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The power of storytelling — will Whistler ever control its own tale?

"To write about Hell, it helps if you've been there." - Sir Ranulf Fiennes Just finished reading a great book about a fascinating man.
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"To write about Hell, it helps if you've been there."

- Sir Ranulf Fiennes

Just finished reading a great book about a fascinating man. It's not new or anything; I think it was published back in 2004 (when it comes to reading material I'm more gourmand than gourmet — used bookstores are my favoured haunts). Still, the story's fresh take on a historical figure I'd mistakenly dismissed as a polar Captain Bligh really brought home to me how easy it is for us humans to be bamboozled by clever propaganda.

The book is called Race To The Pole — Tragedy, Heroism and Scott's Antarctic Quest. And it was written by one of the most wildly eccentric characters in the already insane world of modern polar exploration.

A self-avowed outsider in the gentry'd world of his youth, Baronet Sir Ranulph Fiennes became the first human being in history to reach both the Arctic and Antarctic Poles by land. Indeed, he and partner, Mike Stroud, notched another radical first in 1993 when they crossed the entire Antarctic continent on foot (meaning they dragged all their gear in a sled while they walked/skied the devilishly difficult alpine terrain of this nasty polar zone). This, my friends, is one tough dude.

Sorry, getting side-tracked again. Still, it was Fiennes' own brutal polar experiences that made his positive re-evaluation of Captain Robert Scott's troubled legacy such a compelling one for me.

Don't know about you, but I was consumed by polar exploration stories as a kid. Hendrik Hudson's search for the Northwest Passage in the 17th century; Captain Franklin's doomed expedition in the 19th; Peary, Cook, Ross, Nansen, Amundsen, Shackleton — these were my heroes growing up. I never tired of their exploits.

I mean, it's hard to imagine now, but barely a hundred years ago (1911 to be precise), travelling down to Antarctica was akin to rocketing to the moon. Outside rescue was, practically speaking, impossible. Spending a year (or two) scrabbling for existence on the very edge of this continent was then considered the ultimate test of human survival. As for actually making it over the 10,000' mountain barrier that rings Antarctica and charging for the pole, well, that was still a pipe dream.

Alas, there's not enough room in this column to expand on Fiennes' gripping narrative about the surreal race that ensued between Norwegian Roald Amundsen and Brit Captain Robert Scott during the fateful southern summer of 1911-12. This was, after all, the last great global "prize" to be snatched. And the man to claim it first for his country would be assured major status back home... and lots of shekels too.

I won't keep you in suspense — Captain Scott lost the "race." His Nordic rival reached the southern pole weeks before his own desperate arrival there. But it was on the painful return trip that the Scott myth really was launched. And what an epic! Scott left his coastal base in November 1911 with four seasoned companions and enough supplies cached along the way to cover what he hoped to be a 144-day journey to the pole and back. Sadly, not one of those men made it back to the base alive...

Controversy still swirls around what exactly happened to Scott and his companions on their return journey. But as author Fiennes puts it: "Nobody else was there. So nobody else really knows." Still, this is where Fiennes' personal spin on the Scott legend started to pry cracks in my own long-held prejudices on the British captain.

I'm a child of the '60s. Anti-establishment rhetoric was the lingua franca of my generation. Anything — or anyone — that bore even the whiff of old school imperialism was by definition the enemy. And the books that most inspired me in those days reflected that ideology. I guess it's not so surprising then that I so happily embraced Scott's vicious mauling by postmodern critics.

He was just too big a target to ignore. For nearly half a century, the heroic/tragic story of Captain Scott's Antarctic ordeal had been used by the English establishment to inspire young men to dedicate their lives to Imperial Britain's interests — first as cannon fodder for World War I, and then as willing volunteers to carry on "the white man's burden" in its far-flung colonies. Poor Robert Scott had never asked to become the poster boy for selfless devotion to the imperial cause. But the writers and journalists who began re-visiting his story in the 1960s and '70s couldn't care less. Their agenda was clear. The captain was going down with the empire.

