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Pam Barnsley: Mocking middle life

She’s says she’s a West Coast girl through and through. No doubt. From the time she moved from Whitehorse to Sechelt when she was 10, the Sunshine Coast was her seaside playground.
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She’s says she’s a West Coast girl through and through. No doubt. From the time she moved from Whitehorse to Sechelt when she was 10, the Sunshine Coast was her seaside playground. Water sports — swimming, fishing, dinghy sailing, paddling — that’s what defined her life in those early years. That is, of course, until Pam Barnsley discovered skiing…

“I was in my early 20s,” laughs the still youthful mother of three grown up kids. “My sister and I would take the Langdale ferry across Howe Sound and head to Grouse for evening lessons. Bad weather or good weather it didn’t matter. We had 76 cm skis on our feet and we were going for broke.”

Her husband Jaak had already learned to ski as a kid so he figured she’d soon get over it. But she didn’t. And anyone who knows Pam’s fierce will to learn can only smile at the young Sechelter’s determination to master this new form of (frozen) water play. “I don’t know why exactly, but I sort of became obsessed.” Then she laughs again and asks me if I need another cup of coffee.

We’re sitting in Barnsley’s kitchen-cum-living-room in the middle of suburban Whistler. The view out of their south-facing windows is a beautiful as anything I’ve seen anywhere in the community. Both mountains — Whistler and Blackcomb — act as living frames for a stunning panorama that includes pretty much the whole Spearhead Range. In the distance is Fissile Peak, and just beyond the crenulated slopes of Overlord Glacier.

“Nice view,” I remark.

“Yeah — it used to be.” And then she releases a big sigh. “See that monster tower on the west flank of Blackcomb?” I scan the slope where she’s pointing and can make out the dark skeleton of what must be a behemoth of a lift tower. “I think it takes away from the grandeur of the mountains. After Whistler spent so much for underground wiring this peak-to--peak gondola is going to look like the grand-daddy of power lines strung across the valley.”

I nod in sympathy. But we’re getting sidetracked…

Once hooked to skiing, Pam was no longer satisfied with the North Shore mountains. She was able to convince Jaak to join her for frequent weekend trips to Whistler. “It was the early 1970s,” she says. “The lineups were horrendous. Sometimes you just felt like you’d spent most of your day on the lift.” But there was no looking back.

By the early 1990s the Barnsleys were Whistlerites through and through. “We bought our first house here 17 years ago,” explains Pam. “Two of my three kids went through the school system here — and all three ski raced for the local team and worked as ski or snowboard instructors for the mountain.”

So what convinced her to move a young family away from their idyllic seaside life? After all, the Barnsleys owned a maritime business in Sechelt — one that featured the oldest working tug on the coast, lovingly restored by Jaak. Why would they sell it to their employees — lock, stock and barrel — in exchange for a wet and snowy life up north?

“From the moment I moved up here, I felt like I’d won the lottery! I still feel that way,” says Pam with a great grin playing across her pixyish features. “Even though millions of people know about Whistler, it still feels like the best-kept secret.

“My first impressions of Whistler, I suppose, were much like anybody else’s. It was a heady combination of fear and exhilaration.” Like so many other people, Pam became addicted to those sensations. “Maybe that’s why I’ve gotten into so many new things relatively late in life. I love that sense of danger and exploration, of getting out of my comfort zone. Of not quite being in charge of my own destiny…”

Her next challenge was snowboarding. And within a year she was proficient enough to be hired by Bruce Irving at the W/B Snowboard School. “I really learned a lot from Bruce,” she says. “He’s a truly exceptional person and a great mentor.”

Another heartfelt guffaw: “Working with all those young instructors, I used to call myself the oldest living snowboard instructor in North America. Although I was barely into my 40s and I didn’t feel old at all!”

Lest you think she’s done with learning new sports, think again. For the past few summers Jaak and Pam have been taking their summers off to indulge in their other passion: windsurfing.

Leaving Whistler for the summer, they park their sumptuously renovated old bus (it truly should be in a maritime museum as its interior is more marine-style than any comparably-sized ship) on the shores of Nitinaht Lake on the West Coast of Vancouver Island and spend the next two months communing with the eagles, the ravens and the seagulls. “There’s a whole little windsurfing community down there and the lifestyle is very simple. Get up in the morning, make a cup of coffee and wait for the wind to come up. There’s lots of time for writing, lots of conversation and lots of laughter.”

So much fun are these away-from-Whistler idylls, says Pam, that she and Jaak have decided not to buy a ski pass this year for the first time in almost 30 years (“and that still makes me nervous,” she admits). Instead, they’re going to take their land yacht, err bus, down to Baja California for the winter.

“Another windsurfer trip?” I ask.

“Oh no,” Pam answers smiling. “We’re going down there to learn to kiteboard. One board, a little kite all folded into your backpack — compared to carting windsurfing gear around, it’s pretty appealing.”

Besides, she admits she just wants to keep learning new things. “I have a voracious appetite for everything going on out there.” Indeed. Whether it’s remodelling an old beater house or building a new home, writing poetry or becoming a kick-ass kiteboarder, this firecracker of a “middle aged” woman moves, behaves and reasons like somebody three decades younger. Is it a Whistler thing or a Pam Barnsley thing? I wonder…

“Maybe it’s a little of both,” she says. “We were just talking about it the other day. Long-term residents at Whistler seem to have raised the performance bar when it comes to accomplishing the impossible. Heck, I’ve been to a lot of 60-year-old birthday parties recently where just about everybody looked young and strong. Maybe this is the dawn of a new age…”

What fascinates me most about Pam is here innate ear for good stories. “I come from a long line of storytellers,” she tells me. “In the 1850s one of my ancestors, Captain Mayne, wrote a book about mapping the coast of B.C, and finding trading routes from the coast up into the Interior using First Nations guides. He’s the one who originally gave the name ‘London Mountain’ to Whistler. I grew up around people who valued stories. Books were always a big part of our lives. And that had a huge impact on me.” She laughs. “Combine that with my all-consuming curiosity and the result is pretty much self-ordained…”

She tells me that she used to write stories when she was young and read them out loud to her friends at school; that she was a long-time reporter on the Sechelt paper (while managing a marine business and raising three kids); she even tells me a Kafkaesque tale of writing a book with her sister in the 1970s — called Hiking Trails of the Sunshine Coast — with a federal grant, only to be told when the project was completed that there was no provision to publish it. “So we took it upon ourselves,” says Pam, “to deliver the manuscript to Howard White at Harbour Publishing. It’s still in print…” Another good laugh. After acting in five episodes of The Beachcombers, Pam sold them a couple of scripts; as well, she’s written advertising copy, magazine articles, and recently sold several mystery stories.

Now if anybody else were to confide in me that they had successfully completed a Whistler-based mystery novel that occurs during the Paralympic Games in 2010, I would pat them on the shoulder and wish them all the luck in the world.

But when Pam Barnsley tells me she has such a novel in the works, I can’t help but hope I’ll be one of the first to read that manuscript. “We live in a fascinating mental and physical world here,” she explains. “Anywhere you look these days — among the transients and the locals and the tradespeople and the administrators and politicians — there are individuals with intriguing stories.” She stops. “And I think that makes for a really great read…”

Just in case you’re curious too, Pam calls her new book This Cage of Bones. Are you listening up out there, agents and publishers?

To view previous Alta States columns visit: http://www.piquenewsmagazine.com/pique/index.php?view=altastates