Whistler's Creation Myth

I didn't know until this month that Ian Verchere had written a book about me. Which is only fair, because as it happens I once took his photograph and sold it to the Georgia Straight, and he only discovered this after the fact.

Although we never met back then, Ian Verchere's life has a few parallels with mine. We both grew up near the foot of Grouse Mountain, and skied there whenever we could. We were both about eight when we discovered Whistler, with our fathers. Was it 1967, the year after it opened? We took the old aluminum gondola to midstation, then braced against the weather as we boarded the red chair for the tortuously slow trip into the alpine. Was it the same day? As each of us reached Pony Trail flats, the clouds parted. "I saw the peak of Whistler for the first time, the wind-whipped snow tearing off the top like a comet tail," Verchere writes in V0N 1B0: General Delivery, Whistler, B.C.

From that day forward, we were part of a creation myth. As Verchere observes, Whistler didn't have the remnants of a mining town to give it character or charm. It was all up to us, once we'd ditched our parents: vast quantities of Labatt's 50 at Dusty's after a long day of skiing, springtime clothing-is-not-an-option swimming at Lost Lake, punk shows at the Boot Pub.

Being born circa 1960 in Vancouver and environs (Verchere came into the world at Vancouver General, I popped out in Bralorne, a mining town north of Pemberton) was like waking up on a clear and cold Monday at the foot of a ski hill draped in 20 inches of fresh powder. Anything was possible and everything happened. In the introduction to Verchere's V0N 1B0, Doug Coupland -- who persuaded Douglas & McIntyre's Scott McIntyre to let his Emily Carr art-school chum write the book -- calls our collective good fortune "one of the greatest genetic lottery wins of all time."

Verchere did particularly well at the youthful idyll thing. I imagined I might become a ski bum at Whistler, when it was a local secret that ordinary people could afford. Ian Verchere actually did that -- he lied his way into a ski instructor's job, and raced on 210 cm K2s provided by his sponsor.

When the Village was garbage

Now, in the restaurant of the Granville Island Hotel, our kids safely occupied elsewhere, we're looking back, and talking about V0N 1B0 (von eye-bow to those who know). It is the only book I know of that tells me about the Whistler I remember -- where what's now the Whistler Village was just an ATCO trailer liquor store and a garbage dump. Where 14 or 22 or 31 addled youths would rent a chalet and rotate the sleeping arrangements, so no one person was permanently assigned to the flea-infested lumpy couch.

Verchere was one of those insiders. I was the guy, at another chalet, who couldn't negotiate space in the hallway for my sleeping bag, and so I slept in the car. Occasionally I did steal a spot in a squatter's treehouse or primitive A-Frame. Mostly, I was in the dorm at the UBC student ski club.

But we both had a screamingly good time.

It's all gone now. The municipality got rid of the squats, and billionaires bought up all the lakefront. A couple of years back, I'd phone the Boot pub every now and again, to find out if a demolition date had been set. Its passing deserved to be marked with a story, I figured. The end came last spring, and I missed it.

Ian didn't. That's how he ends V0N 1B0. He recalls the time his punk band, Curious George, set fire to a snowboard onstage, and the bartenders didn't flinch. "No tourist or second homeowner in Whistler is going to miss the Boot," Verchere writes. "But its closure says something to a big chunk of Whistler locals: it's a signal that what they want doesn't matter."

Weasels, snakes, and a toenail necklace

Well, there's still Hoz's Pub, near Whistler's original Creekside base. And there's the book. I know that in B.C., where real estate redevelopment takes place so fast we can't even remember if there was an old store on the corner, Whistler's creation myth has been properly recorded, by someone who understands implicitly that "visiting Whistler in the fall is a lot like going to a nightclub during the day."

By someone who knows that the trail of cars running down the Sea-to-Sky Highway on Sunday night is "the snake." By someone who remembers that Crazy Canuck Ken Read skied the World Cup Downhill without a helmet, after officials cancelled the race because the course was too fast. By someone who honours the ingenuity of the "Weasel Workers," who first made the course fast by hardening the snow with nitrogen fertilizer from a Pemberton farm.

The book is full of photos taken or chosen by someone who knows: not of gorgeous Kodachrome vistas but of slush and Vuarnets and a front-end bumper sticker that reads "Think Fast Hippie." There's a picture of a sign at the dump that reads "Garbage Estates: Choice Lots Still Available" where the Delta Mountain Hotel now stands, and another of a necklace adorned with toenails lost to old-school ski boots.

There are also the small stories that illuminate Whistler's changing character. The theory that the slogan for a new lift -- "the Wizard of aaaaahhs" -- was likely adapted from the name of an old a porn film. The curiosity that runs called Climax, Cougar Milk, and Spanky's Chute somehow survived the marketing-boardroom purge of all the impoliteness. The fact that Microsoft code words for a dozen new programs were drawn from various Whistler locations.

It's a given that money has obliterated a lot of Whistler's history. Verchere is nostalgic for that history, but he's not tying himself up in a knot over what's past. Whistler's changed, he's changed, and he wrote a book to help ensure that we at least don't forget what happened. And soon, when I can find it, he'll have a copy of that photo taken way back when -- of him on a mountain bike rocketing down a Cypress Bowl service road in a race known as the BLT, as in boulders, logs and trees.

