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Jason Worby: Setting down roots for the future

“If things got any better, heaven would be a lateral move…” – Jason Worby All he wanted to do was work for Mike Varrin. Didn’t matter that he already had a job at Whistler. The GLC was where he wanted to be.
1510alta
Columbia River

“If things got any better, heaven would be a lateral move…”

– Jason Worby

All he wanted to do was work for Mike Varrin. Didn’t matter that he already had a job at Whistler. The GLC was where he wanted to be. Unfortunately, Varrin didn’t need him — at least not at first. “I must have told him ‘no’ a hundred times,” remembers the Dark Prince. But anyone who knows Jason Worby also understands that “no” means absolutely nothing to the guy….

“He finally just wore me down,” admits Varrin. “He’d come by after work every day and he’d say ‘Put me in coach. I’m ready.’ I figured if somebody wanted to work here as badly as Jason did, I might as well give him a chance and see what he could do.”

And like a man possessed, Worby stepped into the breach and delivered on his promise. “I wasn’t going to let an opportunity like that slip through my fingers,” he explains. “I wanted Mike to see what a great decision he’d made.”

For Jason, it was a dream-come-true. Living at Whistler, working at the GLC, playing hockey with the guys, skiing every day of the winter: it was everything he’d hoped for. And everything he’d banked on when he suddenly pulled up stakes and left London, Ontario for a new life on the West Coast. “It was my buddy, Shawn Chipchase, who finally pushed me over the edge,” he explains. “The day I turned 30, he phoned me up from Whistler. I think it was like 4 in the morning. ‘Get your butt out here’, he told me. ‘You belong on the West Coast!’ So that’s what I did.”

The year was 2000. And Worby remembers the drive across the country all too well. “It was mid-November and I was all alone,” he recounts. “Somewhere in Saskatchewan I came upon this massive meteor shower. I stopped the car and got out. I was so tired I thought I was hallucinating. It was absolutely stunning! And I thought to myself, if this is a sign of things to come, then I’ve definitely made the right move…”

But the trip wasn’t all lights and epiphanies. “I was driving this little Ford Escort,” he says, laughter bubbling through his words. “And it was filled to the brim with skis, hockey gear, a mountain bike and a well-stocked beer fridge. By the time I stuffed everything in there, the car was probably less than three inches off the ground. Not too bad for the flat stuff, but I certainly learned a lesson when I tried to go over the Duffey with my wheezing car and crappy tires…”

Clearly, Jason is an original; a guy, in other words, who isn’t afraid to follow the beat of his own drum. Still, it was a bit of a surprise to his friends when he and his wife-to-be, Tasha (whom he met at the GLC), decided once again to pull up stakes and move to Revelstoke in the spring of 2005.

“At the time,” says Varrin, “Revelstoke didn’t have much going for it. There was a lot of talk about a new ski area — and huge potential — but Jason was venturing into totally unknown territory. I wasn’t sure then that he was making the right decision.”

Worby admits he took a bit of a flyer on Revelstoke. “We were looking for business opportunities,” he explains. “And both Tasha and I knew that the money we had to invest wouldn’t go very far in Whistler. So we started searching further afield.” He’d heard about this new resort being planned in the heart of B.C. heli-skiing country — had talked to both Dan Treadway and Joe Lammers who had already bought land there — and he was intrigued by the possibilities.

But it was architect Harry Measure who really pushed him over the edge. “He’d come into the GLC and tell me, ‘You’ve got to check this place out. It’s gonna go huge.’” A pause. “He was relentless.” And that relentlessness had a profound impact on Worby.

“We picked Revey solely on the basis that a new ski resort was going to be built there,” he says. “Our plan was to get established, get comfortable with the town, and eventually bid for the food-and beverage contract at the mountain.”

