Every time I see a story in the non-ski, national media about Whistler, or any other ski destination for that matter, I cringe just a bit. Whether the stories relate to winter sports or summer pastimes, they generally tend to be upbeat, Chamber-of-Commercy kinds of stories. “I/we stayed in a nice hotel, ate at great restaurants and, oh, the smorgasbord of things to do were just nonstop and wonderful.”
But the narrative only tells half the story and is often shaded by the overlooked fact the writer wasn’t footing the bill for their whirlwind stay in paradise.
The other half is generally contained in the comments following. I fully understand even the best curated—censored—comments sections are somewhat less toxic cesspools of misinformation than generally found on social media, but they also contain interesting insight into what a cross section of the reading public think about a subject, or in the case of Whistler-centric stories, our home.
Apparently we all tend to be wealthy—quite likely as a happy result of our family’s trust fund—ne’er do wells living in fabulous multi-million-dollar homes, dressed in very expensive designer outfits who favour overcrowded slopes groomed to perfection and operated by an unfeeling corporate money machine. Only one of those things is true but all seem to be part of troll culture.
Interestingly, even quite a few people who fit that description, which is to say a number of our very welcome guests and second, third and fourth homeowners, are surprised to discover there are people who actually live here and aren’t fabulously wealthy. They assume the workerbees live somewhere, perhaps in warrens underneath the resort itself, but they also assume most are just passing through—here for a good time, not a long time. They express shock when I explain most of the folks who live here are not, in fact, wealthy, but struggle to stay here in the face of expensive housing and even more expensive, crucial lifestyle expenses... like bikes that cost way more than many of the cars they own. Such are the sacrifices of living in paradise.
But has paradise been lost? Can Whistler get its mojo back? Will the new, post-pandemic normal be much like it was pre-pandemic, or will it be dramatically different?
Don’t know. My hunch is it’ll be ironically different. Ironically because the population will be larger... and growing. The 2021 census information pegs Whistler’s population at 13,982. I’m rounding to 14,000 because I know there have to be at least 18 more who live in vans, on couches and were undoubtedly missed because they never check the mail they don’t get or didn’t bother to respond.
Notwithstanding the current transit strike, anyone who drives a car in Whistler knows the population is up. We have bona fide rush hours. I don’t know whether they actually last an hour or not but I do know there is a rush of SUVs heading both directions on the highway during what is typically thought of as rush hour. It isn’t just the endless line of traffic north in the morning and south in the afternoon, there’s an astounding flow coming south from points north as well in the morning and reversing that flow in the afternoon.
Also ironically because Whistler the Resort may emerge from the pandemic smaller. Less dynamic. Less animated. More, dare I say, right-sized?
Whistler grew too fast. Our growth was partly out of our control and partly fuelled by believing our own PR—successful resort with an unlimited flight path.
The too-soon, too-much growth began in 1989 when the municipality and province hammered out the details on Village North, the large parcel of land the province picked up when it bailed the nascent resort out of bankruptcy earlier in the decade. Village North—the land roughly north of the pedestrian bridge—was envisioned to be a seven-to-12-year development project. By the mid-1990s, virtually all of the parcels were sold and work was underway on most of them. Poof! Whistler more or less doubled in the blink of an eye.
Whistler’s southern expansion, growing out of Intrawest’s Placemaking redevelopment of Creekside, was an offer council of the day couldn’t pass up. While acknowledging the preference would have been for a more phased redevelopment, everyone believed Whistler would grow into its new shoes, er, footprint.
The direct result of both growth spurts was an almost single-minded effort by the Resort Municipality of Whistler, Tourism Whistler and the Chamber of Commerce to pull out all the stops to put heads in beds, that being pretty much the only metric driving their efforts. That it worked was evidenced by the pre-pandemic focus on overtourism. That it was too much, too soon is evidenced by the empty commercial locations, the truncated opening hours/days of many businesses, the partially opened venues on Whistler and Blackcomb and the handwringing over whether and when workerbees might begin to flock to Whistler again.
Hence, the shrinking of Whistler.
So will we be again what we were before?
I suspect the tourists will come back. Not as sure they’ll continue to come back when they experience the decline in service levels and choices, both in the village and on the mountains.
I believe the Aussies will return. I hope they do. We need them. Not just because they fill jobs we’re struggling to fill, but because they add a vibrancy to the resort sorely lacking in their absence. The gap-year imperative, so celebrated by the island continent, may prove to have been dampened by the pandemic, but I can’t believe it will have been extinguished. It’s too much a part of the culture to disappear, and there are too many people in the country with children ramping up on their own gap years who still harbour fond memories of their own time here to not have passed on the desire to find out for themselves if the stories are true.
I’m less convinced, but hopeful, Canadians and adventurers from other countries will reignite the spark and head here for a good time, not a long time. We shall see. Bad press about housing, pricing and value for price will have to get a lot better for that to happen.
And with the changing reality of foreign ownership, second homeowners retiring to Whistler, digital nomads encamping here because they can work anywhere and the ongoing inability of local business to entice retired and semi-retired people into the workforce, I won’t be surprised to see the smaller Whistler sticking around for some time to come.
I’m also not sure that would be a bad thing.
