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Blindly led by the spirit

OPINION Ever notice how a catalogue of the occupants of an average Whistler gondola ride could sound like the beginning to a joke? (A Canadian, a Mexican, and an Aussie get into a gondola car. . .

OPINION

Ever notice how a catalogue of the occupants of an average Whistler gondola ride could sound like the beginning to a joke? (A Canadian, a Mexican, and an Aussie get into a gondola car. . .)

Diversity here, in Whistler, is a real, breathing entity. Not only is Whistler’s population diverse in terms of its collection of national identities, but it is also diverse in terms of the various tax brackets that its denizens occupy. Anybody who has done their "first season" here on an entry-level salary can tell you all about what it means to sweat it out during that year where part of the fun is seeing whether or not you make next month’s rent.

This is one side of the story; the other side is that several times each night, an amount two or three times the average Whistlerite’s paycheque is blown in just one of those restaurants in town where your bottled beer actually comes with a glass.

The economic and cultural diversity found in Whistler is certainly one of this town’s greatest resources. Although I am not against the Winter Olympics coming to Whistler, I do believe that the community’s diversity is surely one of the multiple resources that are at stake with the arrival of a global spotlight and the global corporations that may follow. In recent years, poor planning and outright corruption have tarnished the Olympic experience for some communities and organizations simply because certain public figures dove head first into the shallow end of the Olympic pool.

Being from Atlanta, Georgia, I can tell you that while the 1996 Summer Olympics brought on unprecedented economic prosperity for the city and the region, such successes have been undermined by the population explosion that has resulted in not only the clogging of Atlanta’s major traffic arteries, but also the clogging of its citizens’ pulmonary arteries with god-awful clouds of smog produced by daily traffic jams. This mess was easily preventable, if the city of Atlanta had had the foresight to aggressively expand and improve Marta, its public transportation system.

More recently, the USOC and possibly even American athletes, were so overcome by the spirit of fair play that they decided to offer up any form of bribery that they could get their cold hands on in order to entice the IOC to come their way and extend Salt Lake City the right to host the 2002 Winter Games. The USOC has yet to recover from the political fallout that followed these allegations, and in recent months they have been about as organized as Cheech and Chong on a high consumption day. Tragically, New York City’s bid for the 2012 Summer Olympics has been seriously jeopardized by these allegations and it is possible that New York City will be denied the bid simply because of the fallout from the Salt Lake City scandal.

Am I here to predict lung-searing pollution and widespread corruption should the IOC decide to extend a bid to Vancouver/Whistler? No, actually, I don’t deal in predictions, although with all the eccentric wackos in this town, I’m sure you could get one of Olympic-sized proportion, probably from some mountain mystic named Madame Tou-skis. My point is this: these examples show that civic leaders and entire Olympic organizations can be simultaneously uplifted and led astray by the spirit of the Olympic Games. Whistler has plenty of community resources, with diversity being chief among them. I’m confident that Whistler’s community is strong enough to prevent the erosion of such irreplaceable resources.

What worries me though is that there are corporate CEOs out there who are equally confident that they can defeat such community values with the stroke of a pen; all that they truly need is the right opportunity or they simply haven’t found the right locale at the right time, yet. The Olympic spotlight and the economic growth that the Games will foster will certainly provide such companies with all the investment incentive that they need. Certainly, affordable housing is one of the issues that comes into play here as high-rise condos may cause non-Intrawest affordable housing to go the way of the dodo (or at least all the way to Pemberton and Squamish, if it hasn’t been totally moved there already).

While Intrawest has provided affordable and functional housing for us first year groundlings, all you need to do to get some sense of the housing situation outside of Intrawest property is to have a conversation with one of the many long-term locals who pay rent with seasonal jobs. Then you will discover that there are encroaching forces that have some of Whistler’s non-Intrawest affordable housing in their sights and I can promise you that they do not have affordable housing on their minds. With or without the Olympics, community preservation issues like this one certainly need the vigilant attention of Whistler’s citizens in the next few years.

So, when and if Whistler gets that coveted Olympic bid, pop the corks and crack a smile, but do not forget where others have been blindly led by the spirit of the Olympics over the last decade. It is impossible to have an apolitical Olympics; quite the contrary, politics and the Olympic Games have always been intertwined. Some of the more sordid examples of this include the Salt Lake City debacle, as well as Hitler’s refusal to award Jesse Owens the gold medal in the 1936 Olympics. Whistler has the opportunity to make a positive political statement to the world and maintain both its sense of community and any other community standards that outside interests may deem as being up for sale.