I want to check this out

I want to check this out before it's demolished - seems like a fun place to play now that it is decrepit with no one watching.

That is too bad it is in

That is too bad it is in shambles and now will be (leaky) condos...Too bad they could not make it a park..

Anyone ever go there in its heyday? I wanted to but never made it.

Blackcomb Whistler

I remember way back when. I remember back when people were addicted to playing Final Fantasy. And the circus came to town! A real live circus arrived with performers and strange people and events. In preparation, a court of drunken old thieving kings took over and blasted through the mountain ranges, expropriated, looted, and kept the masses in a drunken frenzy in anticipation of a coming circus. They ignored the costs and let the kingdom go into disrepair all in preparation for the coming circus. I don't like circuses myself, so I shuttled off to La Buffalo in the deep deep south where no one knew anything about a winterized circus. I think some other people in the kingdom caught my drift and just stayed away or stayed home because they didn't even want the circus to arrive. Anyways, that was a long time ago. But if you ever take your hoverboard up to the deserted village of Blackcomb Whistler you won't see any ski jumps or trapezes but you may just see the remnants of leaky castles built to woo the drunken masses.

Cool article and pics

The last few days i've been studying Ocean Falls and how that community was being destroyed in the early 80's while Fantasy Gardens was being developed. Reading the Hansard debates during that time. I'll grant that the lumber mill that supported that town may not have been viable...but to actually bulldoze houses, apartments, and other buildings....why? For over 20 years Ocean Falls has been producing excess power that could have been housing people in those demolished homes. Makes no sense.

But Ocean Falls can rise again. The hydro that produced electricity that produced pulp so people could read newspapers and learn worldwide was a good thing...today that electricity could instead be used by new people to produce digital content that people worldwide could access through the net.

There's alot of talk about electric cars...what about electric boats. Been researching them a bit. Seems there's been a couple of Canadian companies making them for years. spincraftboats.com and Busch Marine Inc were a couple looked at. I imagine Bella Coola to Ocean Falls to Bella Bella being the hub for hudreds of clean, quite electric boat(er)s to move themselves through that awsome area....a local "marine highway" idea. All these electric boaters could live a few kilometers away from BB, OF or BC and commute over inlet ocean paths between cities. Ability to plug in boat batteries at Ocean Falls and Bella Bella could utilize existing, underproducing hyro electricity. In fact, depending upon size of battery pack and boat-commute distance to home...maybe the batteries in the boat could somewhat power the home. Floating dock technology is pretty good right now cost and engineering wise...imagine parking your trailer on a floating dock somewhere near King Island and taking your electric boat to Bella Bella, Ocean Falls or Bella Coola to work/play/meet/shop and charge up the boat/home batteries for your off-the-grid floating trailer/RV a few kilometers away.

Ocean Falls has great potential. I've been studying the geography around the town on net sat maps...and looking at pictures from oceanfallsmuseum.com... imagine the mountain between OF and the Martin Valley being built upon...

Fantsy wot?

Huh! Never bin there . . . forgot all about it 'til you brought it up!

New Urbanism before new urbanism was new . . . don't worry we can still shop European style at The Village Park Royal.

It is not "New Urbanism" or

It is not "New Urbanism" or at least "New Urbanism" as is malpracticed in North America where there are streets with cars everywhere. No, this is much more like an old European town centre where people could walk everywhere without the noise and pollution of cars. We desperately need a New New Urbanism that is not designed around the automobile. The Village Park Royal at Park Royal is not European style It is just a strip mall with some fancy decorations.

sad

yup things have a lifespan.
The Tyee's lifespan is also over as far as I can see; we are now facing another weekend with not one new opinion feature!
Lots of artsy fartsy garbage, but not one new article that is of any importance.
Great going folks, join Fantasy gardens as a thing we can remember that used to be something of interest.

New urb-fantasy consumerism

Thanqxz rac

I was parodying . . . new urb as promoted by Duaney and Calthorpe is cars all the way down . . . ergo the very 'popular" PR village yuk . . .

