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Conned, disgusted and homeless! As you all know, accommodation for the winter season is very hard to find. So when we came across a house in Whistler Cay Heights available for rent at a reasonable price we thought it was too good to be true.

Conned, disgusted and homeless!

As you all know, accommodation for the winter season is very hard to find. So when we came across a house in Whistler Cay Heights available for rent at a reasonable price we thought it was too good to be true. And it was!

After signing a lease and handing over almost $5,000 we moved into what we thought was to be our home for the next six months. Two days after moving in we found out that the lady we had rented the house from was a con artist. She and her partner had lied to our faces, taken our money and skipped town. We were devastated to find out that we now had nowhere to live for the season, plus the fact we were ripped off.

Luckily for us the owner of the house is a good bloke with a big heart and has let us stay in the house for the last three weeks whilst looking for other accommodation. Thank you so much!

Having lived in Whistler for a year we have heard of bad housing stories but never anything this extreme. Whilst we have all her details and have reported this to the authorities we will probably never see any of our hard earned money again. We are disgusted that someone could be so heartless, blatantly lie to our faces and take advantage of us. As a result we may have to leave Whistler, which we have called home for the last year, and head home due to the lack of housing.

We are all hard working young people employed in Whistler and were looking forward to another fantastic winter season. So beware if you are looking for accommodation — there are bad people out there looking to make a quick buck with no morals. If anyone knows of any accommodation available for four honest, hard working, responsible people we would be so grateful.

Owen Paul

Whistler

Made to feel at home

This letter is to express our sincerest gratitude to the Whistler Community Services Society. WCSS is responsible for a wide variety of services in the community, such as the Reuse-it Centre and Food Bank. A service not so well known is their interim housing program. A generous local B&B owner provides her establishment each year for a small fee to house some of Whistler’s desperate house hunters. This very affordable seven-week program has just ended for 2007. Happily there has been good news for most of us on the housing front. Search techniques such as Nick’s sign “Room Needed, Help Me Stay in Whistler” as he handed out candy in front of Nesters on Saturday, brought forth the generosity of people in the community. Without this innovative program our Whistler dream would have ended sooner, rather than later.

A heartfelt thanks to Greg McDonnell for running this program, for his ideas and suggestions, and most of all for making us feel so welcome here.

A big thank you to the managers: Geoff, Sean, Steve and Dave, for surrendering their evenings to cook for us and to share with us some great stories about this incredible part of the world.

To the guys we shared this luxury with, thanks for the great company and laughter we had here.

WCSS programs such as this serve as an important bridge for newcomers to the area in these times of critical housing shortages.

Have a great winter!

Nick Tunnell and Michael Burns

Whistler

Opportunities getting expensive

Hopefully council will be tightening the old budget belt next year, so that in future, projects like the Nesters recycling plants new roof (that must have been designed by Frank Gehry judging by the price tag), never see the light of day.

I was blown away to read last week that it had cost $258,000. It’s a free-standing roof for crying out loud. If it had a bedroom, bathroom and kitchen underneath it for housing a hard working employee I could understand this price tag. But no, it’s to stop some stinky old bins from getting wet!

Apparently it was a “cost saving opportunity”, according to Brian Barnett. What was the alternative going to be made out of, 24 karat gold?

He also states “the experience at the compactor and recycling site is quite sub-standard for the Whistler experience we are trying to maintain here”. Ex-squeeze me? I don’t know about you, but I don’t hang out at the recycling plant to get my kicks. Maybe I’m missing something here, but I usually get my Whistler experience on the ski slopes or bike trails.

It is this kind of reckless spending we need to nip in the bud right now. What’s next on the agenda, an $18 million roof for an outdoor plaza? What… have I missed something here?

Harvey Lim

Whistler

Thoughts on developments

I have a new concept for Lot 1/9 after reading recent letters to the editor. It will cost way less, provide a legacy that will not require much in maintenance costs and can be enjoyed by visitors and residents for years to come. Firstly, clean up the mess in the trees on Lot 1/9 caused by the years of squatters and build a four-season interpretive walk. Perhaps it could inform on our journey to the Olympics, Whistler's environmental policies etc.

Secondly take a fraction of the cost of the proposed structure and build an impressive, but temporary, structure on the driving range. This would address the problem of accommodating 8,000 people and offer the spectacular backdrop of the valley’s surrounding mountains. The greatest legacy would be to tell the world that we saved the last of the forested areas in the village, I'll take that over any building, thanks.

