Skip to content
Join our Newsletter

Yet another task force?... Been there, done that

Early in the morning of September 11, 2001, a warm, late summer sun was sparkling on the placid waters of Sulfuric Lake.
opinion_maxedout1

Early in the morning of September 11, 2001, a warm, late summer sun was sparkling on the placid waters of Sulfuric Lake. Bald eagles traced lazy circles in the rapidly rising air, ignoring the trout dimpling the surface of the water, sucking up whatever was hatching at the moment. An extended family of Canada geese bobbed for edible tidbits they were finding in the marshy bay to the north. Loons relayed their maniacal call-and-answer cries seemingly across the length of the lake and an assortment of mergansers, grebes and mallards paddled past with no particular agenda but getting on with life.

Lost in my own ritual of getting on with life — strong black coffee and a meditative state brought on by staring unblinkingly at this scene — I was approaching the state of bliss most often associated with the phrase, "Ignorance is bliss." I was, truly, ignorant of everything else in the world other than the natural dance transpiring within my limited range of vision. Time, if it was passing at all, passed slowly, a trick of relativity.

And then the phone rang.

The phone was one of the few modern conveniences resident at the as yet unnamed Smilin' Dog Manor. In point of fact, the phone was one of the only conveniences, modern or not. Having taken possession only a few days before, the list of conveniences ran no longer than the ringing phone, running water, electricity, a propane stove and an ancient refrigerator. Furniture consisted of a few lawn chairs and the "bed" looked suspiciously like sleeping bags on slim air mattresses. We were camping... just with a much nicer tent.

Had there been a way of accessing the Internet — and thereby fulfilling my weekly commitment to this page — without the phone and its painfully slow dial-up connection, there would have been no phone to ring. Alas.

A friend from Montreal was calling. The half of the conversation I heard was, "We don't have a TV." "We don't have a radio either." "They're doing what to the World Trade Centre?" "That's unbelievable."

And so it was. I took in the information, third-hand hearsay at this point and returned to watching the eagles and finishing my coffee. The world, particularly the American-centric world of North America, had gone down the rabbit hole and the most pressing thing on my agenda was digging a garden bed and taking another small step toward beating back the wilderness encroaching on this tiny speck of Earth in the southern Cariboo mountains. Meh.

It was almost two weeks before I saw footage from what had, by then, been shorthanded to 9/11. It was still impossible to miss, still dominating all media. It seemed considerably more unreal than, say, watching eagles and osprey dive for fish swimming in blissful ignorance beneath the surface of the lake, which seemed like an uncomfortable metaphor for the people beavering away in the twin towers moments before hell rained down upon them.

Having missed the live, round-the-clock coverage, none of it seemed particularly real to me nor, I learned later, as traumatic as it was to those who couldn't avoid full psychic immersion in the events as they unfolded. Ignorance was bliss.

And that is why I look forward each spring to returning. After a winter of non-stop activity, throngs of tourists — love each and every one of 'em — week after week of too many events to attend and regret over the ones I've missed, there is bliss in slowing my clock down to the rhythms of night and day and the flow of seasons.

While those rhythms inform the calendar we live by, they are influenced by it not in the least. Victoria Day weekend — and may we cut off the fingers of those philistines who have shortened it to May Long, as though it were a side dish at some oriental restaurant — may be the historically safe time to plant gardens here but if rain continues to fall and the soil is both soggy and cold, putting seed in the ground is pointless and frustrating. Patience isn't a virtue, it's a necessity.

And, as it turns out, blissful. The weather over the long weekend may not have allowed progress in the gardens but there were enough short breaks between rain to trim trees and brush and undergrowth, to turn compost and design furniture, to fix what needed to be mended inside the house and to slip into the rituals of life away from Whistler.

Which is why the shenanigans of the jerky boys over the long weekend didn't affect me nearly as much as the predictable response to them did. Long weekends, spring breaks, virtually any excuse to party — any day with a 'y' in it — runs a good probability of including imbecilic behaviour on the part of some of the participants. While it is behaviour we don't overtly invite, it is, predictably, behaviour that's going to visit in our mad rush to fill our over-built lodging sector.

Whistler is a junkie and tourists are our smack. We crave them; we need them; we'll do anything to attract them and, by and large, we'll turn a blind eye as long as they come and spend money to feed our need. Bad behaviour is going to happen and, frankly, I don't understand why we feign shock when it does.

More perplexing though is why we persist in our belief in magic. Why we believe that hammering together yet another task force of concerned citizens will have any effect on the very predictable outcome. Been there; done that.

In the overall scheme of things, it's probably far more productive to replace the broken windows, clean up the mess, ignore the whole thing and move on as though nothing happened. There are no more long-term threats to the viability — such as it is — of our community because of such behaviour as there have been to all the other resorts in the rest of the world where aging adolescents over-indulge and get stupid and destructive... and even sometimes violent. Move on people, nothing to see here.

But we task force... yet again. If we don't do something, correction, appear to be doing something, how will we convince the outraged we're tackling the problem? That it's an illusion never diminished the entertainment value of magic so why should it diminish the salving effects of another task force.

Sadly, concerned residents will volunteer their time, graze over ground already grazed before, come up with many of the same recommendations recommended before. And then...?

Having been on the receiving end of the chilling phrase, "We'll take it from here." I have no doubt all the earnest recommendations will slip into the dark, ill-illuminated places where other good ideas die in the miasma of muni hall.

Me? I'll take bliss this time, thank you.