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Whistler unfurls its rainbow banners at the 20th anniversary of WinterPRIDE

Pride Week celebrates 'official' civic status

It has been 20 years in the making.

And though there have been challenges and triumphs, Whistler's gay ski week, a crucial piece of the winter economic puzzle, is now being recognized for more than just its ability to bring guests to the resort.

For with the sweep of a blue pen Whistler's mayor, Nancy Wilhelm Morden, has made it official — February 5-12 is officially Pride Week.

She will read out the proclamation on Feb.9 following the first ever WinterPRIDE march through the village.

It doesn't seem like much, just a handful of typed sentences on a white paper with the gold municipal seal. And it does join the ranks of dozens of others official days, weeks and months proclaimed by council, some of which have little real impact.

This, however, is different.

That much is evident at a retrospective gathering held at an upscale car dealership just off of the Granville Street Bridge in Vancouver last week. For the 50 or so people gathered there, some of whom were at the first gay ski week, that proclamation is everything.

Recognition. Status. Acceptance.

"It validates that the municipality takes human rights seriously," said WinterPRIDE organizer Dean Nelson of the proclamation.

"And they're putting their money where their mouth is. They're taking that extra step and saying, 'we understand that some of our guests are coming from communities where their rights might not be the same as what we're afforded here in Canada and here in Whistler, and we just want to make sure that everybody knows that they're welcomed.' That's really validating for so many people to see that, and experience it and know that the government is actually standing up and saying 'we value all human life, we value all human rights. It doesn't matter if you're gay, straight, purple, pink, blue, whatever. Everybody here is an equal citizen.'"

Homosexuality is banned in nearly 80 countries and subject to the death penalty in at least six.

When Nelson tells the crowd standing around the luxury cars that the Pride flag will fly at municipal hall for the first time ever this year, there's a swell of applause.

It continues as Nelson talks about the first ever Pride ski out from Olympic Station, followed by the inaugural Pride March through the village on Thursday Feb. 9. Following that Wilhelm Morden will be addressing the crowd and giving them her official welcome.

For Wayne Hartrick, who has watched the growth of gay ski week first hand, it's testimony to how far they've come.

"It's a real statement... that we're really as a group accepted and welcomed," says Hartrick.

"It's a real sense of feeling like... you're OK."

Whistler prides itself on being an open-minded place to live and vacation — even so Nelson has said previously that there is usually one homophobic incident each year during WinterPRIDE. In 2010 Pique reported Nelson as saying: "It (homophobia) is not normal. It is more of a one-off situation where you have new employees coming in and there might not be sensitivity to diversity issues where they come from." In 2009, a patron was leaving a bar and was "roughed up." In years past some GayWhistler signs were vandalized.

At the time Nelson was clear that he felt the actions were those of just a few individuals, and not the community as a whole.

When the 2010 Olympics came to Whistler and Vancouver, Nelson immediately saw it as another venue to educate the world about the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered community. It was the first Pride House in the history of the Olympics to pay tribute exclusively to gay and lesbian athletes, coaches, family, friends and allies.

His push to get Pride House up and running crystallized in his mind during a Pride march in Budapest, Hungary, where he was almost killed for being gay.

Nelson marched with 900 people, protected by more than 1,500 police and army officers.

"They had army tanks and a huge convoy of army vehicles to give us protection, and there were rocks thrown at us and fire bombs thrown at us," Nelson told Pique previously.

"It was at that point that I had crystal clarity that this is why I am here. This is why we have to create Pride House, to build that awareness. Sometimes we live in our sheltered communities and we don't always realize that it is still illegal to be gay in over 70 countries. We need to get that message out there."

Pride House was such a success that London's 2012 summer Olympic Games has one planned as well.

The Beginning

It wasn't always OK to be gay. In some places, it still isn't. Just this month, a firestorm erupted in South Africa over anti-gay statements attributed to Zulu monarch King Goodwill Zwelithini. It remains to be seen if those statements were a "reckless translation" or truly homophobic slurs.

And while in North America, gay rights have come a long way in recent years with the legalization of gay marriage, it hasn't always been like that.

It was just two decades ago that the state of Colorado dealt a heavy blow to the gay and lesbian community, which turned out to be a helping hand to Whistler. Joe Rachert remembers.

"Amendment 2" passed in a majority vote, a constitutional amendment that revoked and repealed all existing gay rights legislation and prevented any further gay rights legislation from being passed either at the local or state level. The year was 1992.

"God bless Colorado for doing this," says Rachert.

For it was the catalyst for Altitude Week in Whistler.

Aspen had a gay ski week at the time that was more than a decade old. But Amendment 2 didn't sit well with gay travellers and skiers, and others for that matter.

"The response from Hollywood and the national and international gay community was a boycott of Colorado tourism," states the history page on the Aspen Gay Ski Week website. "It was a very effective boycott and had a devastating effect of tourism in general."

If there could be a gay ski week in Aspen, why not Whistler?

That was the question Altitude Week founder Brent Benaschak, who owned a bed and breakfast in Whistler, asked himself at the time.

Benaschak has since passed away so it falls to his friends like Rachert, who too played a pivotal role in getting gay ski week off the ground, to recall what it was like in the early 1990s.

In 1990 Vancouver hosted the first Gay Games. The city was starting to get a reputation as the "San Francisco of the North" — liberal, progressive, open and friendly to gays and lesbians.

"We'd just left the '80s and the AIDS crisis," recalls Rachert, of the pent-up need to celebrate, embrace life, and party.