On another topic, I truly believe that the Rainbow project, while it may or may not be necessary (see later in the letter), building now in the current construction climate would be foolish.

I was glad to see RMOW postpone the muni hall upgrade for the same reason.

Rainbow will cost way too much, and the development will cease to be “affordable” housing for anyone on a realistic wage in Whistler. Wait till after the Olympics, that's when jobs in the construction industry will be needed by the many construction employees in the corridor.

Secondly, I was always surprised during my time on the WHA waitlist that I was not required to submit updated mortgage pre-approvals. I submitted a new one when I changed from a singleton buying a one-bedroom to a family needing three bedrooms during my seven years on the list.

With the current global credit crunch, just by asking waitlisters to submit new mortgage pre-approvals along with their annual updates letter, you'd probably shrink the list by 50 per cent — to people who realistically can purchase a home.

If that is the case, is there still an argument for such a large development at Rainbow? And will it still be affordable?

Alex Wilde

Whistler

Spending spiraling

In a show of concern for the thoughts and wishes of the ratepayers of Whistler, council called a town hall meeting to get some opinions and feedback. Then they went ahead and did what they were planning to do all along. Raise taxes rather than cut spending.

How many people are impressed with the Nesters Road compactor/recycling debacle? That traffic jam should guarantee that people stop recycling! And what happened to the two containers of beams that were left over after that make work project?

Our library is beginning to look like a mini version of the Vancouver Convention Centre!

How many gardeners out there are going to be using compost from the new municipal composting system knowing that it is officially part of the $51 million sewage treatment plant, and will be processing bio solids, read, "human waste", with all of its associated chemical and medicinal additives. That should make those prize Heirloom tomatoes taste pretty special!

Finally, why didn't we just let MY Place go bankrupt and then buy it for 20 cents on the dollar, instead of financing it through its death throes? Failing that, maybe someone with some entertainment business sense could have purchased it.

There are not enough pages to address the fiscal fiasco that has been Whistler's present council, and there is still another year left for them to do more damage.

I hope that the people of Whistler are beginning to see the light, and will begin to fight this spiraling trend before it is completely out of control.

Bill Overing

Whistler

A cheap shot

RE: Bring in the experts (Pique n Yer Interest Nov. 29)

A mere seven weeks after council learned a tax increase for ’08 was inevitable, and a scant year after taxpayers started asking tough questions about increased muni spending, Mr. Mitchell has cracked this story wide open! Can you say Pulitzer?

What muse (or mole) alerted ‘Andy’ that somehow the “…front line muni workers are largely the guilty party” here?

RMOW worker bees don’t create new “2020,” Olympic and other salaried positions. They certainly don’t vote themselves 25 per cent (+) wage increases — council and senior bureaucrats take care of those details.

The RMOW has some of the best educated, hardest working and community driven people in B.C. We don’t strike and we don’t picket. Historically, I believe labour and management have created a valuable and positive working relationship that provides residents and visitors good bang for their buck…

I’m glad Mr. Mitchell isn’t, as he wrote last week “…suggesting RMOW employees are deliberately or carelessly wasting our money… although those kinds of things are being said…” What? What has your papers’ investigative journalists uncovered along these lines? Nice job of slandering 200+ hard working people in one lazily assembled paragraph!

You’re not wrong with the suggestion for an RMOW oversight body like the Feds have; an idea offered up from across the valley for years as well as by one sitting councilor.

However, just because you were asleep at the wheel with this taxation discord, don’t placard an “Open Season” notice on staff that is culpable only of doing a good day’s job in the town they love.

Can we all do better? Absolutely! But don’t dumb down the debate by beating up on a staff that contributes each day to making Whistler one of the most livable communities on the planet.

I’ve got thick skin and can answer for only myself, but Mr. Mitchell’s rant is largely a cheap shot that highlights his own journalistic short coming more than some Vegas-style spending habits of RMOW employees.

B.K. Buchholz

Whistler

Whistler Film Festival Thanks Whistler!

Thank you Whistler for all of your support of the 2007 Whistler Film Festival. We offered you four action-packed days complete with fresh films and fresh snow, and many of you enjoyed both. In fact, never before have we experienced such a high turnout from the community. I personally encountered several pass-holders who were up to their 10th and even 13th screening. Now that’s commitment!

