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Coming together in the Pemberton Valley

Hybrid vigour is the term for melding two unrelated breeds and the resulting burst of fertility, good health and growth

This story starts with a dog.

A dog is shot. Everybody has an opinion, a finger to point. A schism erupts in a small community, and people are either on one side or the other of a don’t-look-down crevasse.

In Pemberton, the old-guard and the new kids on the block are squaring off. Veronica Woodruff’s anti-hunting crusade, in the wake of her dog’s killing, has scratched the surface of a deeper conflict. Pemberton is changing faster than anyone can keep up. And that has some people feeling very proprietary.

Long-time locals have been heard to comment: Well, everybody knows it’s a hunting ground in the fall.

But I didn’t know that. And I realize that I don’t know much about Pemberton at all.

What is Pemberton all about? The numbers speak for themselves. In 1993, the population of Pemberton hovered around 300. By 1996, it had exploded to 897. By 2003, it had more than doubled again, hitting 1,997. If you include the population of Area C in the SLRD, which takes in the Pemberton Meadows, the Pemberton to Whistler corridor, the Mount Currie to D’Arcy corridor, and the First Nations communities, that’s another 2,800 people looking to much of Pemberton’s infrastructure.

At the library, they feel the swells and surges of the population first-hand. The library is a front line service provider, and the staff are often the first friendly community face for new residents. Hovering around the check-out desk, I discover librarian Jan Naylor knows everyone’s stories – how long they’ve been here, where they’re headed next, why they’re moving on. She’s like a weathervane for the community, and I check in with her, to take the pulse of Pemberton, just as my predecessor Oona Woods did for Pique , in 1997 in her story "Pemberton’s growing pains."

"In 1980, when the library started," says Naylor, "we had a circulation of 4,000 items. Last year, we circulated just under 39,000." Every year since 1990, library circulation has increased by an average of 10 per cent a year. This season, Naylor is seeing more francophones – "a lot of the young people who’ve come to work at Whistler are coming in to use the computers" – and a baby explosion. "There’s a real need for a new baby time, and story time," she says, noting that the Books for Babies program has served close to 100 babies a year since it started in 2002.

Pemberton is bursting at the seams. Nothing new there. No wonder the old-timers are shaking their heads.

Seed potato capital. Mountain biking out my back door. Organic farms with harvest boxes and farm-gate operations. Cowboys clopping past my house with as much frequency as the cyclists. The touchstone of Mount Currie that keeps us forever looking to the mountains. That’s the Pemberton post-card series.

But, what exactly is the character of this place? This is a question that some residents have been quietly grappling with over the last year. The Pemberton Valley Spirit of British Columbia Community Committee, a code-name for the local Olympic committee, has been preparing to host its first major event, the Feb. 11-13 Winterfest. The celebration will raise funds for a newly formed non-profit society, A Chance for Kids, which aims to support talented corridor youth to deal with the financial hurdles that can prevent them pursuing their dreams as athletes or artists, with an initial focus on youth with a shot at competing in 2010.

Don Coggins, a self-employed consultant, who has lived in Pemberton for the past seven years, after making the move from Whistler, says being on the committee has definitely given him insight into the community. "There are a lot of really interested people out there, if you can allow them to do the things they’re interested in, they really come to the fore as far as volunteerism goes."

As community-originated festivals do, the Winterfest truly reveals the character of Pemberton. MuchMusic will be hosting a youth dance on Friday night – a recognition that teenagers universally are more interested in global culture than local customs. On Saturday, a parade will be marshalled to the museum, for family activities and celebrations hosted by the French community, including a sugar shack. Big Sky will host the hoe-down, an adult western style dance, where people can cut the rug in their best bib and tucker. On Sunday, the focus will move up the valley to the Pemberton Meadows, for a winter sports festival, with a cross-country skiing loppet, dogsled rides, snowmobile demonstrations and what is likely to be the centerpiece of the day – ski-joring. A competition event that is taking off in the States and Manitoba, ski-joring involves a skier being hauled along by a horse and rider through a jump-filled, 200 yard course. The best time across the finish line wins, provided the horse and rider are still together and the skier has at least one ski on, and both boots. Laughs Coggins, "There’s nothing more Pemberton than that. It’s the perfect combination of old and new." If the old-timer is the cowboy, drawn to Pemberton by farming or forestry work, and great backcountry access on horseback, and the newcomer is the snow enthusiast, drawn to Pemberton by its proximity to great skiing, ski-joring might represent the perfect marriage.

Because, despite the friction that the shooting of a dog has caused, revealing as it has the tensions that have been in existence since the first residential development sprang up in Pemberton in 1990, Pemberton folk are looking for ways to build bridges. The same old gripes are still there, echoing issues the Whistler community has been struggling with for years – affordability, the exodus of young families leaving for towns where they can purchase a house, managing growth without destroying the character and ambience of the place, the spectre of development barons buying up tracts of land with dreams of bags of money. Everybody echoes the same sentiment: we need a plan.

