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Celebrating the relationship economy

By Michel Beaudry He says it’s hard-wired in him. The spirit of hospitality, he explains, has always been there. “For me. It’s about doing things unconditionally,” Mike Varrin adds with a near twist of a smile.

By Michel Beaudry

He says it’s hard-wired in him. The spirit of hospitality, he explains, has always been there. “For me. It’s about doing things unconditionally,” Mike Varrin adds with a near twist of a smile. “My biggest reward in life has always been about making the people I care about happy.”

Real words or just spin quotes? A cynical mask or an authentic personality? In the head-snapping, neck-turning, name-dropping world of Thunder Bay’s one-and-only Mike Varrin, anything is possible. Especially for a guy who admits to a lifelong fascination with magicians. But I like to think the guy is genuine…

The Reverend Mike — or the Dark Prince, your choice — turns 40 this week. And the avuncular manager of the Garibaldi Lift Company is flying higher than ever. Equal parts entertainer, director, procurer, psychologist, impresario — and boy-next-door mountain host — Varrin has taken an under-achieving Whistler watering hole and transformed it into one of the most celebrated après-ski spots in the valley.

Ad it’s not just a local thing. For the first time ever, an Intrawest-owned drinking establishment has been named Skiing Magazine’s Number One Mountain Bar in North America. “Well, I did take pretty good care of those journalist guys during their visit here,” says Mike with only a hint of tongue-in-cheek smugness. “Maybe now my bosses won’t complain so much when I ask them to raise my entertainment budget…”

His eyes let me know his words are only half in jest. And then he laughs, long and easy and totally without rancour. “I was first hired at Blackcomb by a guy called Jeff Stipec,” he recounts in his usual quick-paced stutter style. “Those were the days when there were still fierce mountain loyalties in this valley.” He laughs again. “Heck — people didn’t cross Fitzsimmons Creek unless they had a really good reason to.”

It was 1994, Whistler was booming, and Stipec wanted Varrin to take over Blackcomb’s lucrative après-ski bar at the base of the mountain. “Running a place like Merlin’s was an attractive job for a 28 year old and I was pretty keen,” he says. “Besides, it combined my two most favourite things in life — skiing and hospitality.” He pauses. Smiles hugely at the memory. “During the interview, Jeff told me what my mission would be: ‘I want you to come in here and break some rules!’ he said. And that was it. I was hired.” Varrin smiles. “So that’s what I’ve been doing ever since…”

The grin inflates into a laugh. “You do have to be a bit of a magician to run this kind of operation,” he adds. “To be successful, you have to convince everyone — staff, suppliers, guests, locals, even performers — that they are the most important people in your life. That’s quite a magic trick, if you think about it. And it takes a lot of positive energy.”

Which is something he seems to have in large reserves. “Yeah — I’ve been involved in a few memorable parties around here,” he says. Still, he admits it’s not always easy to get consent for some of the more imaginative events he comes up with. “But then I’ve always believed in asking for forgiveness rather than waiting for permission…”

And it’s worked — mostly.

Remember the one when Guitar Doug came flying down onto Blackcomb Square in a tandem paraglider singing and playing his guitar? “The whole patio at Merlin’s is looking up and screaming,” remembers Varrin. “Doug has this shtick, where at the beginning of his show he calls out: ‘Who’s thirsty?’ Well — as he’s floating down to earth, he calls it out and everyone on the patio responds. Meanwhile I have 75 jugs of Margarita’s ready to go — one for each table. And while we’re serving them, the bylaw officer is right at my elbow saying ‘You can’t do this…’”

Or how about the “Drop Your Gear For a Beer” event? “I brought in these portable hot tubs,” says Varrin with just a murmur of a giggle. “And we set them up on the outskirts of Merlin’s. But I was a bit naïve. I never realized that Whistler people didn’t need an invitation to take their clothes off…”

One of the most remarkable Varrin parties happened outside the country. “It was shortly after the two mountains had joined up,” he remembers, “and the newly formed Whistler-Blackcomb team wanted to go down to the Las Vegas Ski Show and really demonstrate to the industry what this new mega resort was all about.” So Varrin came up with the idea of putting on a classic Whistler party — set in Vegas. “We printed invitations on doctors’ prescription pads had them hand-delivered throughout the show by young models disguised as nurses. We also brought down a couple of well-known Whistler go-go dancers and a DJ and reserved one of the hottest nightspots in town.”

The party’s success was beyond everyone’s expectations. “At one point in the evening, the lineup to get in reached halfway around the block,” remembers Varrin. “I had to send people out regularly to ‘rescue’ VIP’s stuck out there.” He sighs. “That night, everyone thought they were VIP’s…”

But the budget also ballooned beyond expectations. Varrin got his wrist slapped for that — and slapped quite hard. But he says he wouldn’t have done it any other way. “The things you can’t measure are sometimes the most important things in life,” he says. “If you want people to truly connect with what you’re doing, you have to do things unconditionally — in the true spirit of hospitality — without looking for something in return.”

And as simple as that concept might sound, he believes it’s one of the toughest equations to reconcile in the hospitality business. And one, emphasizes Varrin, whose successful resolution is vitally important to Whistler’s future success.

“You can’t achieve subjective rewards simply by measuring them by objective standards,” he explains. “And for a long time I tried to find ways of reconciling the two. But it’s impossible. On the one hand, we’re supposed to make sure people experience a memorable holiday while they are here at Whistler. On the other hand, we put all our emphasis on just measuring the bottom line.”

He sighs. “So if I buy a round of drinks for a group of Aussies who are celebrating a friend’s 50 th birthday,” he says, “my bottom line will be affected negatively at the end of the night. But chances are I’ve created lifelong GLC patrons. So how do you resolve that discrepancy?”

And what’s more important for Whistler in the long run? “This is still a great place,” he says. “And the people who are attracted here now — the ones working in the trenches — are still as much adventurers and risk-takers as they’ve always been. We just have to be sure we teach them the right stuff. We have to help them become more self-aware, more conscious of the value and importance of their role here. We have to give them a sense of pride in that place. And that comes from a strong cultural belief in what we’re doing.”

Creating that shared sense of belief, says Varrin, is Whistler’s biggest challenge right now. “To see how much Whistler has changed in the last 15 years — it’s almost overwhelming.” While change is OK, he says, it shouldn’t kill the magic that brought you here in the first place. “Maybe the Fortress buyout will make us wake-up to who we really are as Whistlerites,” he adds. “Maybe it will force us to come to terms with what we really stand for.”

For nearly a week now, Mike has been fêted from one end of town to the other. And even though Madison Avenue would have you believe that 40 is the new 25, he admits things aren’t quite the same once you face your fifth decade. “A lot has happened to me this year,” says the birthday boy. “And there were some real wake-up calls — like losing my mom — so I took the time to look around me and take stock of my life.” He pauses. Thinks carefully about his next words. “I have never taken my life for granted,” he says. “But I’m not much of a future-planning guy either.”

He stops. Laughs again. “I just want to squeeze as much out of now as I can.”