Being the pragmatic, even-keeled realist I am, I did not fall for the insane hype last month around where Japanese baseball superstar Shohei Ohtani might sign this offseason… at first.
Then some Toronto Blue Jays “insiders”—or insider adjacents—started tweeting: Ohtani is definitely on a plane to Toronto right now to sign with the team; his alleged flight coincides with a supposed day of luck in Japanese culture; his Japanese compatriot (and Toronto Blue Jay) Yusei Kikuchi definitely reserved the entire upper floor of a posh Toronto sushi restaurant for that same night; Ohtani’s dog’s name (which is top secret) is a tell of where he plans to sign.
Like many Jays fans, I was fully onboard the hype train at this point, daydreaming about placing an order for an Ohtani home jersey.
If you follow baseball, you know the rest. It was all bullshit; a swirling fever dream of unfounded rumours, some possibly floated by Ohtani’s camp itself to bolster the bargaining position with his preferred team, the Los Angeles Dodgers.
And on Dec. 11, Ohtani signed a 10-year, $700-million contract with the Dodgers—the largest contract in professional sports history.
It is likely Ohtani was never going to sign in Toronto. But for a brief 24- to 48-hour period, there was hope, even for us realists—because a small cadre of insiders put their credibility on the line (and got burned—c’est la vie).
It serves as a timely reminder that even the best, supposedly most knowledgeable inside sources can sometimes get it wrong, or be led astray—and that predicting the future with any degree of accuracy is almost always a fool’s errand.
So, rather than feed you a list of “informed predictions” for the year ahead that almost certainly will not come true, we’re going to take a page from the Toronto Blue Jays insiders, and try to wish our preferred outcomes into existence.
AND… ACTION!
In 2023, the Resort Municipality of Whistler (RMOW) adopted the community’s first Housing Action Plan—a move named Best Council Decision by Pique readers in this year’s Best of Whistler poll.
That’s all well and good, and the plan does contain plenty of exciting initiatives to guide the future of housing in Whistler… but if we’re talking a 2024 housing wishlist, the ask is the same as at the outset of 2023: that the RMOW take serious, concrete measures to address the loss of private suites in the community.
It’s crucial to keep building employee housing, as the RMOW and Whistler Housing Authority have done with great success in recent years. Optimizing the existing supply—a key plank in the new Housing Action Plan—is arguably more important.
By the end of 2024, we hope to see real, measurable progress on preserving and optimizing Whistler’s housing stock—including tangible policy measures (with teeth!) that will actually address the holes in the resort’s housing continuum.
CONNECTING THE REGION
Last month, Pique heard from young people in Mount Currie who said they are scared to take a local bus route due to anti-social behaviour.
Many people who use the route are drunk and cause fights, they said—but that’s not the only issue.
The bus servicing the route is of lower quality than typical BC Transit buses, and doesn’t have a bike rack. Residents bemoan its lack of consistency and regularity, saying they often wait by the side of the road for a bus that never comes.
It is indicative of a much larger issue with transportation in the region.
In the letters section of last week’s Pique, Whistlerite Brian Buchholz called the lack of regional transit in the Sea to Sky a “profound failure”—we concur.
As we’ve written in this space ad nauseam, the case for getting it done is clear: with less housing availability in Whistler, more are commuting. Get their passenger vehicles off the highway as much as possible, and you get less congestion, fewer accidents and reduced greenhouse gas emissions.
Regional transit would help ease the employment burden for local businesses, and on health-care facilities, while also bolstering tourism in the corridor.
It has been a perennial promise, and woeful white whale, of local leaders going back decades.
With a provincial election slated for Oct. 19, the corridor is due for another kick at the regional transit can—expect the issue to be front and centre in the riding come election season this fall.
NEED MORE PROOF?
As a university student, I always looked forward to my birthday—the only day of the year I could ever convince my friends to go bowling with me.
So imagine my absolute delight to learn in 2018 that Calgary-based Concorde Group planned to bring a fully-fledged bowling alley and game centre to the heart of Whistler Village.
Sadly, the proposal died an unceremonious death after Concorde walked away in early 2019.
The closure of Whistler’s Village 8 Cinemas in January 2023 dealt another blow to indoor activities in the resort—an area in which we are already severely lacking.
Venues such as the Whistler Racket Club, the Squamish Lil’wat Cultural Centre, Audain Art Museum, or Escape! Whistler offer activities to pass the time when the weather isn’t cooperating.
But high atop the wishlist for 2024 is more weatherproof activities for Whistler, like a bowling alley and movie theatre—particularly as the warm weather and rainy days stick around into 2024.
SNOW, SNOW, SNOW
And on that note, one item tops all the others when it comes to wishes for 2024.
Whistler needs snow, and it needs it bad.
Not just to bolster the ski season, but to head-off the early impacts of another bone-dry summer in Whistler’s forests.
And it’s not just a Whistler problem. According to the BC Government, the provincial average for all snow weather stations in the province was just 68 per cent of median as of Dec. 18.
A lower snowpack in the alpine this winter will mean increased chances for drought and wildfire in the spring and summer.
So let’s all channel our favourite Blue Jays insider and wish with all our might that the snow is coming soon.
