Whistler's infamous and long defunct Toad Hall beat out dogs and naked skiers to win the last round of Icon Gone Wednesday night.
The annual Whistler Museum event pits locals against each other to argue for Whistler's most iconic person, place or thing. The 2013 instalment was the debate's last.Angie Nolan, who also won last year with her argument for the shuttered Boot Pub, made it through three rounds defending Toad Hall — an infamous squat for ski bums of yore — beating out Mandy Rousseau's case for the mystical naked skier and (Pique's own) G.D. Maxwell's argument for dogs.
Max edged his way back into the finals after the introduction of a "wildcard round" this year where the packed crowd at Merlin's used an applause-o-meter to bring back one of the ousted competitors from past rounds. In her final defense Nolan quoted Jack Kerouac's famous line from On the Road to describe Toad Hall's roving guests: "The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars.”"As long as we remember to break some rules... Toad Hall will never be gone," she concluded.
