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Legends among us

By G.D.

By G.D. Maxwell

Canadians are funny, eh? Not funny ha-ha - although comedians have been one of the Great White North's best-known exports since pioneering Canadian funnymen realized they'd have to go abroad to find an audience with a sense of humour - but funny weird.

One of Canada's trademark funny weirdnesses is the never-ending quest for a unique national identity and the way that quest very often - always - seems to get reduced to a search for ways in which Canadians are unlike Americans.

To the list of we're peacekeepers not warriors, we've never manifested a destiny, we have a parliamentary system of government and our national leader knows how to pronounce nuclear, can be added this differential insight: Canadians are reluctant to celebrate themselves.

When it comes to beating our own drum or blowing our own horn, Canadians stand mutely on guard for thee. Take the coin of the realm for example. All our coins have some British dame on one side and a parade of animals on the other side. The most recent prime minister engraved on a Canadian note is the Rt. Hon. William Lyon Mackenzie King, looking pretty in pink on the fifty. King first held office in 1921 and left politics to set up the country's first 1-900 Psychic Hotline in 1948.

Granted, U.S. money honours its share of dead white men from another century too, but it also includes likenesses of Roosevelt, Eisenhower and Kennedy. And Jimmy the Greek is giving even odds the current wave of rabid Republicans won't leave office before Reagan's likeness graces everything from currency to airports to a big monument depicting the Republican's greatest single achievement - deficit spending.

Once you get beyond money though, the US really leaves Canada in the dust. From buildings to bridges to mountains to parks to public squares, the U.S. celebrates its heroes, the great and near great, movers and shakers, and more often than they're probably comfortable with, scoundrels and scalawags.

Canada, on the other hand, well, just isn't comfortable with such public showings of praise. Canada slumps its shoulders, sticks its toe in the sand and turns its attention to celebrating events more than people. When the last Parliament considered the 'appropriateness' of offering up a monument to Pierre Trudeau who, love him or hate him, dragged Canada kicking and screaming into the 20 th century, the best they could come up with was an obscure mountain in the Northwest Territories and they never did reach an agreement on that.

Canada doesn't do monuments.

Does Whistler?

Well, we've got a street named after Rob Boyd. Another one honouring Seppo. A couple of bridges no one knows are dedicated to former mayors and a park named after Ross Rebagliatti. There are scant few runs on either mountain named after people and the one celebrating Ross' Olympic gold medal has reverted back to its former name. In a largely overlooked press release, Whistler Bla. let's not go there this week, announced the run formerly known as Ross' Gold was reverting to Gandy Dancer due to the fact that, well, that everybody still called it Gandy Dancer. I'm waiting for the press release that officially renames Rat Fink, Dad's and Marmot, Mum's, Afterburner, The Sewer and whatever they came up with to rename Toilet Bowl, Toilet Bowl. What's sauce for the Ross, guys..

But the public's been asked to come up with suggestions for 11 monuments to be built into the refurbished Village Square. They can honour storied events, special places, noteworthy features and memorable characters vital to the Whistler experiment.

How cool is that?

Before offering up a few suggestions though, here's a contentious question. What is Whistler? Should we be considering momentous people, places and events in the history of Alta Lake? Or should we be focused on the post-1960 history of the town of Whistler? There is no correct answer, just another notion to debate over a refreshing beverage.

The list of people worthy of honouring easily exceeds 11. There are the Whistler pioneers, the ones with fire in their belly to bring the Olympics to British Columbia, the ones who scouted out a suitable venue and came up with London Mountain. Dave Mathews, Sandy Martin, Franz Wilhelmsen and the risk-takers who formed the nucleus of Garibaldi Lift Company.

There were the visionaries who saw beyond Whistler Mountain as a ski hill to envision Whistler Resort. Al Raine figures prominently in this group as does Garry Watson. And often overlooked because of their contemporary presence and the low-level animus reserved for Intrawest, would be Hugh Smythe, Gary Raymond and Paul Mathews, whose vision of a ski hill went beyond moving people uphill and feeding them indiscriminate grub. Like it or hate it, everything modern ski resorts - most noticeably Whistler-Blackcomb - have become can pretty much be laid at their feet.

Looking beyond the resort and its development, two names that might but shouldn't be overlooked are Paul Burrows and Florence Petersen. Having laboured to produce a number of historical stories about Whistler, I was struck by the lack of historical record prior to 1976, the year Paul decided the best way to make a living would be to produce a local newspaper. Sure, a lot of it was hokey, folksy and just plain gossipy, but it is the only written, historical record of what was happening during the lean years and I never adequately thanked Paul for his efforts.

Florence, without much support and with even less fanfare, simply took it upon herself to be Whistler's archivist, preserving historical material in the possession of her good friend Myrtle Philip. Her efforts became the foundation of Whistler's Museum and much of the history of this special place would likely have been lost entirely were it not for her efforts.

I hope Dave Murray gets careful consideration. Dave institutionalized the culture of ski racing on Whistler Mountain, a culture that embraces lapsed elements like Master's camps and the Fantastic Downhill and elements that endure and help define this place like the Peak to Valley race.

And if for nothing else, Rob Boyd deserves a spot for bringing us that one iconic moment when he stood atop the podium at the 1989 World Cup downhill race at the Creekside base of Whistler Mountain.

So many possibilities. The Toad Hall poster. Dusty's. Tapley's, both the pub and the housing project. An homage to Whistler's squats and then low-life, now notable citizens who lived in them. Chris Speedie and his early photographic record of life in the nascent resort. Jim McConkey. The entrepreneurs who started Milo's Market which became Nesters which negated a long trip down valley to pick up groceries.

And maybe one of the 11 should just be a question mark. Something to remind us of what will be. Something to remind us that what happens here in 2010 will have implications we can't even begin to know but is, in many ways, a completion of the circle begun 43 years ago.