Over 7,000 attended the 2007 festival, representing a 15 per cent increase in attendance. Clearly, this was our best festival yet! It was the combination of the films, special guests and celebrities in attendance, increased industry participation, audience enthusiasm, and the overall intimate nature of the event that created a positive energy that you could feel in the air. Plus our team and volunteers were absolutely fabulous and really outshone themselves.

We want to thank all of our committed partners including the Resort Municipality of Whistler as well as Tourism Whistler, whistler.com and Whistler-Blackcomb for ensuring that this event remains relevant and viable for our community. We extend our sincere gratitude to all of our local sponsors who helped to accommodate, transport, feed and take care of our guests. This event would not be possible or as successful without your continued support and confidence.

Despite the snow and rain that delayed our guests on the highway by up to eight hours on their journey home, the reaction was overwhelmingly positive and we have no doubt that the media coverage will be significant.

Thank you again Whistler for supporting the adventure of film and the Whistler Film Festival, which despite humble beginnings has become one of Canada’s leading film festivals and now plays a leadership role in providing professional development programs and opportunities for filmmakers. Here’s to 2008 and all that awaits!

Shauna Hardy Mishaw

Co-founder/Festival Director

Whistler Film Festival

Get a grip

Many of us who routinely drive the Sea to Sky Highway are careful to properly winterize our cars. What this means is installing our winter tread tires in October so that we remain safe during extreme weather conditions. Many regular commuters prefer studded tires, or will have chains in the trunk. I believe that the average commuter in the Sea to Sky corridor understands that this is necessary equipment in the winter months. Ask any cab driver in Whistler how they equip their cars in winter months, and it will be winter tires and/or studs.

Last week, my minivan had to go in for repairs which required a part that would take days to arrive. I had no choice but to rent a car, as I had to transport my family to Whistler on the weekend. I had no luck securing a rental in Squamish on a Saturday that was equipped with snow tires, so I opted to enlist a friend to drive us to Whistler and get a rental there. I assumed that a rental car in Whistler would automatically come with snow tires. After all, it is a mountain resort, with lots of snow and steep roads. I guessed wrong. The car rental agency informed me that none of the cars in the fleet are outfitted with snow tires, and that to their knowledge, no rental cars in B.C. are outfitted in this way. I was astonished, to say the least.

I made it home safely on a dry road with sunny skies. Days later when I had to return the rental car to Whistler I was unable to due to extreme weather conditions. The RCMP was turning back all vehicles that were not properly equipped at Alice Lake. I thank the RCMP for their diligence; however I was stuck with a car I could not return.

I finally managed to return the car, and the rental car agency was very reasonable with the billing. They understood my dilemma, and listened to my concerns, but would not acknowledge any potential safety hazards.

Imagine this. A family of four from Texas flies into YVR and rents a car to go up to Whistler for a ski vacation. Now we have people in a vehicle without snow tires, trying to navigate the Sea to Sky Highway with all the minor road closures, temporary lanes and twisty roads. They have never driven on snow. The snow flies, and they pass Alice Lake before the RCMP have a chance to do tire checks. They are not even aware that they are not properly equipped. They fly into a ditch just outside Brandywine. Nice way to start a vacation. The scenario could be even worse with casualties involved. Is this what needs to happen before the rental car companies wake up and understand the potential hazard here?

Laura Modray

Squamish Mother of two and proud owner of 4 snow tires

Hut areas will be protected

This letter was addressed to Tyler Freed of Coast Range Heliskiing Ltd. A copy was forwarded to Pique for publication.

Thank you for your letter to the editor in the Nov. 29, 2007 edition of Pique Newsmagazine, in response to our earlier letter in the previous edition. We accept your comments and admit we were at fault not to have researched the matter further. We used information from a source which, in light of your facts, was incorrect.

From what you have said, we are relieved that the surroundings of the Wendy Thompson and Flavelle huts will continue to be protected from commercial encroachments. Please accept our apologies for reflecting badly on your company.

Shirley and Michael Thompson

Whistler

The Lillooet connection?

I read with curiosity the passing of first reading of a bylaw that would establish a regional transit service aiming to provide bus service from Lillooet to Squamish, with potential for expansion. A simple question to the SLRD board: How many passengers does your business plan envision travelling from Lillooet to Pemberton, Whistler or Squamish each day?

