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Bob Colebrook - they broke the mould after his birth

They call him Bosco. And there's no one quite like him. A fiery mélange of Charles Bukowski and Hunter S. Thompson, Bosco brought an edge (and a refreshingly twisted sense of humour) to Whistler culture that, in many ways, defined the place.

They call him Bosco. And there's no one quite like him. A fiery mélange of Charles Bukowski and Hunter S. Thompson, Bosco brought an edge (and a refreshingly twisted sense of humour) to Whistler culture that, in many ways, defined the place. Alas, that edge pretty much disappeared when he left the valley for good in the early 1990's. And we've all been poorer for it.

In his heyday, Bosco was one of the most potent voices of the Whistler counterculture. No matter what went down in the valley - serious, ridiculous, pretentious or lame -it was all fodder for his surprisingly sophisticated pen. In his role as the outlaw copy editor of the legendary underground Whistler Answer , he poked fun at all manner of sacred cows in this community. And he got a rise out of just about everyone.

Bosco was loved and reviled; respected and derided. And it didn't matter to him one bit. As far as he was concerned, you were either on the bus or you were under it...

"You can write whatever you want," Whistler's once-reigning enfant terrible tells me.  "Because it's all true." He booms out with a huge belly laugh. "I lived large. Took big risks. And I paid the price. But it's all-good, you know. My attitude now is better than it's ever been. I'm not bitter about the past one bit."

Still, he says, Whistler stories are often hard to bear. "It's so mixed up in good and bad memories for me. I'd rather not think too much about that time." And then he laughs.

Bob Colebrook has indeed paid the price for his extreme lifestyle. A Victoria resident now, and suffering from Type 2 diabetes, the still-loquacious 58-year-old doesn't get outside much anymore. "I can hardly walk now," he says. "No circulation. And I'm probably gonna lose my left leg at the knee." He stops talking. Sighs. "But that could be next week or next year. Still I'm prepared. It's kinda like losing a sore tooth now..."

And he goes on to explain. "I felt very sick when I was first diagnosed. Got into the whole 'sick man' routine." Another long pause. "But I snapped out of it," he says, "when they started fitting me up for a wheelchair. That's when I decided to fight back. 'Forget it, man,' I said to myself. You gotta be stronger than all that negative shit." He smiles happily. "So that's my attitude now. I'm a fighter all the way."

No surprise there. A battler for most of his life, Bosco is the kind of guy who's never met a challenge he didn't answer. But lest you think I'm dramatising his current situation, listen to his words in a particularly unguarded moment: "You know," he says, "it happens three or four times a year that I dream of skiing again. These are very vivid dreams. And it's wonderful. It feels so good to let the laws of physics pull you down the mountain at dangerously high speeds again."

But then he wakes up. "And I'm totally bummed for the rest of the day. I realize I can't do that anymore. And that really hurts." He grabs a quick breath. "For me, skiing was the ultimate pursuit. I can't imagine anything better. Great for a hangover too..."

The young Colebrook grew up in New Westminster and got his first taste of skiing in the late 1960s when his local school started bussing up students to the newly opened Garibaldi at Whistler area for ski lessons. "I still remember the first time I came up," he says with a face-splitting grin. "After what seemed like an interminable trip, we got off that bus in the old Creekside parking lot and we all wondered 'where the heck is the ski area?' There was nothing there. It was truly desolate."

But all it took was one ride up the mountain. Like so many kids his age, Bob was immediately hooked. Now all he could think about was skiing. "During Grades 10- through 12," he says, "a bunch of friends and I rented one of the little A-Frames at the base of Creekside for the Easter Holidays. I think it cost us $30/night - and that was in total. Lift tickets were all of five bucks!"

It was a magazine article, he admits, that finally pushed him over the edge. "I was going to college," he recounts. "And I read this story about all these cool hippies and ski bums and UIC recipients having a good time at Whistler. And I thought to myself, 'yeah. That sounds pretty attractive.' So I quit school, quit my part-time job and took a stab at living at Whistler."

