Skip to content
Join our Newsletter

Investing in the community

By Michel Beaudry Education is vital to Whistler’s future. At least, that’s what Dave Demers believes. “Education will drive families here,” says Whistler’s 2006 Business Person of the Year. “Education will also keep families here long-term.

By Michel Beaudry

Education is vital to Whistler’s future. At least, that’s what Dave Demers believes. “Education will drive families here,” says Whistler’s 2006 Business Person of the Year. “Education will also keep families here long-term.” He pauses for a moment. Searches for a way to frame his next thoughts as diplomatically as possible. “We desperately need a post-secondary facility at Whistler,” he says. “So why is the municipality ignoring such an important issue?”

Demers has thought about this matter a lot. And he’s not afraid to call a spade a shovel. “Look — it’s simple,” he says. “We really need to attract young families here. I want 30 year olds to settle down here with their kids. I want them to be excited about investing their future in Whistler. But it’s happening less and less now. We have this incredible brain trust of talented youth — and they’re all leaving.” Another pause. “So how do we keep our young people at Whistler? Provide them with affordable housing. And offer them great education!”

It’s a no-brainer, he says. But it will require a real shift in thinking among Whistler’s leaders. “Muni Hall has to open the door — be ready to listen and learn from a wide range of people: academics, entrepreneurs, young and old.” He takes a deep breath. He knows he’s walking into contentious territory now. “In my mind, the Cheakamus Athletes’ Village site would be ideal for a new post-secondary facility — a college that showcases our core strengths and competencies. So why isn’t it happening? I really don’t know…”

The president and part-owner of the Sundial Boutique Hotel, Demers is no newcomer to Whistler. “I moved here from Montreal back in 1979,” he says. “I had $80 in my pocket and my car was running on three cylinders.” But those were mere details to the university grad. Demers was here to ski big mountains. And ski them he did.

“One of my first jobs at Whistler was working for Dave Kirk at the old Chamonix Ski Shop at Creekside,” he explains with a laugh. “It was a great job. But Dave must have fired me a dozen times for arriving late to work.” You see, Demers’s idea of a good ski day was seeing how many times he could hike to the peak of Whistler Mountain (this was before Whistler’s high country was accessible by chairlift). Invariably, he’d do the 40-minute climb one too many times…

“My next job was working for Jim McConkey at his shop,” he recounts. “And the same thing happened there. But I really didn’t care in those days. Money and security were secondary issues for me. Skiing was everything.”

But he was far from naïve — and soon realized just how many opportunities there were for a smart young man with a little imagination. Over the next few years, Demers quietly set about establishing himself at Whistler. He bought a condominium unit at Whistler Vale. Then he bought another. He got involved in a windsurfing business on Alta Lake and for a few years toyed with becoming a professional mountain guide. “But,” he says with a sad chuckle, “I soon realized that having cold hands in winter just wasn’t my thing…”

Demers felt at the time that he pretty much had the world by the tail. “My life was wonderful,” he says. “ I was living the dream…”

But then tragedy struck. And it struck hard. “It was a beautiful March powder day in 1990,” he recalls. “A bunch of us had climbed up to Flute to catch some fresh tracks.” The group had already skied the run a couple of times when one of their friends, Stuart Dickenson, volunteered to ski down the slope and videotape them for posterity. Demers and another buddy were on deck. And both decided to leap off the cornice together.

“That’s when all hell broke loose,” he says, choking back tears. On landing from their jumps, the two skiers had triggered a massive slide that engulfed everything in its path. “I was completely buried, but I could still hear my friends on the surface searching for me. I was sure I was going to die.” While Demers was eventually rescued, Dickenson wasn’t so lucky. By the time they dug him out he was dead. “There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t think about that accident,” says Demers. “It completely changed the way I perceive the world.”

It also spurred him to start focusing more on getting his financial affairs in order. That year he launched Crown Resort Properties. “I started with a management contract for 13 properties (all owned by pilots), and then grew that to 330 properties,” he says with evident pride in his voice. By 1998, he was ready to sell out. “Forget Freedom 55,” he says with a laugh, “I was on the Freedom 40 plan! I had worked extremely hard and now I was ready to retire and enjoy life.”

Things looked mighty good for the young entrepreneur in the fall of 1998. His wife Sharon was pregnant with their first child, the sale of his business was going to provide them with a comfortable financial cushion for the foreseeable future and Dave was at the peak of his physical powers. But fate wasn’t finished with him yet.

On November 28 h , while flying down Whistler Mountain’s Green Acres in pursuit of his friends, Demers crashed off a bump, landed hard on his head and passed out. When he came back to consciousness, he realized that things were not as they were before. “There I was, lying in the snow, and I couldn’t feel a thing from the neck down. I couldn’t even tell whether my arms were still attached to my body. Talk about panic…”

Demers was heli-lifted to the valley clinic, where they immediately decided to transfer him to Vancouver General Hospital. “When I arrived at VGH,” remembers Demers, “I was placed in the acute spinal ward. Hours later I was wheeled through the pasty white corridors into the MRI room. Thump. Thump. Crack. Crack. The sounds of the machine made me cringe. Is this for real? Back in the hallway the x-ray technician went by and she said: ‘You are a very lucky man.’ I was indeed a lucky man. Although my C3 and C4 vertebrae were compressed, my spinal cord had not been severed…”

Still, few doctors held out any hope for a full recovery. In fact, they warned him he might never walk again.

“I remained in the acute spinal ward for 20 days,” he says. “That was the murky time. The morphine moments… In those 20 days I began to learn how to move again. I had to learn to retrain my mind, my muscles and my body. It wasn’t easy, but I did it.”

It was truly an amazing recovery. Although he maintains he only has about 60 per cent mobility on his left side, most medical professionals cite Dave’s comeback as a virtual miracle. And he insists he could have never done it without his wife Sharon. “She was unbelievable,” he says. “She was there for me at every step of the way…”

After spending two years at home taking care of his newborn son Cole and learning to walk again, Dave decided it was time to take up a new challenge. “In January of 2001, the Westbrook Hotel came up for sale,” he explains. “It was a tough nut to crack: 35 of the 49 units were owned by more than 200 Japanese investors. If we were going to succeed where other people had failed, we’d have to find a way to buy out all these owners. It was an unbelievable adventure!”

Totally refurbished and re-positioned as Whistler’s premiere boutique hotel, the Sundial opened for business in 2003. It wasn’t easy, admits Demers, but he had great partners. And good contacts at Muni Hall. “Whistler’s building and planning department was really supportive,” he says. “Guys like Dave McPhail really believed in our concept. And they went way out of their way to help us accomplish our dreams…”

Demers no longer has much to prove. Having overcome the physical obstacles that his accident had set for him, he could easily sit back and rest on his laurels. But that’s just not the way he’s wired. “I like doing things,” he says. “I truly believe hard work pays off. And there’s a lot of hard work to be done in this valley…”

Which is why he has no patience with the people who whine but don’t contribute to the community’s well-being. “There is a ton of talent in this place — there are a lot of good potential leaders around. But they have to step up and take responsibility for the future.”

And he’s ready to challenge those who’d rather talk than act. “If you have a vision for this place and you don’t think you’re being heard, then get involved,” he says emphatically. “Join the chamber, run for election, get named to a board. But do something!”

He laughs. “Results happen from pushing the envelope,” he says. “And I’m ready to push the Whistler envelope. I want to foster change. I want to encourage discussion and open up the channels of communication to stimulate new ideas in this community.

“After all,” concludes Demers with a smile, “Whistler is only as good as the people who participate in the system…”