I grew up in the Era of the Cowboy. I don't say that in a sepia-toned, nostalgic way. I don't miss my toy guns, cowboy hat, chaps, vest and whatever other regalia I relentlessly beat my parents into submission to buy me, promising to be good, promising the object of my transitory desire would be the last thing I ever begged them for, promising... whatever seemed to be called for at that moment; after all, promises were cheap and cowboy stuff was dear, who wouldn't strike that kind of bargain?
The first time I ever got to ride an actual horse, I thought I'd burst with anticipation. I wanted to gallop that sucker across the purple sage, cowboy hat flying behind me, its cord strangling my scrawny neck all Cisco Kid style. Of course, the ride turned out to be more nose-to-butt, slo-mo poke than gallop, a gift as it turned out since the first time I ever straddled a horse at anywhere near a gallop I had an immediate, close encounter with the ground and swore I could hear the horse laughing.
But something happened near the end of the ride that puzzled me. As if responding to an unseen hand, an unheard command, the horses - all of them - came to life. They held their heads high, sniffed the air, doubled their pace from plodding death march to spirited walk and, yes, may have even approached a saunter, whatever the heck that is. It was my first horse-approaches-barn experience, even though it would take a few more before I realized that's what it was.
So happy were those swaybacked, greenhorn-fatigued horses at the mere thought of getting us the hell off their backs and hanging out near their food source that they jumpstarted their indifference and beelined back to the comforts of home. Had there been a wall of fire between us and the barn, I wouldn't have bet against the horses dashing right through it, so single-minded was their dash to the end.
I'm feeling pretty much the same way about the Olympics these days.
I'd walk through fire if it would make April 2010 an immediate reality. Unfortunately, we all still have to carry this overweight, bloated, and for many of us, unwelcome interloper around on our breaking backs until we get back to the barn nine months from now. I feel like I'm carrying quintuplets... or five of the seven rings of hell.
While an ember of optimism about Whistler's post-Olympic reality still glows deep within my psyche, though ever-so dimly, it seems the probability is greater we will lose more in the end than we gain from this pact with the devil. Perhaps that's what comes from holding on to a dream for too long.
Popular history tells us it was the dream of hosting the Olympics that fired up the original group of Vancouver businessmen in the early 1960s whose efforts eventually led to Whistler Mountain being developed as a ski hill. While not impugning that version of reality, I'm left wondering whether it isn't just another chimera, another uplifting version of the fairytale about the U.S. fighting their Civil War to free the slaves. That bloody conflagration had far more to do with the economic power of the North wanting to vanquish the feudal, agrarian economic model of the South, with its closer ties to England than New York, than it did with bringing social justice to blacks. I don't think it's entirely cynical to wonder whether the mercantile interests of Whistler's founders might not have been an important element of their desire to bring the Olympics here.
Whatever their motivation, I wish they'd have succeeded forty years ago. Or thirty when they mounted their second attempt. Whistler could have used the boost back then in its march from nothing to something.
Or could it? There's probably merit in scrabbling from a glimmer of hope to a whimsical, regional ski hill to a successful player on the world stage by dint of your own labour, without the supercharged boost even those pre-corporate Olympics would have brought. I don't know how much pride in accomplishment the people who have lived here so long and worked so hard would be cheated out of if an early Olympics had short-circuited Whistler's development. I suspect that Toilet Bowl would bear another, less colourful name - not unlike the forgettable one they're trying to make us remember - had the mountain been on TV in those formative years.
The 2010 Olympics have brought a number of "legacies" supporters firmly planted on the asset side of the ledger, though a more sober assessment reveals each of them bleeding into the liability column. We have a smoother, faster, half-a-billion dollar highway linking us to Vancouver. The last best guess was it'll lop half an hour off the trip, assuming reasonably good weather and not too many inept drivers to clog things up. That's probably a good thing although I'm mindful of the reality of Nagano's Olympic gift of a bullet train that helped it go from weekend destination for Tokyo skiers to day trip status because getting there and back became so easy. I also wonder whether the Sea-to-Sky highway sopped up so many highway funds we may never live long enough to see the Duffey - which has now sunk to third-world status - repaved.
The athletes' village should be a sound legacy of the Games, providing nearly-affordable accommodation for a larger segment of Whistler's workerbees. Having said that, the new municipal economic regime wrought at least in part by Olympic spending has made the economic sustainability equation far more tenuous for the very people who will call it home. Aside from the ballooning property tax burden, we're now seeing our elite class plaster so many user fees on us that I wouldn't be at all surprised to find pay toilets the next time nature calls while strolling through the village. Just kidding, guys; I did not just suggest a pay-to-pee scheme.
But the dream that has truly died - assuming it was ever more than that - is sustainability itself. We can pat ourselves on the back as much as we want over our award-winning plan but the truth is our Olympic dream has led us further down the path of unsustainability than ever before. Exhibit A: the sliding centre, a hundred million bucks of concrete, ammonia, blazing lights and blight. Exhibit B: our hydrogen bus depot, an idea whose time hasn't come - the dream of a California to B.C. hydrogen highway is dead - and for which we ate up more of the wetland we didn't eat up to build golf courses. Exhibit C: asphalt as far as the eye can see. We've abandoned the idea of permeable paving for the day skier lots in favour of asphalt. We've agreed to pave yet another lot for the sake of not muddying the Olympic Family's shoes. We've dumped another unnecessary expense on our tax base.
We've leapt ever further from out goal. Oh well, bread and circuses for everyone.
