lil.
"Lil has always had a heart of gold," said Calladine. "So has Howard."
Still, Lil was BC downhill champion in 1946.
That's one of the reasons why he married her, joked Howard. His racing career wasn't going anywhere and he thought Lil was his ticket to getting the Goldsmid name on a cup.
With skiing genes like that flowing through the blood, it's easy to see why they were keen to come to Whistler. They owned one of the first condos built in town.
Then built their Whistler house in 1969/70 and for a decade it was their second home in the mountains before they settled here full time.
Both Bruce and Leslee were avid skiers, as were Howard and Lil. Ski racing was a way of giving back to the community — standing at the start gates, timing at the finish line, getting up at 4 a.m. to make lunches for the volunteers. They were always volunteering. They still are.
"That community has been great for them, but they've also welcomed everybody into their home," said Bruce.
Little did they know it then but the Whistler house, with its beds of well-tended flowers and planters leading a welcoming path to the front door, would be a glue of sorts holding the family together, always bringing them back to Whistler, and to each other.
"Skiing and the mountains kept the family together," said Howard.
That first winter at the Whistler house Howard remembers buying a big Land Rover to make it through the snow.
The big car was a blessing and a curse. Being the Goldsmids with the Land Rover meant getting lots of phone calls on blustering wintry nights to pull cars out of ditches.
People always wanted to give him something for the help, said Howard shaking his head, and he was loath to take any money for helping somebody out. What to do?
So, he had a tin, much like the tins in his stores that collected the spare nickels and dimes, and asked people, if they wanted, to make a donation to the Children's Hospital.
He still shakes his head in wonder that Whistler donated $800 for all those tows.
It's a lot of money today, a lot more in 1970.
It's stories like that which stoked the fire of fondness for the town.
It could have been snuffed out just as easily too when a decade later the Goldsmids invested in the village Clock Tower building in the early 80s. They had so much faith that Whistler was going somewhere that they began to build.
That was before the global recession of the eighties hurt Whistler hard. Banks were charging 22 per cent interest. Bankruptcy threatened on many corners.
Howard and Lil lost out, financially. And gained true insight into the idea that the almighty buck isn't the be-all and end-all.
"That was maybe a setback in our lives," mused Howard.
They didn't blame each other, said Lil.
They never did play the blame game through their marriage.
"A person knows," she said gently. "They don't need to be told."
And they didn't keep score.
Without saying it to each other, they both knew what they wanted in their marriage.
"We wanted our marriage to be a success," said Lil.
While they didn't keep score over real or imagined slights and hurts, they continue to keep a long running score in their daily game of cribbage.
In their sunroom overlooking Alta Lake, Howard and Lil sit down daily to one game of crib. That's been going on for a few years now, said Howard, referring to a small piece of white paper with the running tally.
With more than 1,200 games under their belts at two cents a point, 25 cents a game and double for skunk, Howard and Lil seem fairly evenly matched.
True. Lil owes Howard almost $400. But then Howard owes Lil almost $350.
They aren't ready to settle their debts yet — their game, like their love story, is still ongoing.
