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A tale of two cities

With Whistler’s tourism role well established, Squamish attempts to define what it means to be The Outdoor Recreation Capital of Canada

Midnight. Two hooded figures creep through the darkness silently. Dressed in black, they sneak commando-style along the roadside, wielding an awkward package that is wrapped in garbage bags. The headlights of vehicles passing illuminate them like skittish deer as they go about their mission. Despite racing hearts, they aren’t detracted from their task. Averting their eyes from the lights, the figures manhandle the package. They wrestle it into place, remove the garbage bags, and depart as mysteriously as they came.

And so it was by way of a midnight-stealth operation that on Good Friday 2001 Squamish announced itself as The Outdoor Recreation Capital of Canada.

"A number of people involved in adventure recreation pursuits in Squamish – mountain bikers, rock climbers, backcountry skiers, mountaineers, hikers, windsurfers – had over the years described Squamish in a variety of ways," explains Squamish resident and writer Ron Enns. "Not as an outstanding area only for the specific activities in which they were involved, but for its incredible diversity of high-quality opportunities. We'd always talk about things like being one of the premier places in North America for mountain biking, that Olympic whitewater kayaker Margaret Langford sometimes trained on the Mamquam River, that Everest expedition leader Chris Bonington sometimes climbed here, that the ski touring, hiking and mountaineering within a close radius was unlimited. We always knew that this place was incredible – as did all of the people who were coming here from around the world to play here."

What these local evangelists were seeing was the destination potential of Squamish. Twenty years after Whistler-believers had decided their holy grail was to become an international four-season resort, Squamish visionaries were ready to start building their own capacity to become a tourism destination.

A destination, Tourism Whistler President Barrett Fisher explains, is a place that is export-ready, with the ability to attract customers from long-haul markets, and the amenities and resources to meet their demands. Fisher identifies key ingredients in cooking up a destination: the natural environment and its physical attributes that engage active participation, scenery that draws people in to admire it, and a sense of place and character. "When I look at Squamish," she says, "I think of world-class rock-climbing, amazing windsurfing, kayaking."

Now, Squamish is registering on the radar and its destination assets are being recognized. And the time is ripe for Ron Enns to come out of the closet as one of those masked operatives, who decided to take matters into their own hands, and put Squamish on the map.

The name, The Outdoor Recreation Capital of Canada, had been in use for about three years. It was coined by then Economic Development Officer Brent Leigh and 99 North co-founder Patricia Heintzman. Recreation wasn’t on the District of Squamish council’s agenda at the time, so a motley band of individuals were forced to work from basements and back-alleyways to promote their vision of Squamish as a mecca for outdoor and adventure recreation.

After three and half years of keeping quiet about that mission, Enns confesses his participation.

"Cliff Miller (of the Test of Metal and the Squamish Off-road Cycling Association) had a plan to try to make the name stick. He had an ‘Outdoor Recreation Capital of Canada’ sign made at his own expense and devised a plan to put it up on the existing wooden Squamish sign on Highway 99 just north of Britannia Beach."

Miller planned the mission for the Thursday night before Good Friday, hoping the weekend traffic and the public holidays would be the perfect alibis. District of Squamish staff was least likely to be sent to take it down over a long weekend. Miller was right. The sign was an instant hit.

The name was finally adopted and trade-marked, and like a self-fulfilling prophecy, began to change the face of Squamish. Now, the little town on Howe Sound is really starting to attract international attention. Rock-climbers from around the world converge on Squamish every summer to scale what is being hailed as the Yosemite of the North. The hostel is a babel of languages, from Icelandic to Spanish, and licence plates from across America reveal the launching points of thousands of pilgrimages. Windsurf and kayak-crowned vehicles are a frequent sight on the highway, and the editor of Men’s Journal has just declared Squamish to be the home of the best mountain-biking in North America.

All this has happened without an official or concerted promotional effort. Karen Hodson, Manager of the Squamish Chamber of Commerce explains, "We don’t have a Tourism Whistler. We don’t have the staffing or the funding to go with it. The chamber of commerce, like all chambers across Canada, is a business-based membership organization. So we represent our members, and the tourism aspect of their businesses."

The chamber operates the visitor centre, answers inquiries, hosts annual fam-tours, but can’t take a more proactive, promotional role because of budgetary restrictions. Though Hodson admits it’s frustrating – "if we had a million dollar budget, we could be doing some amazing things" – she sees an incredible momentum building.

"The energy has completely shifted in the community from five years ago. People are optimistic."

Brent Leigh, now President of the Whistler Chamber of Commerce, worked for two and a half years as Squamish’s Economic Development Officer. Leigh’s not surprised to see Squamish emerging as a recreational destination.

"Squamish clearly had a destiny, and it’s clearly realizing it," he says. "I worked with a good team down there that dealt with the early university application, the downtown plan, and some aspiration for outdoor advancement. Change in the world today happens from the encouragement of many, and the whole community has clearly mobilized on these opportunities."

People outside the community are mobilizing as well. Squamish is not just attracting the attention of recreationalists, tourists and travel writers, but property investors and developers. Whistler-based Peter Alder is one who has turned his sights down-valley. A proposal put forth by Alder and Ecosign’s Paul Mathews to build a sightseeing gondola up the Squamish Chief has generated protest and widespread debate from Squamish residents, people across the Lower Mainland and beyond. More importantly, it’s brought the question to the forefront: What exactly is the Outdoor Recreation Capital of Canada?