Verchere has missed a few bike trips of late. He can blame his somewhat more adult life. He was the creative producer of such video games such as Electronic Arts' SSX Tricky, and is now creative head of Shift Control Media, which was formed in July. Of course, creating simulated adventure realities instead of living in the real ones is not without irony. "We're working on building an entire virtual world for a very large brand that is one of the presenting partners of the Olympics," Verchere says, declining to name the client. "Our focus is on branded entertainment. Instead of EA making a game, why not, say, Mountain Dew? It's all about being authentic, though. That's the key.

"It's not an oxymoron," he insists. "It's a very much in-demand attribute."

Verchere offered these reflections on the Whistler that used to be, and why it matters to honour its history, even when it's only a marketing technique...

On not being a "retro grouch":

"Whistler is not a bad place if you're 20 years old and going for the first time. I didn't want to take away from the experience of those who are there for the first time. It hasn't changed for the better, but you can't have a place that's an hour and a half from a major centre and not have it develop. With that terrain, it's an amazing ski area. You've got to let it grow. If it was the Stein Valley, that would be different.

"I hope the tone of the book wasn't retro grouchy. It's a moment in time. It's like saying 'If only the Clash hadn't broken up.' They did. It's like art, it's like music -- it's a moment in time that can never be captured again, nor should it be."

But sometimes being a retro grouch:

"Whistler isn't competing with Aspen or Silver Star. Don't say Silver Star. I don't want anybody to know about Silver Star. Uhhh...Big White, Mt. Washington. Whistler is competing with Las Vegas, and Varadero in Cuba, and Disneyland, for that sort of packaged week-long experience.

"And the gloves are off now because [Vancouver-based] Intrawest has just been bought by a venture capital firm from New York. Maximize revenue, minimize expenses. Even with Intrawest, as big a corporation as they were, there was a local connection."

On the book's idiosyncratic photos -- a crew creating artificial rocks "inspired by mother nature," a sticker-plastered old fridge (now in the Whistler Museum) from Peak Mansion on Alta Lake:

"If I were writing a book about Disneyland, I would want to get a shot of the guy wearing the mascot suit, with Mickey's head off, having a smoke. It's not the picture that Disneyland wants you to see. But that's what it's like to be there, to work there."

On what he hopes will persist at Whistler, against the odds:

"My friend Charlie Doyle, who ran the Whistler Answer for all those years, they had the wherewithal to put a group together to buy Tapley's Farm, it was a freakin' 80-acre swamp. It wasn't an easy task. But you go down to where they live now, down Lorimer Road, and you come across Easy Street. They took that whole notion of 'Bartertown.' where locals get together to rent a chalet. A bunch of locals who were committed to living there said 'This is our home.' And they managed to put together enough money to buy this farm and cut it up and give themselves a place to live.

"It's the most normal-looking street in Whistler. There's hockey nets in the streets. The houses are side by side. There's kids, and 'Drive Slow.' This is what Whistler needs. If it gets too expensive for the people who make the place run to live there, it becomes a completely artificial place, where you have to bus in workers, because they can't afford it. When you're at Disneyland, you don't want to see the people who make the rides run. You're separating the work that it takes to make it run from the experience of being there. I think Whistler needs more Easy Streets. Places where people can make a life there, and not treat it as a destination.

"The employees fly in from Australia and the U.K. Yes they're doing employee housing, they're doing a few things. But it needs waiters and baristas and caddies and bike mechanics. Those are not necessarily high-paying jobs. They're important jobs. I've done them. And I respect the people that do them. If you place their existence outside, what are you left with?"

It's not just Whistler:

"You read the Bowen Island newspaper, and they talk about being 'Whistlerized.' I spend half my time on Salt Spring Island, and it's the same thing. 'Whistlerized. Whistlerized. Whistlerized.' The prevalence of expensive, often-empty second homes drive up the cost of living for the people that have been there a long time. People end up moving farther afield. You see it on the east side of Vancouver -- the gentrification. I just think we're a little too accepting of it. I'd like to see people dig in a bit and fight it.

"I'm concerned. What do people do in Vancouver? Do we manufacture? Is it a financial place? We've done alright in the video game industry. High tech. We've created a lot of jobs. I could argue that I've created a lot more jobs than McMillan Bloedel did. I can say that with a straight face. But what else is there?"

And it's not just Canada:

"Even though the book is a personalized view, what's important to me is that someone who lives in Tofino, or Santa Cruz, or Jackson Hole or Nelson or Fernie, would see something of themselves. That's why I put [the cartoon] 'Localman' in there. Localman's not just Whistler. I wanted something that would resonate with everybody."

On the arrogance of entitlement bought with money:

"I was brought up to give right of way to the skier below you. You got up, you had a good breakfast, you waxed your skis, you did your stuff. There was an ethic then. You would go out on the T-Bar traverse and you would go to your spot, and the next person would go 10 feet past that. Now people just try and get to that one thing they can hit before it's all skied out.

