Teddy Bear Daycare Tots Fight for Their Space in Whistler

Oh boy, is this ever a HOT TOPIC! So many Whistlerites are literally fuming about the Maurice Young Millenium Place Society's, (MYMPS), cold-hearted decision to close the Teddy Bear Daycare Centre, forcing many young angels to have to consider moving far away to another facility that is foreign to them and making life for their Moms and Dads very difficult.
As I described in my previous blog about this debacle, the MYMPS defended their draconian decision by saying that Art and Culture needed a place to grow in Whistler.
Right - so toss the kids out with the bathroom water and lets get on with drinking our Chardonnay and talking shit about Salvador Dali's "Meditative Rose", shall we?
Have you ever?

Then my heart just broke when I read Ken Achenbach's beautifully written letter to the Pique this week where he describes his darling daughters' delight in creating sculptures, paintings and drawings, as well as performing through singing and dancing [a cultural form of artistic expression].
Ken, this eloquent Dad, calls it the Teddy Bear Arts and Culture Space! How lovely.

Ken writes:"Don't take away the space where I can create art and at the same time create my vision of the future through art where I can grow up to be anything I want. Maybe even an artist."
Well said, Ken!
I do hope that someone gets through to the collective thick skull of the MY Millenium Place Society so that they realize they are messing with Whistler's greatest assets - its children. Just imagine how boring and bland Whistler will be during the Winter Games in 2010 if all the teeny tots go on strike and stop producing their delightful works of art?

Something to think about...

Image by Olsen "Side by Side"

Whistler Community Outraged by Lower Mainland Gang Invasions in May

"Village Idiots" - that's what Bob Davis, a former resident of Whistler, wrote about the gangs of young punks who descended upon Whistler over the May 17th long weekend.
Most of us know by now that there were 3 stabbings over a period of 2 days in our usually tranquil and safe mountain resort.
I blogged my disappointment at the unrest and the violence and I expressed my support for Dave Gibbon's idea to have a road-block set up just outside Squamish where the RCMP could screen the cars and turn away gangs who are coming up to cause trouble.

Seems there are others who agree - take Chilli Thom's expletive letter to the Pique this week , entitled "UFC WHISTLER....WTF?", where he ends off : "I hate to say it but I feel we need to put a gate just outside Function and start doing some "profiling" on long weekends, turning people around and standing up for our citizens."
Yes, but Function is a little too close for comfort , in my opinion - I can quite easily imagine these gangs camping near the Cheakamus and sneaking into the village at night just to upset our people and wreak havoc.

As Mr. Davis writes in his letter to the Pique News Magazine: "The reports [of the unrest] failed to indicate the fact that the perpetrators were gangs of young East Indian men from the Vancouver or Surrey area. Obviously omitted so that racial tensions aren't escalated. But let's discuss facts, this is who they are and they are bringing a behaviour to Whistler that is common in the Surrey and Lower Mainland area. The difference so far is that they haven't pulled their guns out and shot a resident yet. Is that what it's going to take to get some real action out of the "leaders" in our community?"
I don't know Bob, I hope not. Does anybody know a councillor with enough "cajones" to stand up and look at preventing a repeat performance next year? I can't think of one. I know that the RCMP, Dave Gibbons and other nightclubs are doing everything possible to keep the peace, but our councillors need to stand up together [asking for a miracle] and vote that gangs and groups of young people from this area should not be allowed to enter Whistler. Plain and simple.

Again, I pose the question, are we going to allow these gangs into Whistler during the Winter Games in 2010? If so, the May long weekends will seem like a picnic compared to the violence that will erupt in our community for those 2 weeks - it's just par for the course. Gangs = trouble.

It doesn't matter if our local RCMP are bolstered by 30 or 50 police officers from Vancouver, incidents will occur regardless, as they do in Vancouver and Surrey. It is the "element" that these gangs bring with them that makes them dangerous and unpredictable.

Methinks we need to hold a referendum whereby these "idiots" as Bob so eloquently describes them, are kept the hell out of Dodge - in this case, our peaceful town.