For some, the plan will be too little, too late. They’re looking to other towns to solve their issues.

Others are rolling up their sleeves. They’re trying on optimism for size.

Jan Kennett runs the Pemberton Trading Company in town, and sits at the table of the Winterfest Committee. Her history with Pemberton goes back to her childhood, visiting her uncles who had started a forestry business here, from 1959. Says Kennett, "I think it’s an exciting time for Pemberton and we have real opportunities to showcase what a beautiful valley we have. You have to monitor the growth, and the cost of real estate." But, Kennett sees the changes in Pemberton over the past 15 years as an evolution that is keeping the younger generation here.

"We still bring to the table our core values," she says, referring to the core group of people who have been here for generations, whose roots go deep into the Pemberton Valley soil. "Community values are the core value. We’re trying to keep what we have in tact – the scenery and the sense of community and so on. We’re evolving from a very small rural community to an urban/rural community. People are trying hard to manage the growth. It can be hard. It can be overwhelming for some people. But the next generation can see the opportunities."

Kennett notes the benefits that tourism is bringing to the economy. Young people go away for school and choose to return, wanting to come back and live here, seeing their own future play out in the place they grew up. Farmgate sales and farm tours, backcountry tourism operations – these opportunities come because of Pemberton’s location in the corridor – the proximity to Whistler that is at the same time a blessing and a curse. "If our economic base was just as a farming community and a forestry community, economically we’d be in the same situation as a lot of communities in the north."

Lisa Helmer is one of those young people who went away for school, and is building her future in Pemberton. A fourth generation potato farmer, Helmer sees the old versus new dichotomy as a conundrum. "I’m aware that it’s there" she says, "but I almost don’t want to recognize it." A mountain biker, a director of the Pemberton Wildlife Association (PWA), a fisheries technician, an organic farmer, Helmer straddles the divide, and acknowledges the impracticality of really categorizing people as "old" or "new." The bottom line for Helmer is that Pemberton is her home, through and through. Because she’s secure in her sense of belonging here, Helmer takes up the role of environmental steward naturally. And she wants to open the doors to everyone.

When the Birkenhead River fish hatchery was condemned, after the one-two punch of flood damage, then bursting frozen pipes, the PWA’s Fisheries Committee knew they were going to need to spend a lot of money to replace it. In their plans to replace the lost hatchery, they have been thinking bigger picture, and are working on plans for a Pemberton Environmental Interpretive Centre.

The Interpretive Centre would be the home of a new fish hatchery, a spawning stream and rearing pond, and interpretive rooms and classrooms. The grounds would eventually be developed with trails, parks and picnic benches, and a passenger van to facilitate tours, excursions and clean-ups. "In Pemberton, the environment is our culture to a large degree. We live in a flood plain. Whether it’s irrigation, living on a well or controlling these two huge rivers that run down our valley, the environment has shaped our culture," says Helmer. Her vision for the Environmental Interpretive Centre is broad enough that it becomes a community and cultural hub – a place that bridges the gap between old residents and new residents, between people who have a relationship with the land here, and those of us who live in condominiums or come from the cities and suburbs.

Helmer says that looking ahead, the key concern for Pemberton residents, new and old, "is to create a sense of belonging for everyone. I think it’s up to everyone to make that happen. I think that’s got to be the biggest thing – to make people feel it’s worth it for them to buy a house here, because that’s a big deal, to raise a family, to pour their heart and soul into the community. To make sure they don’t feel driven away or unwelcome."

There is no welcome wagon in Pemberton, and no one can work out whose responsibility it is to host it. The real estate agents who sell people their properties here are transaction-managers. The local government is already under-resourced. People in the community who aren’t elders don’t feel it’s their place. The responsibility, largely, falls on the newcomer themselves. To go out into their new home, arms and eyes wide open, with a willingness to adapt to the local status quo, to respect and protect what drew them to the place, and to get involved. As Don Coggins told Pique about managing the direction Pemberton is moving in, "You have to ultimately put your faith in the elected officials and if you don’t get involved, don’t vote, don’t show up, then you have to take what you get."

Yes, Pemberton is growing. Healthy things grow. And a surge of health comes from bringing two different strains together. Hybrid vigour is the term for the burst of fertility, good health and growth seen in progeny when two unrelated breeds are mated. The longer the breeds have been separated and the greater the differences between them, the stronger the resulting hybrid vigour. So the combination of old and new cultures in Pemberton could be a great thing.

But that growth has to be at a sustainable rate. Exponential growth is not sustainable. The futurists have been trying to explain that to us for a while now. If an organism grows too fast, like the Thanksgiving turkey amped up on growth hormones, it will not be able to support its own weight, or live into old age. The laws of biology teach us that there’s a fine line to walk. Don’t grow – and die. Grow too fast, and die. As long as the growth is healthy, moderate, organic, as opposed to steroid-enhanced, frantic, and greedy, the future of Pemberton looks good.



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