"Now you see some dude in the parking lot and there's like Wu-Tang Clan flapping out of a [Cadillac] Escalade, and his butt cheeks are hanging out, and he's having a smoke, and you know damn well he's going to go to this one thing and tear it up. That, of course, is retro grouchy, and I fully acknowledge that. But there are places where that doesn't happen. And the onus is on me to find them and go there."

On whether snowboarders wreck terrain for skiers:

"I've never snowboarded. Boy this is going to get me into trouble. We used to say this about people with short skis. They'd get onto a run that was above their ability level, and those of us that liked the big round moguls, made by 210s, come up there, and these people would traverse across and cut the back of the moguls off."

And there was this one particular snowboarder:

"I had a snowboarder spit on me once. I was setting up a racecourse. And he just hocked a loogey on me. And you could tell, it was just 'fascist skier.' I'm wearing a Ramones t-shirt here. I was livid. It really bothered me. I put in more rootsy punk-rock days, hiking and skiing and living, than this kid had spent on the earth. It's my lift tickets, its my season's pass money, it's skiers who paid for the road up here, for the lifts to go in, all of this stuff, and you're now here for the first time. This really sucks. I know skaters and surfers who would never ever do that."

On what skiers owe to snowboarders:

"I ski on 188s, and people think I'm a dinosaur. But they're shaped skis. The new skis are good. Skiing does owe a debt to snowboarding, which owes a debt to skateboarding. Skiing is the new snowboarding. You've got twin tips, and wider skis, and way more selection. But there is a cynical marketing side about creating niche equipment for every condition."

On respect for eccentrics:

"There was a guy, we used to call him Fluidman. He skied under the green chair, and he skied his own way. He would just go down with his skis together, wiggling his bum, and then he would just kick it out, do a little flip and do 30 turns in the space of a foot. He made his own boots out of fibreglass. And he would tape them to his feet every day, and go all day, and cut his feet out at the end of the day. He was an old guy, easy to mock. But he got up every day and taped boots onto his feet, he went up on the mountain and went skiing. That's hardcore. I don't care if he's 70. He had the right stuff that guy. What I ultimately miss about Whistler is that it just isn't a place for people like that anymore."

On Whistler versus Blackcomb, and why perfect isn't perfect:

"I just have a spot in my heart for Whistler. If you have a day to spend, where are you going to spend it? It just has to be. Blackcomb has beautiful fall-line and grooming, but...Blackcomb used to be called the long-run mountain. We called it the one-run mountain. You'd be skiing down and going 'Is this Gearjammer or Coaster?' It was all this constant fall-line. Chunky's Choice is two-thirds skating and one-third mogul field. It just has something about it. Blackcomb is a good hill. It's good skiing. It's just different."

On whether Whistler is selling its real brand:

"No. Not even close. They've gone through more branding exercises than your average Internet startup. [Verchere holds up the picture of the old 'absolutely beautiful' Garibaldi Lift Company logo, the stylized 'G' that encloses a snow-capped green mountain, and reads from the book.] 'Whistler once had a logo as potentially enduring as that of the Yankees or the Habs.' It's like Orca Bay: [the Canucks logo] says more about the holding company than about hockey."

On the importance of telling our own stories:

"That TV show Whistler -- I'm sure it will be a great success, but it's not authentic.

"It's the same as some East Coast filmmaker telling the story of Michael Turner's Hard Core Logo. He played in the Hard Rock Miners, he wrote the book. It was a great book. And then to see this is weird Telefilm version of what punk rock was like here on the West Coast...When I saw the movie, I thought, 'That is bullshit.' I hated it. It was some guy from Toronto cherry picking what should have been our tale.

"I've known a lot of people in the scene. Punk rockers are not stupid people. I remain friends with Jello Biafra. The Mr. T Experience -- they were literally rocket scientists. Look at [D.O.A.'s] Joe [Keithley].

"That was the motivation for doing this book. I knew somebody was going to write this, somewhere, somehow. I think Scott McIntyre and Doug Coupland did exactly the right thing. They said 'We should do this.' And Doug took it to the next step and said 'I know just the person to do it.' We did a handshake over breakfast at the Tomahawk. That was it. I took that very seriously. Doug and I had collaborated before, so he knew I was not going to screw it up."

On whether an old guy can still be young, or whether everything changes, as Verchere says in the book, when you pass on skiing to go to Ikea with your girlfriend:

"I'm still punk rock, but I'm not. When you do a stage dive at the Cobalt and your wallet falls out and you've got like, a Holt Renfrew card…"

On what the 2010 Olympics will do for Whistler:

"Lower Franz's is still one of the best runs on the planet, not just at Whistler. I could ski all day -- Fisheye, Upper Franz's, Lower Franz's. I just like letting her go, on a corduroy day when it's minus 10 and clear. I love that. Lower Franz's, they're actually going to mess with it. One of my buddies from Whistler said, 'You won't believe this, but they're going to take dynamite to Lower Franz's.' It's going to be the women's downhill at the Olympics, and because the Olympics has their FIS rules and Olympic rules, where there has to be no part of the course where you can come to a complete stop, they're actually going to mess with mother nature."

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