So Dollz, the next council meeting is on Monday, June 2 at 6.30pm at Millenium Place in Whistler Village. See y'all there!

Victoria Day Weekend a Sign of Things to Come??

Friends and family and their young childen visited us over this past long weekend and were grateful for the respite from the city traffic and chaos as they settled into Whistler's fresh mountain air, brilliant sunshine and promise of a peaceful time away from Vancouver.


That is until we visited Rainbow Park, Lakeside Park and other parks in Whistler, trying to find somewhere peaceful and safe for the kids - yes, I know that sounds ridiculous. If you live in Whistler you know what I mean. But throughout the Village and in the surrounding parks and on the trails, we literally bumped into or had to push through gangs of little and big punks! They were loud, obnoxious, rude and unruly, and mostly under the age of 25.


It it weren't for the local RCMP who were everywhere on patrol, God knows what would have been left of our precious mountain resort!
In fact, the hooligans broke into our local RCMP station, and fights abounded throughout the village until all hours of the morning, despite excellent cooperation between the RCMP and local bars.


The problem appears to be a result of certain Hotels and Resorts in Whistler who don't seem to care that our community safety goes down the toilet each time they allow gangs and groups of young punks in for a few dollars more.
Mark Munn, who is with the Hilton Resort and Spa in Whistler was someone with whom Bob Lorrimon, a local councillor in Whistler, chose to discuss the matter. Lorriman writes that the issue needs to be balanced, and I quote:"The young Lower Mainland guests can make up a significant portion of bookings for the weekend and the hotels need the revenue." (as published in Whistler's piquenewsmagazine.com


In my opinion, that is nonsense! Isn't the safety and well-being of our community far more important than bringing in accommodation revenue for a weekend.
So the hotels make more money, but the RCMP station gets broken into, people get stabbed, the punks are evicted from hotel rooms because they disturb other guests and so on. How does one "balance" this kind of situation?



As far as we are concerned "the young Lower Mainland" guests/gangs can stay just where they are.
If Whistlerites had wanted to live among gangs and continuous crime, they would be living in Surrey. There is a reason we chose to live here: we considered it safe for young families, and a peaceful haven from the big city rush.
And what about the Winter Games? Are we going to let gangs from the nether regions of BC invade and destroy our town during those two weeks?

It's going to take a lot more than "balance" to keep the trash out of Whistler.
I like Joey Gibbon's, of the Gibbons Hospitality Group's suggestion:


"...we put a roadblock up in Squamish and not let anyone up under 19..."

Whistler Public Library an Expensive Disappointment

Thank you to Bob Burnett, Editor of the Pique News Magazine for publishing my letter concerning our disappointment with the new Whistler Public Library (link below)

"Letters to the editor
Judging by the covers… My family and I waited in anticipation for the opening of the new library in Whistler. For more than four years, we have been members of the Whistler and Pemberton libraries. All of the press releases and the information that it took approximately $11 million to build the new library led us to believe that it would offer enough books to cater to the needs of our children, teenagers, students, our senior citizens and all ages.

We were in the library the other day with my family and friends from Vancouver who used to live here. All the kids were asking, "Where are all the books, mommy?" In fact, we offered to donate some books as the shelves were so bare. Several rows of shelves are empty! One would think that with a budget exceeding $10 million, books would have been a priority on the agenda!

When we finally decided to check out, we were told that the computer system was "down". The librarians had to write down all the serial numbers of the books by hand. Surely, with a budget in excess of $10 million, we could expect an operational system.

Given that Whistler is an international destination for working students from Europe, Mexico, Australia, New Zealand, China and Japan, there should be books for them in foreign languages. My husband and I are speechless, but that is nothing in comparison to how our children and teenagers feel when looking for books that are suitable."

