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Past, present and future tense

Time is an interesting concept. It’s a human invention, of course. But still, what a way to frame one’s passage though the world. Consider: it was 35 years ago this month that I first set foot in Whistler. And it was total happenstance.
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The Old Creekside gondola barn

Time is an interesting concept. It’s a human invention, of course. But still, what a way to frame one’s passage though the world. Consider: it was 35 years ago this month that I first set foot in Whistler. And it was total happenstance. New to the West Coast — and horny for adventures — I’d jumped at the invitation to leave the city behind to spend a weekend in the mountains. I had no inkling that this would be a life-changing trip however…

The weekend didn’t start out all that auspiciously. Can’t remember why I was the one appointed to drive the old VW bug (I probably volunteered), but there I was — 19 years old and driving like I was still in Quebec. Heck, I came from the highlands of Charlevoix. I knew what a curve in the road was all about. Slow to 20? You gotta be kidding.

That was my thinking as we came careening off the first big turn in the Cheakamus Canyon. My second thought, as we hit the huge right-hander after it, was: “Oh my god, they really mean it!”

Nobody said anything after we wrestled the car back onto the gravel. In fact, I don’t think any of my passengers said much at all until we reached our destination on Green Lake. To my credit though, I mostly kept the VW’s tires on the highway for the remainder of the trip.

I remember driving by the old Whistler Mountain base at Creekside like it was yesterday. It’s an image that recurs easily in my mind’s eye, like an old sepia postcard on the fridge door. Picture this: an (already) dilapidated-looking brown-coloured gondola barn with a faded “WHISTLER MOUNTAIN” painted on its side, a couple of wood-panelled outbuildings on either flank and a football field-sized parking lot by the highway. That’s all there was. This was Whistler.

It was hard to accept what my eyes were telling me. In my family, you see, Whistler Mountain had acquired something of a reputation. My parents had spent a couple of weeks here back in 1967. They’d come home enamoured. And the story of the new West Coast giant had grown from there. In my mind, it was the Canadian Aspen. Hip, sophisticated and very progressive. But it was more than that too. It was big and snowy and full of great skiers. I mean, Pierre Trudeau and his very cool young wife, Maggie Sinclair, hung out on its slopes. Ski legend Jim McConkey directed the Ski School. Nancy Greene and Al Raine ran ski camps in the summer here. There’d even been a big exposé on its ski bums published in the influential Weekend Magazine a few months before!

I mean, this place was supposed to be happening.

Somehow all this didn’t jibe with what I was seeing out the Bug’s window. Alta Lake (as Whistler was then called) was still on the edge of the world. This wasn’t Aspen. This was the bush. Logging was still active and throughout the valley rude squares of mountain forest were totally shorn of growth. And it wasn’t pretty. This was truly the New World, I thought to myself, a place where extraction and tourism clashed head-on.

But it’s not like I was disappointed. The winter before had been a big one evidently. For the peaks around the valley — from Rainbow to Wedge; from Whistler to Fissile and Blackcomb Peak — were still festooned with crowns of dazzling white. I couldn’t get enough of them. I’d never seen forests and mountains like these before. It seemed like the slopes ran forever, the summits rising miles above the valley. It was a land of giants. Of grandfather cedar and spruce and fir. Of million-year-old glaciers and timeless granite.

And then I discovered the lakes. And another lesson was learned.

The parents of our host, as it turned out, owned a cabin on Green Lake. It was a hot day. The trip had been longer than we’d planned and we’d all gotten a bit warm in the car. A body of water had never looked so inviting. All I could think about was parking the damn Bug and jumping in the lake. I figured it would be the same for my travel mates.

I guess my passengers were still a bit queasy from the trip, for the moment I found a place to park they all oozed out of the car and slouched their way into the house. “What about a swim?” I suggested. No response. Not one of them gave me a backward glance.

Being young and bold (which often rhymes with stupid) I decided to go for it alone. Forget the unpacking ritual. Never mind the being polite to the host niceties. I was going for a swim.

The sight that greeted me from the dock at the back of the house almost took my breath away. Across the water, above the rough-hewn cabins of Parkhurst, was an alpine vista of Coast Mountain peaks that defined the genre. Steep-sided and lofty in stature. Mean-looking almost. And certainly not kind to the foolish. I was progressively becoming entranced by the place.

But first I needed that swim. I checked the water off the dock to make sure it was deep enough to dive — it was — took a couple of deep breaths and dove head-long into the glacier-fed waters of Green Lake like I was diving off the deep end of the Kitsilano pool.

Did I already mention that I grew up in the highlands of Quebec’s Charlevoix County? A place that re-defines the notion of skin-crinkling cold? A place whose cold-water lakes and streams are notorious? Well, I spent much of my youth playing in those frigid waters and I thought I was pretty much immune to aqua-borne chills. But nothing had prepared me for this.

Maybe the life of a pampered urban athlete in Vancouver had made me soft. Maybe it was the long trip and my driving misadventures in the canyon. Maybe it’s just that winter had lingered a little longer in the high country that year and the lake was truly cold.

Whatever. I hit the water and it hit me back like a Joe Frazier uppercut to the kisser. And I was out in the first round. I couldn’t reason. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t breathe. All I could think was: cold, cold, cold! I h-a-v-e-t-o-g-e-t-o-u-t-o-f-h-e-r-e.

And I did. I don’t know how. My mind went blank. But suddenly I was back on the dock, sitting on the wet cedar planks, shivering like a madman and suffering the worst ice-cream headache I’ve ever experienced.

So this is Whistler, I thought to myself. Interesting place. Lots of lessons to learn. I think I’m starting to like it already….

I didn’t make the move right away. But it fundamentally changed my relationship to Vancouver and my dream of making the Olympic swimming team. For now I had this little devil in my ear constantly whispering terms of endearment. Think of the mountains, it would say. Think of all that snow and the kind of skiing you could be doing now.

It didn’t take long. Maybe six months. Maybe slightly longer. But like so many others who’ve been touched by the crazy, wild, uncontainable Whistler magic, my life didn’t feel complete until I’d packed all my things, put my books and swimsuits and goggles in storage and borrowed my friend’s Bug to drive me and the rest of my stuff up to Whistler.

Thirty-five years. Such a long time. And yet so little, too. For the years — both for Whistler and alas, myself — have seemed to move too quickly. We grow, we age, we mellow or we don’t; that’s the way it is over time. And as much as I mourn my male-patterned baldness, stiff joints and middle-aged ailments, I also mourn the imminent urbanization of this beautiful, once-wild mountain environment we proudly called Alta Lake.

Those thoughts were foremost in my mind as I contemplated the new Whistler socialscape without the positive energy of Al Schmuck. Truly a Whistler elder — even if he would be the last one to ever bestow such a title on himself — Al touched so many people during his nearly four decades up here that I can honestly say this town is a sadder place without him. He was much too young to leave us so soon.

But then that too is a sign of maturity. We’re losing our first generation of Whistler Ski Bums. We’re starting to see the passing of those wild, unruly, creative, irreverent counter-culture heroes that the Weekender memorialized back in march of 1973. And what a great start to the story those early residents were able to shape! I wonder what their heirs will produce in turn.

Which is maybe a good place to end. Or to begin. For the Whistler story is still very young. It’s up to all of us to see it continues to grow in a positive and progressive way.