Hodson, who sits on the District of Squamish’s Tourism Committee, admits that this hasn’t been thoroughly fleshed out. The vision of what tourism will be in Squamish and its key brand values hasn’t yet been developed.

"People are frustrated because they can see the potential in Squamish, but it’s not happening fast enough," she says. "But I use the analogy of a puzzle. The edges are there, there’s some images coming together, that first third takes forever, but then the pieces start clicking into place. Every now and then someone takes a piece and tries to ram it in but it just doesn’t fit."

A sightseeing gondola on the huge chunk of rock that stands guard over Squamish, perhaps? One of the questions raised by this proposal is whether it fits into the emerging picture. Alder, as project proponent, says yes. "When I look at the Chief," he told the Pique, "my first thought is ‘Why isn’t there a gondola there?’"

Alder admits that a gondola is in line with the kind of commercialized and packaged tourism that Whistler has specialized in, and that this project has a captive market made up of over 500,000 sightseers and picnickers stopping at Shannon Falls, and 5 million vehicles driving past the Chief every year.

"My thing is, 80 per cent of all people driving past will go up at least once. There’s no use in putting up a gondola where there are no people."

The provincial government clearly sees Whistler resort as an economic model for the rest of B.C., and is encouraging resort development with a specific strategy. Ecosign, Whistler-Blackcomb master-planners since 1975, and part of the team that will be developing the Callaghan Valley’s Nordic Centre, have used what they’ve learned in Whistler to help plan resorts as far away as South America and Russia.

Whether the Whistler model fits in Squamish is a question that the community of Squamish has to decide. And soon.

Alder, an expert master-planner, sees the community at a crucible.

"In many ways, Squamish is a blank slate," he says, "and it has been for 30 or 40 years. Logging and the railway kept the place alive and now it’s changing. Squamish is saying ‘We’re the gateway to Outdoor Recreation’, but they still haven’t formalized a real policy with respect to that, how they’ll address that over the next 20 years.

"Finally they’ve put a council in who’s forward-looking, but they’re so overloaded (with development applications), and they don’t have a master plan. I’m a firm believer that you need to have a master plan. You can’t just say ‘We’re going to be the Outdoor Recreation Capital of Canada because we’re not a logging town anymore.’"

From his new post in Whistler, Brent Leigh sees the two towns at different crossroads.

"The intention in the early 1980s in Whistler to create a four season resort was a very high energy goal, but it was fairly linear. As much as it was aspirational, it was ‘Let’s build something.’ Whistler is now facing the greater challenge of how to sustain that. And Squamish is at that earlier linear opportunity. The challenge for Squamish is to do it well."

There might be some value in looking to seasoned Whistler developers and planners like Alder in rising to that challenge, but many Squamish residents have a very different sense of what their town can grow up to become.

Enns has no doubt that the visionaries who contributed to the evolution of Squamish as the Outdoor Recreation Capital of Canada want to keep the Chief gondola-free. He’s clear on what Outdoor Recreation means – so clear, that it was critical to his decision to settle his family in Squamish.

"To me outdoor recreation implies self-propulsion. It's an escape from the hustle and bustle of our lives, it's a time to listen to nature and allow your body to work with the elements. It's about movement, about the reward of hard work and accomplishing goals. It's as much, if not more in many cases, mental as it is physical. In this way, it's also about personal growth."

For Enns, outdoor recreation is as much about being able to constantly "re-create" yourself, as it is about enjoying the wild environment.

Squamish resident, Megan Olesky, feels strongly enough about the direction Squamish is headed, and the impact the gondola proposal will have on that, that she is spearheading a grass-roots advocacy group in opposition to the gondola, called Friends of the Chief.

For Olesky, the gondola jeopardizes the town’s status as the outdoor recreation capital.

"A quick gondola ride to a viewpoint symbolizes everything that outdoor recreation is not," says Olesky. "Outdoor recreation is not hard infrastructure and an easy way up. Outdoor recreation is an appreciation of the challenge of the outdoors through hard work and reward. It is our natural assets in Squamish that make us unique and draws people to us. The outdoor recreation capital of Canada is not just a marketing slogan to us, it's our lifestyle, it's why we move here and it's why we travel to get here."

Tourism Whistler officials are watching what’s happening in Squamish with interest, and not because they see it as a competitor.

"We very much see Squamish as a complementary partner, not as a competitor," says Fisher. "We really believe it’s the entire corridor-sell that will make the region and particularly Whistler sustainable in the long term against other destinations."

Squamish’s Hodson is on the same page. "Our competitor is New Zealand. It’s not Whistler. Whistler is a resort, and it has its specific market."

Fisher sees Whistler’s strength as a destination coming from the combination of its incredible natural assets juxtaposed with a slice of luxury, enabling visitors to experience and enjoy the natural environment, while simultaneously enjoying creature comforts and amenities.

"There are very different strengths in Squamish," Fisher comments. "Any destination has to be true to who they are. Customers are looking for a genuine experience, so Squamish needs to focus on what their core competencies are. Who are we? And what do we do best? I don’t believe any destination can achieve success by taking a cookie cutter approach. The town of Squamish needs to consider, does this proposal maximize their natural assets or take away from them?"

People like Enns and Olesky are saying the same thing, although for them, the answer is clear. The rest of the community will have a chance to consider this in the coming months, as the gondola proposal wends its way through a stakeholder and public consultation process.

Alder and Mathews will publicly present their sightseeing gondola proposal for the first time to the District of Squamish at the council meeting on Sept. 28.



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