Meanwhile, the marketplace was just discovering the power of the "pink dollar" — the acknowledgment of the rise of the purchasing power of the gay community.

With Colorado taking steps backwards, the time was ripe to create something new in Whistler.

Rachert remembers that first year going throughout the village putting up posters with the message "Friends of Dorothy" were meeting at a bar — code for a gay gathering.

That night a couple of dozen people met at a bar.

And Altitude Week was born.

"In 20 years you've gone from secret signs to a week that the mayor is proclaiming," says Rachert. "It shows a ton of progress."

But it hasn't been without its hiccups.

Rachert remembers trying to get T-shirts printed in the early days, modelled after a slogan "Chicks with Sticks." They wanted "Dicks with Sticks." The T-shirt shop was at a loss — should it print these shirts?

"We had to fight for that in Whistler," say Rachert. But they got the shirts.

There were struggles like that over the years and ongoing internal discussions to move the event to another mountain town, he says. But they kept coming back, getting bigger and bolder year over year.

Just a couple of years in and things began to explode, says Rachert.

"We ran out of food, we ran out of everything," he recalls of 1995.

But Whistler was making a name for itself, not just for the skiing but also for the circuit party — large-scale gay dance parties that hit their peak in the '90s.

And then tragedy struck, threatening to cut gay ski week off at the knees.

In 2003, 12 years into the gig, its founder, its pioneer, its trailblazer 41-year-old Brent Benaschak committed suicide, just weeks before Altitude XII. It was a terrible blow.

His memory is everywhere at the retrospective evening.

"He was an important guy," says Rachert. "He was a visionary, a true visionary."

His passing put a hole in the heart of Altitude.

Hartrick describes the ensuing two years as putting the event on "life support." Uncertainty prevailed.

In 2006 the Altitude week was cancelled by Out on the Slopes Productions just weeks before it was set to go.

And though several people came to its rescue stating on the official website that tickets would be refunded no one knew what to expect that year.

Dean Nelson was one of its saviours. He was the director of sales and marketing at the Pan Pacific at the time and involved on the periphery of gay ski week.

He remembers beseeching the municipality to help, along with a handful of others. They asked the town to hang Rainbow flags along Village Gate Boulevard, heralding the event for any wary traveller.

Those flags were a site to behold says Nelson, getting emotional at the memory.

That first night, sitting on tenterhooks, volunteers and organizers waited with bated breath.

Then the call came. The Perimeter Bus Line had to put on extra buses from the airport to accommodate the number of people coming for gay ski week.

The week may have been cancelled but that wasn't stopping anybody.

"They were prepared to come on the hope something would happen," says Hartrick.

Affirmation. Support. Establishment.

The People, The Party

At its height more than 2,500 people have taken part in WinterPRIDE. One of those is Bryan James.

More than 10 years ago James came to Altitude. It was 1999.

The Twassessen local had just split from his wife. He didn't really know what to expect.

"It was overwhelming to see so many gay men," he says.

"It was a great experience because I felt a sense of belonging."

For several years, he, like his friend Michel Lessard, has been a mountain guide at gay ski week.

Having the skiing is a critical part of what makes the week a success. It's easy to meet people skiing together for the day, easy to form bonds, and take those friendships to après and other parties.

Lessard has been volunteering on the mountain since the early days. This year, like years past, he's looking forward to seeing friends from Switzerland, New York, Australia and Germany.

"I call them my ski family," says Lessard.

And it includes the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered, two-spirited and queer community.

In an effort to reach out to the lesbian community, award-winning writer Gina Daggett was invited to speak at WinterPRIDE in 2008. She is better known as "Lipstick" in the national advice column "Lipstick & Dipstick."

Little did she know then it would be a life-changing gig. It was where she met her partner of the past four years. Soon she had emigrated from Portland to Vancouver and has been coming back to Pride ever year since.

"As soon as we came around the bend (the first time) I saw Whistler Village, the gay flags that were hanging amazed me," says Daggett, who popped by the Vancouver retrospective. "It blew me away. It helped that there was a sunset and there was an amazing alpine glow. But I had almost a spiritual experience when we pulled in. It felt so surreal. It was like we were arriving at a gay village. It was a wonderful entrance."

Now Daggett and her partner are planning on relocating to Whistler full time — that's how much they feel at home.

The lesbian community is still the minority at WinterPRIDE, about 10 to 15 per cent, but it's not for lack of trying to reach out and entice the community.

The Town

With its re-branding in 2007 from Altitude Week to WinterPRIDE, gay ski week has been positioning itself as a festival — in the ranks of the Crankworx bike festival, the film festival, the ski and snowboard festival. And Whistler couldn't be happier.

If there was any reticence in the early days that has long been replaced by a general embracing of the week and what it means to Whistler.

"It's an important group for the resort," says Tourism Whistler's Lynn Chappell, manager of partnerships, promotions and events.

"It's a good piece of business with 2,500 attendees over the eight days."

The WinterPRIDE visitor, she adds, is a savvy traveller and the festival not only highlights the skiing and snowboarding, but also all the other world-class amenities in the resort from the dining and the nightlife.

And so businesses will be dusting off their rainbow flags and the municipality will be unfurling its banners.

Lawrence Black, of Black's Pub, has hosted many an après ski and dinner during gay ski week.

"We want them to know that we appreciate the business," he says of why he flies the flag.

In the meantime, the bookings for WinterPRIDE are strong, mirroring bookings overall in the resort.

"It's a part of history now," says Rachert. "It's not even gay history. It's a part of history."



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