Skip to content
Join our Newsletter

Pique N Your Interest

Revelations from the mayor's office
alisonbyline

In a stuffy basement room at the Holiday Inn in San Francisco I’m trying desperately to keep my eyes open at a work conference while sitting next to my boss.

There’s no fresh air. I’ve just eaten a big lunch. My head is nipping with too much wine from the night before and I’ve had seven hours sleep in the past two days. I want my hotel bed.

The guest speaker asks us all to close our eyes – finally, I thought, a speaker talking my language.

Now, asks this award-winning investigative journalist, what colour is my tie and what’s the pattern on it?

Hmmm, a challenge. Immediately I’m awake, mind on overdrive, trying to remember.

In a room of more than 50 journalists only two raised their hands with the answer, one of those a Pulitzer prize-winning reporter.

Tip number one, said the lecturer: "Shut the f**&$^% up."

Stop talking and start paying attention. Notice the world around you. He added that he had walked around the room with a hand out, personally making eye contact with each reporter, and in the end only two had noticed the colour and the pattern of his tie.

Chagrined enough about not remembering I was ready to listen intently to the rest of the lecture.

A simple tie, a rumpled shirt, messy hair, scuffed shoes – all can speak volumes about a person before they ever open their mouth.

The devil is in the details.

Can we learn something, for example, by the way a person’s office space is arranged and organized?

As Pique Newsmagazine's municipal hall reporter for the past three and a half years I’ve had my fair share of interviews in the mayor’s office, first with Mayor Hugh O’Reilly, and for the past two months with Mayor Ken Melamed.

As any of you who follow local politics knows, the two on the surface appear fairly similar – both engaging and likeable, both passionate about the community, both committed environmentalists.

But they are very different.

And that is never more so apparent than in the way they arranged the mayor’s office. What does the décor, the furniture choices, the mood in the office tell us about these two mayors?

O’Reilly’s office worked around a dark mahogany desk. Don’t get any illusions of grandeur – it was mahogany veneer. Facing the door, he could see who was coming into the room from that vantage point. The desk was littered with work. It was tidy but cluttered at the same time. Behind him file folders bulged with paper and an old computer was tucked into the corner.

Along the wall facing the desk was a dusty rose soft velvety couch. A second matching couch sat perpendicular, under the windows. When I interviewed O’Reilly we always sat back on those couches, tape recorder resting on the worn armrest between us silently capturing our conversations. It was informal, relaxing, friendly – the way O’Reilly conducted the business of mayor.

With Melamed’s election in November Whistler ushered in a new era in Whistler politics, and more than the brassy nameplates have changed.

O’Reilly’s light textured walls have been painted green. I’m guessing the name of the colour is "hospital pants green." A lone Whistler painting hangs on the back wall.

The mahogany desk is gone, replaced with a more functional L-shaped desk which has been pushed into a back corner – the mayor’s back is now to the windows, the door to his right.

There are no couches, dusty rose velvet or otherwise.

Opposite the desk sits a plain office table with six office chairs.

It is at this table in this austere setting that the mayor and I conduct our interviews, usually with Whistler’s information officer, another councillor or two and Pique Newsmagazine's competition.

So what does this tell us about these two men?

O’Reilly was everyman’s friend. He liked to keep things informal. He rolled with the punches. He wasn’t interested in décor.

That’s not to say that Melamed fancies himself an interior designer in mayor’s clothes. On the contrary, his office set up is all about function. It’s designed so that people can work together, hash out ideas.

O’Reilly’s office was somehow a throwback to bygone days of grandeur, Melamed’s office reminds me I am there to work.

I’ve since learned there are reasons for why things are the way they are.

O’Reilly’s office was a replica of former mayor Ted Nebbeling’s office. Nothing had changed. When O’Reilly became mayor in 1996 he didn’t worry about the office. It worked for him. It probably would have worked for him if the walls had been black and the sofas hot pink.

But it wasn’t Melamed’s style. Our new mayor had a friend into Feng Shui who offered advice on his office layout. That is why things are the way they are. The walls are green because it’s a colour that builds consensus.

The table is there so that he can work with ease and have others around him working too.

This is a new era.

But despite all that this reveals, and read into it what you will, there is one question that remains. What happened to the dusty rose velvety couches that heard so many a mayoral conversation?

They’re in a bump room on Whistler Mountain. Now if only I could get those couches to talk…we would have some great investigative journalism!