What lumber mill?

Fascinating commentary, CourtGQuinn ... I remember Ocean Falls as a Pulp Mill town that stunk to high heaven ... and high heaven was way, way UP like a virtual hole in the ceiling, walled-in by tall mountains all around.

This piece of BC history seems to have dropped off the planet ... are ALL the houses demolished? why? is the the Pulp Mill demolished? Who owns it all now?

You obviously have a love for the area and your ideas suggest an intriguing new life for the town which -- if that pulp mill has stopped pumping its stench and pollutants around -- might actually become a special kind of Fantasy Garden.

Living Fantasies...

"Germinated in the florid imagination of former B.C. premier Bill Vander Zalm and then brought to life in South Richmond, Fantasy Gardens -- an eclectic (some might say inane) theme park comprising an almost cartoon-ish medieval European village with working windmills, Giverny-like gardens with lily ponds, Japanese bridges, clock towers, a faux-Crystal Palace, a miniature train and a chapel out of Little House on the Prairie -- will soon be dismantled and relegated to history's waste basket."

There (or here) it is, what was the Socred fantasy that was Capitalism BC. It is finally beginning, see the Basi-Virk trials business at BC Mary's web site, beginning to fall in on itself. As it was destined to do, because of its fundamental disconnect from reality all along. (And don't fool yourself, many a working class person fell into the delusion no less. Though I can say, not yours truly. I was in another kind of delusion at the time... that of "communism". Not that there was or is anything wrong with the "idea" of communism, just what turned out to be its "reality".)

Fantasy Gardens. Old, Take The Money In a Paper Bag and Run Bill Vander Zalm's capitalism was one of the markers of the end of the postwar capitalism prosperity era. Another was the Kerkhoff dispute that was the cave-in of the offical "Labour Movement". We Communists of the time got much of that right, but of course, we got much wrong about our own particular fantasy as well.

And that is what has to be remembered and put in proper context by us all... especially those of us on "the left". We really did get, and are still much right about capitalism and its particular fantasy of itself. Which becomes more and more obvious as current events evolve. But we also got much wrong about our own fantasy "vision" of where it was all headed to.

Nothing wrong with frank admissions, or as we used to speak of it, the catharsis of "self-criticism". Remamber?

We are all suddenly in a new time, like in an old playland or circus House of Mirrors, where reality is still recognizable but also all distorted and twisted out of shape. Only Vander Zalm's paricular fantasy of capitalism, distorted and unreal from the beginning, is now here seen, in this article, as it really was all along.

We all need to give our collective heads a shake, as in the article on Celebrating The Childfree Choice, and see what was, is, and needs to be, more realistically.

And there's no doubt, it gonna mess with yo head, wherever you're coming from ideologically. :-)

Now, I've got a hoss I've got to try some new hoof boots on. :-D

TGIF.

Where are you my laughing Hyena? :-) Speaking of fantasies.

Thanks, Lee!

I could never shoot Fantasy Gardens. Remember the film The Omen, when they tried to bring the child Damien to church? That's how I would react if I got as close as you did to take this shot.

Does anyone know when wrecking ball day is?

A little fast-shuffling.....

....took the land out of the ALR. I think it a fitting "tribute" to The Zalm that the land be put back into the ALR, complete with restoration.

What I beleive

Tourism is the future, and what is one of the first things you see when you arrive by car in BC is a failed Theme Park. It should have been bulldozed years ago, or better yet, never built. Logging, fishing, mining, high tech (maybe a wee bit), gambling on the VSE, are all things that are not going to be the future of BC in my opinion. I was in Victoria last week for a few hours. What a fantastic city. No one who knew of it, would not want to visit again and again. That is the future of BC, but tell that too Gordon and Kevin, and the rest of the dwarfs in Victoria. They have visions of grandeur, mostly to do with their back pockets I think.An article today in the Sun (what a piece of crap newspaper) about what they have done in the Valley of Mount Washington. A truly inspired job, years in the making, will bring many Olympic hopefulls to BC, and they will get to see more then the Hwy. to Whistler, and that Fantasy Land they built up there. I feel sorry for the residents at Whistler, at least those of modest income. The rich, well they can eat thier dead for all I care.

