Opinion

Whistler has to take a serious look in the mirror. In the constant tug-of-war between community needs and individual rights, it has not been a stellar week for the community.

With the Nagano Olympics coming to an end last weekend, and Tourism Vancouver officials returning from Japan full of optimism about a Vancouver/Whistler bid for the 2010 Games, it’s starting to look like 1960 again.

With the hiring of Rick Staehli as general manager of the housing corporation and the public hearing scheduled for the 19 Mile Creek employee housing proposal, Whistler could be at a turning point in its perpetual housing debate. It’s about time.

It’s difficult to measure the level of hypocrisy in the International Olympic Committee’s (original) decision to strip Ross Rebagliati of his gold medal, but it certainly exceeds 17.8 nanograms.

They’re talking about us... That former UBC president David Strangway has been considering a private university in Whistler has been an open secret for some time.

It’s getting awfully difficult to differentiate Glen Clark and his NDP government from any of the Social Credit governments the current premier used to attack for lack of ethics.

We probably have to go back to the 1950s, before the first talk of bringing the Olympics to this valley, for the last time Whistler wasn’t staring straight into the headlights of some imminent, significant changes.

Very few details of the proposed Vancouver-Whistler bid for the 2010 Winter Olympics have been worked out, but there is only two months for public discussion of the concept before an application must be submitted to the Canadian Olympic Association.

Whether you believe the next millennium will start in two years or in three doesn’t really matter. What Whistler has to begin this year — 1998 — is to take some concrete steps forward toward Whistler in the next millennium.

Out with the old, in with the new.