Skip to content
Join our Newsletter

Fact and fiction — Whistler's next chapter needs good storytellers

"Don't Dream It. Be It." - Dr. Frankenfurter I've been writing a lot of fiction lately. No. No. I don't mean in Alta States. C'mon, be kind. This column is strictly reserved for true stories.
opinion_altastates1
Reminiscence of the past, and looking to the future.

"Don't Dream It. Be It."

- Dr. Frankenfurter

I've been writing a lot of fiction lately.

No. No. I don't mean in Alta States. C'mon, be kind. This column is strictly reserved for true stories. Okay, so maybe true stories with a bit of opinion thrown in. Still, that's not what I'm referring to here.

I'm talking about the kind of writing where you can let your imagination gallop full and free. Where the only truth is the one the writer creates. And there's nothing more liberating to the imaginative mind. Mould a few characters from the clay of your own fancy, invent an outlandish situation for them to confront, and then stand back and let them work it out on the page (or the screen) before you. Voila – pure magic.

And it's amazing how quickly these characters take control of your story. You think your mind is driving the plot. You're sure the narrative is yours. But then, just when you're gazing out at the sky, thinking of the next words you're going to write, or maybe about the stand-up paddle session you're planning on that afternoon, or the crazy Hungarian novel you're reading right now, PAF! One of your protagonists revolts and leads the story on a completely different path than the one you had in mind. And it's way better than the narrative trail you'd proposed to take.

It's uncanny. Almost like you've invented this hauntingly real world — where people actually live and breathe and love and lose — only it exists in another dimension. And it takes on a whole reality of its own. Totally independent of your wishes. I mean, my made-up characters surprise me all the time. Do forbidden things, carry outlandish opinions, respond in ways I could have never devised. Maybe that's why it's so fun to embark on these fiction journeys. I set them in motion, sure, but I'm never quite sure where they're going to take me.

Which makes me wonder if God isn't the ultimate fiction writer....

But I digress. I was thinking of the Whistler story the other day. And all the characters who've been involved in its telling over the years. Franz and Al and Hugh and Mur and Joe... and Myrtle and Florence and Joan and Sara and Nancy and Ashleigh. And I realized just how much of a wild adventure tale this community has lived over the last forty-five years.

Now I know Whistler's alter ego, Alta Lake, existed long before skiers set tracks on the surrounding mountains. And the early lakesiders' stories offer an intriguing lens into that time. But for today's exercise, let's assume that the story I'm talking about started when a bright-eyed Norwegian transplant decided to convince his Vancouver buddies that a ski area in the Coast Mountains could be just as good as one in the Alps.

Like any raconteur — maybe more even— Franz Wilhelmsen had to spin a good tale to keep his listeners entertained. And enthused. Excited even. After all, he needed to separate them from their money if his ski-area project were to take off!

Fortunately, he was outstanding at it (the fact that he refused to take "no" for an answer obviously helped). But those who were around back then will tell you bluntly: it was never a slam-dunk. This was the kind of risk-fraught project that most investors wanted nothing to do with. But Franz was nothing if not convincing. He twisted arms, called in debts, pulled on his social connections — in short; he did what he had to do to make the story happen. And he succeeded.

By February of 1966, Whistler Mountains' shiny-new lifts were hauling awed visitors into a winter wonderland that few could have envisioned before. When Whistler hosted the world's best snow-sliding athletes in 2010, well, I could just imagine Ol' Franz grinning from ear-to-ear in his own private Valhalla. "See," I'm sure he was telling his pals up there, "I told you my story would work!"

No matter how you pare it, his is an impressive piece of tale spinning....

Looking around today at Whistler's enviable valley facilities — the pedestrian village, the biking trails, the parks, the mountain lifts, and yes, the restaurants and hotel rooms and B&B's and... — it feels like we sometimes take our history a little for granted. We forget just how BIG an imagination Whistler's earliest proponents really wielded. Indeed, the resort's long-term success is due in no small measure to the huge-picture thinking of its earliest residents.

And I'm not just talking developers here. It took a lot of guts in 1981 to stick around and build a house and suffer crushing interest rates and raise your kids in a perpetual construction site... and all for the dubious honour of calling Whistler home. Just ask anyone who did it. And what about the many small-e entrepreneurs who bet their life savings on starting a restaurant or a bookstore or even a ski shop in Whistler? I mean, talk about brave. Talk about buying into the story.

As for trying to muscle your way into the Whistler housing market in the 1990's, well, that too took a big sense of mission. And a heroic dose of optimism. For those who risked it knew they were mortgaging their future for a chance at a Whistler address. And yet. And yet. So many of them endure.

Community. I think it's a part of the Whistler story that many people miss.

You see, the concept of 'resort-community" — a term that Whistler happily embraced in the early 1980's — is profoundly oxymoronic. It's an existential thing. As in: the bigger and flashier and glitzier and noisier the "resort" gets, the less the resident "community" actually wants to be part of the picture. When the reverse happens — when the visitor numbers fall and the retail rape-and-pillaging wanes — well, that's when the majority of the residents are at their most comfortable. All the things they moved here for, you see, now become accessible again.

I know. Huge irony. And yes, of course, I also realize that the secret to success for Whistler resides is finding that balance between the two extreme states: feast and famine. And it's not an easy task.

Still, I think Whistler is closer to finding that balance than ever before in its history. I mean, it's only anecdotal and all, but I haven't heard so many positive comments about the place (from both residents and guests) since I first started writing this column six long years ago.

A recent letter to the Pique illustrates this shift nicely. "For a time in the early 2000's," wrote the Burnaby correspondent, "I started to hate Whistler... I felt like I was visiting Las Vegas or some other American tourist trap." And so she and her husband stopped coming. "Well," she continued, "circumstances brought us here again last weekend... and are we ever glad." She concludes: "We... hope the road [Whistler] is on now is the one it will continue to follow."

So what happened? To me it seems obvious. The locals have taken back their town!

Yes, the beds aren't all full, and some great restaurants are shutting down and the overall number of employees is dropping and many of Whistler's small-business owners are struggling. But Whistlerites feel somehow more involved in what's going on now. More in charge. Intrawest is gone. The IOC has disappeared. The Vancouver Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games no longer exists. And the great wave of transients that used to flow in and out of town every winter has crested. The inmates are free to take over their own asylum again.

The Whistler community, says longtime local Kashi Richardson, is in great shape. "I keep hearing about young families moving back to Whistler," says the popular yoga instructor. And that, she adds, might be the Olympics' greatest legacy — the fact that we now have a decent resident-housing stock for those who want to set roots down here. And I couldn't agree more. For that too is another stabilizing force in the community.

Still, Whistler's destiny is not written in a big book in the sky. It would be nice, you know, but I'm afraid we're out of luck on that one. Rather, Whistler's next chapters will be determined by all the people who live, work and play in this valley. It's your dreams, your hopes, your beliefs —your successes and failures — that will decide how this kooky, crazy, loveable, contrarian town evolves.

So dream big! Write a great script! But mostly — think of snow. Winter is coming soon...