The article, the infamous "The Mountain Belongs to the Bums," appeared in the March 3, 1973 edition of Weekend Magazine . And it caused a stink from sea-to-shining-sea! Featuring a titillating 'don't tell your mom' prose style, it provided a highly romanticized view of the lifestyles of such Whistler ski-bumming stars as Al Davis, Rene Paquette and Lyle Featherstonhaugh. Parents across the country were warned never to let their daughters visit this alpine Gomorrah. "They might disappear and not be heard from till spring," leered Soo Valley denizen, Paul Mathews. It was the kind of invitation that a man like Bosco just couldn't ignore.

By the fall of 1973, he was living full-time at Whistler. "That was a pretty heavy snow year, as I recall," he says, with another grin inching across his cheeks. "I was on UIC - like everybody else I knew - but halfway through the season I ran out of money and decided to get a job with the lift company." Yeah right. As if that would work...

"Well," he continues, "they sent me up to mid-station and told me to report to supervisor Jim Monahan." He lets out a sharp burst of laughter. "There was two-three feet of snow that day. Heavy and wet and totally gross. And they wanted me to shovel that shit."

It couldn't last. "After a couple of hours, I went back to Monahan," he says. "And I told him 'I can't handle this. Just rip up my time card and make believe you never saw me.' And then I took off and went skiing." He sighs. "I don't think you could do that today."

But there were other jobs, says Bosco, that fitted his working style better. "The next season I became the doorman at the Whistler Mountain Lodge. It was the only nightclub in town then. We had live music Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights, but other than a few American drunks from time to time, we rarely had trouble in that place."

And the reason for that, he adds, is because the whole community acted as bouncer for the lodge. "You know, when you have 12 guys surrounding you and one of them says 'Hey buddy - we're here for a good time. So chill out,' it's pretty effective. I'd never seen that before. Whistler back then was probably the mellowest place I'd ever lived."

Still, his good pal Charlie Doyle remembers some pretty rowdy nights there. "The image that sticks in my mind," says the popular Whistler sign painter, "is Bosco standing at the door with a long row of drinks that people had bought him lined up on a nearby ledge. He could really put it down in those days."

The thing about those years, says Bosco, is just how unique life was at Whistler. Here was a new community made up of similar-aged, like-minded young people who were just out to have a good time on the mountain. There was virtually no infrastructure and no rules - even the police presence was intermittent. It was like inventing life all over again - but this time with skiing and partying as the focus. "Take the squatting thing," he says. "I mean, in the early years, you could move up to Whistler, ski as much as you wanted and still live cheaply. That was pretty cool."

Bosco claims he was all over the squatting thing. "I did it for a full winter," he says, with just a hint of a smirk. "Somebody had built this tiny little shack on a utility trailer - it was all of six feet by eight - and abandoned it by the highway. So I decided to move in."

He admits it was very cell-like. "Not a lot of room for friends, eh." But he couldn't have cared less. "Sure it was small, but I didn't mind at all." Another big laugh. "I had music playing off a car battery and outside my window were trees and mountains and lots of wildlife - and very few people. And it was close enough to the highway to get around." But living there, he says, was still an adventure. "One night after too many 'shrooms and whiskey I spent a couple hours wandering around in the woods looking for it..."

The Whistler Answer got going in 1977. Remember? Created by a quartet of hippies in a squatters' shack on the banks of the Cheakamus River, the hand-printed magazine was a tongue-in-cheek response to the Question's less-than-daring style back then ( Pique wasn't born yet).

Sassy, cheeky, irreverent, ironic, impolite, courageous, irresponsible, outrageous - call it what you will, The Answer perfectly reflected the ideals and aspirations of the growing hordes of young adrenalin hounds then migrating to the Whistler Valley. And Bosco quickly decided he wanted a piece of the action. Ah, but that's another story...

Next week: Bosco meets Pierre Trudeau, visits the new Whistler jail with Fast Eddy and keeps stirring the cultural pot...