2 BC BOOKWORLD SPRING 2010

17 BC BOOKWORLD SPRING 2010
THE WAY WE WERE
THE BIRTH
OF FREESTYLE
Whistler history traces evolution from
hippie hangout to gorbie gulag
Most local histories are written by
people over age fifty—and that’s
a fine thing.
Stephen Vogler is under fifty
and his Only in Whistler: Tales of a
Mountain Town (Harbour $24.95) is
radically different.
For starters, its unusual cover literally
shows four ski bums; four women wearing
only skis and boots, preparing to ride
the ski-lift. Although this “non-frontal”
nude cover has prevented the book from
being displayed on some shelves, it does
not misrepresent the contents.
The free spirit of Whistler in the seventies
and Eighties was audacious—and
Vogler proves it.
Whistler, after all, is the birthplace
of freestyle skiing and home to the
world’s first snowboarding medalist,
Ross Rebagliati, the pot smoker
now running for office with the federal
Liberals. Free-style skiing and
snowboarding are sports that arose from
free spirits, from the people that Vogler
makes legendary.
✍
Once upon a time, not so long
ago, before Whistler was a place
for freedom and outlandish
partying. Old-school European
alpinists shared the slopes with
snow-hippies who lived rent-free
in rough squatters’ shacks where
folks listened to a lot of music, took
a lot of drugs, and basically didn’t
conform to mainstream (ie. Vancouver/Victoria)
values.
Vogler has been a resident of
Whistler since he arrived there as
a child in 1976. He’s young
enough to clearly and unflinchingly
recall when Whistler had only 500
year-round residents and all weekend
visitors were disdained as “gorbies.”
At age twelve, his “de facto teen centre
was the pinball machine at the 76
gas station.”
Since then Vogler has witnessed the
evolution of the Whistler experiment
(hatched by the New Democrat government
of Dave Barrett) to the
present day. Although he is never overtly
opposed to the Olympics in his text, he
TOSHI KAWANO PHOTO
Ace “Longstocking”
Mackay-Smith
perpetuates the partyhearty
atmosphere of
Whistler by hosting a rave.
questions, on the final page, how the
ever-expanding infrastructure of Whistler
will impact the lives of his three children.
Along the way Vogler, a journalist,
carefully chronicles some hilarious antics
and remarkable characters.
The story of how a 19-year-old
squatter, and third cook at The Keg,
named Nigel Protter started the
town’s first cappuccino service in a converted
bus parked at the bottom of the
Olympic Run in
1979—the Espresso
Express—is typical.
“As a teenager,” he
writes, “I remember
emerging from the fogenshrouded
lower run
and seeing this beacon
of civilization; a hybrid
of hippie bus and fine
European café with a
spectacular view of the
landfill.”
The Espresso Express
is accorded seven
pages. The history of the
Snow Goose fleet of
buses merits eleven
pages.
There are games of
shinny on Alta Lake,
the Party Barge, wet T-
shirt contests, Blackcomb’s
1987 Sextathlon
(possibly the world’s
first free-skiing competition)
and the town’s vibrant live music
scene.
Vogler also offers an in-depth record
of the Whistler Answer newspaper started
by Charlie Doyle after he came
across a magazine article in Banff entitled,
‘Ski Bumming is Humming at
Whistler.’
Twenty years from now, if someone
writes a history of Whistler, most of the
details in Only in Whistler would likely
disappear. 978-1-55017-504-2