He never counted on falling so deeply in love with the little clapboard restaurant with the red metal roof on the side of the Trans-Canada Highway, five minutes west of town. What would eventually become The Great White North Restaurant (or the GLC East, as some like to call it) was exactly what the young couple was looking for. “I can still remember my first sight of it,” he tells me with a long, happy sigh. “There it was on an east-facing bench, on the very edge of the Monashee Mountains, with a killer view of Mt Mackenzie and the proposed resort. It came with a three-acre parcel of land with a house and a workshop.” Another booming laugh. “And the price was really right…”

Once again, it seemed like the stars were aligning just so for the two entrepreneurs. “We took possession of the restaurant on June 1 st , 2005 — on the very day the London Knights finally won the Memorial Cup,” says the former pro hockey player. “I figured you couldn’t get a better omen that that…”

In yet another instance where good fortune smiles on bold decision-makers, Jason would eventually discover that his new restaurant was situated right across the highway from the Boulder Mountain turnoff, “which,” says Worby with the hugest cat-eating-a-canary grin, “is the sled Mecca of the world! Without even knowing it, we’d just hit a Grand Slam.”

To visit the Great White North today is to get a glimpse of where Revelstoke might be heading in the future. With an airy design plan, lots of windows and a natural wood motif (“I did a lot of the woodwork myself with salvaged white pine submerged when Mica Dam was built,” he says), the GWN oozes good-natured fun. On any given night, visitors from Whistler need only climb the stairs to the second floor loft/lounge — serviced by a “drinks gondola” — in order to be greeted by a gaggle of familiar faces.

“It’s almost like a hostel around here,” moans Worby with just a hint of humour in his eyes. “I can count the number of days that Tasha and I have been alone here since we moved to Revey….”

Whether they’re transplanted Whistlerites like Lammers or RMR president, Paul Skelton and his wife Michelle; visiting artists like Feet Banks or Chili Thom; working pros like Christian Begin or Eric Berger; or just curious folk come to take the pulse of the new resort — Worby maintains that the constant stream of friends dropping by the Great White North means he’s never homesick for his old haunts. “How could I be?” he says. “Whistler folk keep visiting — and staying for good!”

He sighs. “But to be serious for just a moment, I can say honestly that the hardest thing I’ve ever done is leave Whistler. That was the biggest risk for me.” And another smile lights up his face. “That’s why it’s so comforting to see how popular we’ve become. We’ve gone and created a new home, and our friends seem to approve.”

No question. The 80-seat restaurant just hums at dinnertime. “Skiers, sledders, cross-country travellers, full time residents — we want everybody to feel welcome here,” he explains. And it seems to work. “We’re starting to see a bit of a trend among the younger-minded locals,” he adds. “They’ve begun using this place — particularly our upstairs lounge — as a kind of local hangout. And we’re totally OK with that…”

As if they weren’t busy enough, Jason and Tasha (with partner and good friend Joel Asher) recently took up an even bigger challenge. “We were still keen on landing the F&B contract with the mountain,” he says. “But when October 2007 rolled around and we still hadn’t heard anything from them, we figured we’d missed out on our chance.”

Later that month, however, Worby got a call from the base area manager, Steve Bailey. Could he come in for a talk? “To get that phone call at the last minute — it was like winning the lottery!” After that, things started to move fast. “We then met with COO ‘Lightning’ Rod Kessler — Joel, Tasha and I — and we hit it off pretty good.”

The upshot? Kessler and Bailey wanted them to run the food and beverage concession at Revelstoke Mountain. There was little time to prepare — and a team of 22 young kids and professionals to train. Could they do it? “It was really tight,” admits Worby. “We didn’t have everything in place — grill working, fridge turned on, shelves stocked — until the evening before Opening Day. And even then we were scrambling like mad.”

But when people ventured into the new day lodge the next morning, Worby’s team was ready. Concludes Jason: “It’s amazing, you know. When we first moved here, you couldn’t even tell there was a ski resort in Revelstoke. To see it all come together — it’s just too exciting for words.”

Still, he wants to make sure I understand one last thing about him. “No matter how exciting things get,” he tells me, “nothing comes close to the way I feel for Tasha. She’s the love of my life — my number one concern. And I wouldn’t have it any other way…”