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Karen Krivel — keeping things fun

"There's no scarcity of opportunity to make a living at what you love. There is only a scarcity of resolve to make it happen." - Wayne W. Dyer She's one of my favourite people in the valley.
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"There's no scarcity of opportunity to make a living at what you love. There is only a scarcity of resolve to make it happen."

- Wayne W. Dyer

She's one of my favourite people in the valley. Funny and self-deprecating, energetic and outgoing, she represents all that is good and positive about the Whistler experience. But that should come as no surprise. After all, Karen Krivel has been involved with this place for the better part of 45 years.

"My dad grew up in Saskatchewan," she starts. "He was in the medical corps during World War II and was stationed in Vancouver for a time." She stops. Smiles. "He was a doctor at heart, you know, but an athlete in his mind. And he totally fell in love with the West Coast way of life."

When the war ended, Doctor Krivel returned home only to realize that living in the prairies couldn't fulfill his needs anymore. He'd gotten a taste of the coast. And he couldn't wait to get more. "My dad always said: 'The best thing about Saskatchewan was leaving it.'" She laughs. "He was all of 140 pounds soaking wet, you know. But he was keen. Really keen."

He fell in love with Whistler at first sight. "He came up here with a bunch of medical buddies," she tells me. "And that was that." In 1967, the Krivels bought a condo across the highway from Creekside — in fact, the first condo development ever built in the valley. "It was a real family scene," she remembers. "And lots of fun for the kids. The Sinclairs, the Ladners, the Quinns, the Sloans... they all had a place there."

Soon, Doctor Krivel, his wife and their four young daughters were spending every winter weekend at Whistler. "On Friday afternoons, my dad would pick the four girls up at school in our big station-wagon and pack us up to the mountain." She pauses for a beat. Shrugs. "And I really wasn't all that keen to go. As they say in my family I was onggabloozum. 'Why do we have to go to Whistler,' I'd whine. 'I want to stay in the city.'"

More laughter. "It's ironic in a way," she says. "Of the four Krivel girls, I'm the only one who ended up living here. But I always found it so cold at Whistler. It's just physiology, I know. But I had to work my way around that..."

She laughs again. "I'm a fish at heart. I love the water, I love the beach." She takes a long breath. "But I also love the mountains. Whistler has always been a spiritual place for me — a refuge. It's part of me... to the core."

And then she puts it all in perspective for me. "From the very first," she says, "Whistler was like a member of the family. Sometimes you love her and sometimes you don't. I knew this place would always be part of me. You know, I travel a lot — I've lived all over the world. And yet, no matter where I've been, a piece of Whistler has always been there with me."

Her taste for travel and adventure, she says, was sparked by a 1975 trip to Fiji as part of Pierre Trudeau's Canada World Youth movement. "I stayed in Fiji for seven months. I'd just graduated from high school and I was still fairly naïve. But that was my WOW moment. 'There's a busy world out there,' I told myself, 'and I want to be part of it.'" She sighs. "It was the demise of my academic career..."

Still, she gave it her best. "I started out at UBC in rehab medicine," she says, "but I just wasn't ready for the university experience." So instead she moved to Hawaii and enrolled in the Hawaii School of Business where she earned a degree in hotel management. The next few years flew by. "I worked for a while at the Westin Hotels... was the concierge at the Bayshore for six years!"

And she might still be in the hotel-management business today, if not for a major crisis in her life. "It was just before Expo '86," she starts. "One minute I'm healthy as a horse, the next I've been diagnosed with t-cell lymphoma..."

And the prognosis wasn't good. "They gave me six months to live." She sighs. Takes a deep breath. "That was a wake up call, I can tell you. A real epiphany..."

She shrugs. "But I came through it. I don't know how. I mean, what do you do? I was in my late 20s — pretty rare for someone my age to get this sick. And then I got better. I was a bit of a phenomenon at the time."

When she realized she wasn't going to die, Karen decided to change things up in her life. "It was such a crazy situation. The psychology of the disease wasn't really addressed in those years. And it kind of screwed me up."

But not enough to squash her plans. "I took responsibility for my own happiness. Decided to follow my passions and got myself a job teaching scuba diving with Club Med."

Karen worked with various Club Meds around the world for the next four years. "We were really pushing the envelope," she says. "Diving very deep. And one day, I just decided that was enough." So she moved back to Vancouver to see if her travel itch would settle down.

"I got myself a beautiful pad in Kitsilano." She laughs. "And just when I was about to move in, I got a call from Whistler Mountain. They said they had a job for me with guest services..." The year was 1989. And Karen decided that this was just the job she'd been waiting for. "We had such a great team back then — you know, people like Heather Linskey, Dawn Titus, and Barb Simpson. We had a lot of fun." She laughs. "And some great parties too."

But the best was yet to come. "I was approached by Heather Linskey one day. 'We're trying to launch a host program on the mountain,' she told me. 'And we think you're the right person to run it.'" Another burst of laughter. "So that became my job."

Whistler's (then revolutionary) Mountain Host program was an immediate hit. And much of its success was due to Krivel's drive and her ability to recruit the "right" kind of person to work there. "We had all these great guys and gals on the team," she says. "And what an experience for tourists. To ski around the mountain in the company of long-time locals, well, you can imagine just how popular the program became."

When Whistler and Blackcomb merged in 1998, Karen was hired by the new company to manage the two-mountain host program. But by 2002, she'd had enough. "I'd lost my spirit," she admits. "Every day was a fight — every decision was a struggle — the passion for the job had totally left me."

So she decided to take a big step back. "I wanted to take a look at what I was putting out there. Because what I was getting back was not conducive to a healthy lifestyle." She sighs again. "You know, there were things presenting themselves in my life that didn't reflect the way I wanted to live/work. Besides, I just didn't think I was dealing with my issues in a healthy way."

So she went to India. "I mean, where else does one go to seek answers?" she asks rhetorically — and took up meditation and yoga. "I became a seeker," she says. "I was never a big believer. Never much into organized religion. But I realized that I needed to explore that realm." She pauses. Takes a breath. "I thought there was something there. I didn't know for sure... but I thought."

She smiles. "And I found it. Spirit, love, connection, acceptance — not just making it through the world feeling like I had to be strong all the time. I came back to Whistler in a much more positive space."

But she'd been out of the working world for five years by then. "There was nobody waiting to recruit me for a new job this time around," she says. "So I decided to do it for myself. I took courses on interview techniques and resume-writing and all sorts of other job-finding skills."

It worked. "I was fortunate enough to find a job with Whistler Sports Legacy... in guest services." She laughs. "But seriously, working at Whistler Olympic Park — spending my days in the Callaghan Valley — it was very spiritual for me."

And then the Sliding Centre came calling. "They needed someone to run their guest services and volunteer program," she says. And smiles happily "So that's where I've been ever since."

I couldn't think of a better posting for her...