By all means, let's improve the regional transit plan between D'Arcy and Squamish but what does Lillooet have in common with Pemberton, Whistler and Squamish in terms of regional planning?

Gary McDonell

North Vancouver

Re-shaping takes many forms

Regarding Sheldon Tetrault’s warning to watch for a “re-shaping of our society” based on “First Nation” ownership of B.C. public lands that lie outside the reserve, I have to wonder. If “provincial jurisdiction does not apply on aboriginal title lands,” what validity could a provincial court ruling have? Especially when “ownership” of the land is not a concept any of Tetrault’s ancestors would have used.

A 2007 article in the Vancouver Sun on aboriginal heritage sites in Stanley Park points out that the concept of private ownership of land was not inherent to native culture but was adopted from the settlers. A recent edition of the St’at’imc Runner, a Canadian-taxpayer funded publication of the Lil’wat Tribal Council, also clarifies this fact in “Interpreting The Declaration” when it states that the reason the St’at’imc Chiefs used this term in 1911 was because they had “already been influenced (by) colonialism and (the) coming of Confederation” and also because they “came to believe (in) using the English terminology as a way to get their message across.”

Squamish and Lil’wat sovereignists will also cite the Royal Proclamation of 1763 as further proof of their “ownership” of British Columbia. This document was actually designed to protect the lucrative fur-trading profits of the world’s oldest corporation, the Hudson’s Bay Company by limiting any westward expansion from the original U.S. and Canadian colonies so that native peoples could continue trapping for them. Some historians say the Royal Proclamation, not the issue of taxation, actually sparked the American Revolution that left the American Indian bereft of the protection of British Law, a magic so powerful that the Canadian border came to be known as “the Medicine Line.”

Meanwhile, here on the west coast, the native peoples were demonstrating the harmony in which they supposedly live with nature by happily hunting the sea otter to near-extinction in exchange for metal tools and weapons their stone-age culture lacked.

Corporations have now hit upon “reconciliation” as the perfect formula to cherry-pick assets that actually belong to all of us. With the Campbell government’s approval, all they have to do is award the local tribal council benefits that may or may not filter down to the band membership and they are suddenly entitled to defy their own “legally binding referendum” and privatize waterfront properties for development, rivers for power projects, agricultural lands for container port expansion, parks for subdivisions and even entire watersheds for open pit mines.

During Russia's corrupt Boris Yeltsin era in the 1990s, there were pennies on the dollar privatizations of huge assets that rightfully belonged to the Russian people. Despite Tetrault’s claims, I don’t think there is much chance that aboriginal Canadians will end up owning B.C. any more than the poor little Russian proletariat now own Russia and her vast assets, although Vladimir Putin’s popular nationalistic regime is buying it back, little by little, with re-nationalized petrodollars. Even so, with the aid of the global central banking system, Russia’s wealth remains mostly in the hands of billionaires who live safely out of reach of Russia’s international criminal arrest warrants, in Britain, where they own soccer teams, and, in Israel, where they were the subject of a TV series.

History is a sorry affair and a lot of water has flowed under the bridges the settlers have built. Rather than issuing sweeping statements on how they own everything perhaps the Squamish and the Lil’wat would be wiser to consider the words of the Cheyenne visionary Sweet Medicine who warned them of people “looking for a certain stone... these people will not listen to what you say; what they are going to do, they will do... They will try to change you from your way of living to theirs... They will tear up the earth, and at last you will do it with them. When you do, you will become crazy, and will forget all that I am teaching you.”

Jane Carrico

Lillooet

Looks great, no weeding

In Pemberton recently, the main traffic circle was "renovated", thanks to generous donations made by a local artist and various businesses in town. I was so glad to see that this prominent area was cleaned up and that such an interesting display of metal sculptures, rocks and lighting was installed for the pleasure of all to enjoy.

This display of local art is intriguing and thought provoking. It looks amazing covered in snow, or illuminated by the indirect lighting. Thank you to the Pemberton Arts Council for creating this innovative improvement! Who needs more pine bushes?

Hopefully, this is just the beginning of more exhibits showcasing the talent of local artists. The arts council is doing a great job in beautifying the village of Pemberton.... and this rock garden won't need weeding!

Gail Macdonald

Pemberton