And I confess: I ate their version up like chocolate ice cream on a hot day. To me, it was obvious that the wily Amundsen was the hero of that 1911 polar race. I mean, the guy had pulled off the coup of the century! With little government support — and a blitzkrieg style of attack — Amundsen and his team had shown the world just how fast well-piloted dog-teams supported by experienced skiers could move over snow. Meanwhile, that tired anachronism, Captain Scott, had stubbornly stuck to ponies and man-hauling and a hierarchical chain of command that harkened back to the Napoleonic wars. And look where that had gotten him: his team had so exhausted themselves getting to the pole that they'd foundered on their way home.

The guy was a loser. Period. And I never really questioned my own biases. That is, until Sir Ranulf's book made me sit up and pay attention. By the end of his intro, this kooky (but incredibly well-read) explorer had convinced me to re-evaluate Scott's story with a more open mind. And slowly, patiently, Fiennes set about debunking each and every one of my previous prejudices. Suddenly — oh my goodness! — I realized just how much I'd been played by the propaganda-makers of my youth...

This guy, Captain Scott, wasn't such a loser after all. On the scientific front alone, Scott's team was responsible for discoveries in Antarctica that weren't truly digested until the 1950s — in fact some of the stuff his team unearthed in the early 1900s is still driving research today! And as a leader, well, it turns out he wasn't the rigid, old school martinet that I'd been led to believe. Indeed, according to the diaries of the men who served under him, Scott was an exceptionally hard worker, a surprisingly modern thinker and a very generous man. As for his inability to get his team home, Fiennes' detailed research shows that on their return trip Scott and his men were exposed to some of the most severe fall weather ever recorded in Antarctica. That fact alone, maintains the experienced explorer, would have hindered anyone's progress. But at such a critical point in their journey — a full five months after they'd left base — the men's depleted bodies would have struggled to fight the extreme cold such freakish storms would have brought with them.

So much for youthful ideologies. Captain Scott: forgive me. You're my hero again.

Speaking of propaganda — and how tales can be rigged to fit dodgy agendas — last week's brouhaha over the Victoria Long Weekend "fiasco" suggests that there's a profound disconnect between the story we tell ourselves about this place and the story we tell others. I mean, how can Whistlerites complain about rowdy guests, when both Tourism Whistler and Whistler-Blackcomb have saturated the Lower Mainland with a narrative whose main theme is the town's inexhaustible supply of cheap hotel rooms?

Vancouverites get it online. They get it in their mailboxes. They hear it on the radio. They see it on TV. The message is even broadcast across their various social network platforms. "COME PARTY AT WHISTLER! IT'S NEVER BEEN CHEAPER!"

I know. I know. Nobody likes to host impolite and/or destructive visitors. I totally understand that. But when the town's principal concern — as we've all heard ad nauseum — is "putting heads on beds" (regardless of their interests or tastes), then we'd better be prepared for a few unpleasant guests.

But there's a bigger issue at work here too. Whistler's original story was never about filling hotel rooms. Most early migrants moved here because the community offered a viable alternative to the mind-crushing rat race overtaking Canada's urban centres. We wanted to change our priorities in life. We wanted to ski and hike and have outdoor adventures and interact with like-minded folk. So what happened?

Hubris. Pride. Naiveté. Pretty much the same thing that happened to me as a pre-teen reading Scott's saga in the 1960s. We bought into somebody else's agenda. We wanted to believe their story. Wanted to believe they had our best interest at heart. So we let them convince us that they knew what we needed better than we did.

And now we're faced with a bit of a dilemma. Either Whistlerites get comfortable hosting unpleasant guests who have no stake in the mountains or the local lifestyle (but fill our many empty beds). Or we tweak our storyline and re-take control of our destiny. Yeah. Yeah. I realize how expensive (and difficult) it will be to change the dominant narrative in this town. Still, I think the time has come for us to revisit what it is we're going to leave to our children and our children's children. Don't you?