Lary Waldman

Tourism

I'm not so sure tourism will deliver Larry. If our world is truly about to get much smaller, there won't be enough folks with the disposable income to globe-trot for fun and adventure.

CourtGQuinn:

Just in case you didn't find this tidbit in your resaearch, Murray McLaughlin wrote a song about Ocean Falls and made a video for it as well. I googled for a link to lyrics or the video, but came up empty-handed.

Our Leader's Castle

I remember passing Fantasy Garden in it's heyday with a visitor from Colombia. She had just arrived in Canada for the first time and it was her first trip outside South America. I pointed out Fantasy Garden as we drove by on the highway and told her that that was the home of our Premier, the political leader of British Columbia. She was incredulous and I am sure that it made a lasting impression.

from the land of Mount Washington...

From my perspective, there have been few "inspired" developments in this beautiful valley...and the tourists tend to fly through and not spend much money.
I didn't read the article, but I doubt that it mentioned that jobs at Mount Washington pay an average of $9/hour...that house prices are astronomical and rents unaffordable...that the average wage is $15000/year less than the province's average...that our homeless population is truly shocking for the small population...that BEFORE the economic meltdown unemployemnt was at 15 % for those over 50 and is growing by leaps and bounds...that our estuary and watersheds are being destroyed and supply of water is a problem, both in quality and quantity...
that the same get-rich-quick mentality combined with small-town smugness means sprawl, Wal-Mart, and mediocrity everywhere...
Pretty much a replay of Fantasy Gardens, writ large.

For Vander Zalm, Fantasy Gardens. For Gordo, BC Rail.

Strange, isn't it, that Vander Zalm's roadside curiosity known as "Fantasy Gardens" should have become such a symbol of the weird corporate drive to create artificial profit out of every conceivable element ... even farmland.

Whereas Gordo has made much deeper, bloodier wounds on this province ... mostly hidden, or fudged, or accounted for in tumbling clauses and multiple agreements. Find a symbol for Gordo's style of doing government business. I think it's BC Rail.

A cautionary word

Lest we foget, Gordo is not sometthing that has just suddenly appeared from nowhere. Rather, he represents the remaining, more overt stages of the "final economic solution" of the Fascist Globalisation that has been underway since the Fifties, and which Vander Zalm as Socred Premier once helped advance.

Despite his charismatic boyishnes and his aura of sincerity which prompts us to indulge him still, he remains the guy who thought welfare recipients should be given shovels instead of cash and who told us that more Free Enterprise would solve all of society's ills.

Despite his too-late recognition that Gordo may be taking Free Enteprise "a bit too far", he, just like our friend Rafe, in their past opposition to Socialistic regulation of Coporate businesses, have actually paved the way for the greedy to go
"a bit too far". I doubt either have changed their poliical preferences.

Be very careful how you interpret or how much you believe of what such people say, for it is not in our interest to bandaid the present system in order to save the bacon of their past - and likely still - good buddies,

ME2

"Lest we foget, Gordo is not sometthing that has just suddenly appeared from nowhere. Rather, he represents the remaining, more overt stages of the "final economic solution" of the Fascist Globalisation that has been underway since the Fifties, and which Vander Zalm as Socred Premier once helped advance."

Yes, right on, ME2.

Certainly if you know the history of The Islands Trust in the early eighties and how Vander Zalm sympathized with and advanced the cause of developers over the people's interest and over the preservation of previously protected island land.

The agenda was set then and continues on under Gordo.

You make some very good points which has caused me some re-consideration.

Definitely the malignancy that was set in motion years ago has now engulfed this province.

Who would want to admit they were the intial architects of such momentous betrayals and madness?