PIQUE NEWSMAGAZINE LETTER TO THE EDITOR

Thank God for The Pique News Mag in Whistler

What would life be without The Pique? I for one would be bored to tears.
Despite how much technology I use on a daily basis to satisfy my craving for learning and information, I still wait with eager anticipation for each and every Thursday so that I can sit down with my coffee or a glass of good wine and devour every page.

I know The Pique is available online, but it isn't as fun and it doesn't satisfy the ritual that I and so many other Whistlerites have adopted.

Thank you again and again to Bob Burnett and his amazing team for this outstanding publication in Whistler.

Olympic Sliding Track in Whistler Tested Successfully!

The Olympic Sliding Track in Whistler cost $105 million. Can you imagine that?

It was put together apparently by a majority of local contractors and it is one of only 15 in the world.
According to news sources, Vancouver Organizing Committee for the 2010 Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games (Vanoc), along with the athletes, are pleased as punch and impressed that the structure is ready two years before the Winter Games."

A local Whistlerite says she and her Hubby and used to watch the Emil Anderson construction guys coming back from the site, covered in concrete and just wasted. But they were always excited and really proud of themselves once the job was done.

"Hope-based Emil Anderson Construction Inc's Bill Swaine, the firm's top manager for the project, said the company was attracted by the sliding centre's uniqueness and complexity.
It was all a delicate dance, co-ordinating the work of carving out foundation footings, building the foundation, then having the steelworkers lay down the track's underlying re-bar trough structure while welders laid in 114 kilometres of refrigeration piping.
Swaine added that Emil Anderson was lucky to hire the Ontario firm Underground Services, which had recently resurfaced Lake Placid's track from the 1980 Winter Games, to spray down the track's concrete, which must have a precisely flat finish.
Demands, both on the budget and timeline, also forced contractors to innovate, according to Jim Longo, president of Ideal Welders Ltd., the sub-contractor that installed the track's refrigeration piping."

See ya at the Winter Games 2010 in Whistler!

Tim Farr - Personification of Courage, Chutzpah and Bravado on the Ski Slopes

Well, I take my hat off to Dudes like Tim Farr, here, who is training to compete in the Paralympics 2010 in Vancouver/Whistler. As Tim says in his own words:

"To be a contender at the top level of any sport you need to train hard, to be the best you need to train harder and more than anybody else. Disabled skiing is no different to any other sport. If I am to get to the top and to the Winter Paralympics 2010 I need time on the snow and in the race gates training as well as the race experience and results. To achieve this however all costs money and unfortunately in Britain there is little funding for winter sports on the whole let alone disabled alpine sports. Without sponsorship and or funding I would not even be able to attempt to achieve my goal and dream of reaching the Vancouver Winter Paralympics in 2010."

All I can say is, "Go for it, Mate, and let the cheering from the crowd spur you on!

Tim writes on his blog, http://timfarr.wordpress.com, that he had an accident in 2004which left him paralysed from the waist down...and then he provokes us to read on saying that this would-be disaster didn't stop him from being himself and working on his dreams.
He completed university, played wheelchair basketball, continues to water ski and within a year of the accident, he was BACK ON THE SKI SLOPES!

Tim goes on to write that he hopes by following his blog and his progress, that we, the people will realize that our disabled friends can and do live a full life. He aims to inspire others who are disabled. Tim says:
"If you want to do something there is always a way to do it."

Whistler's Unique Culture

Shucks, I just had to blog this one, Dollz!

For those of you who don't already know, I work at this incredibly colourful "boutique" in Whistler's Function Junction where we "recycle" anything and everything. It's called the Re-Use-It-Centre. We were recently featured on Global's "Destination Whistler" for the countdown to the Winter Games in 2010.

Anyway, we're hip, we're cool and we see EVERYTHING!

Two days ago, two Dudes are standing outside our receiving area, hoping to unload their mattress. I've seen better beds in Africa, so we politely informed them that they would have to take their hokey mattress to the local dumpyard.

A few minutes later, I am called by a fellow employee to witness this abomination: these two laddies trying to squeeze their beloved mattress into the dumpster!

So, with hands on hips, like any old Mama, I shouted in my most ladylike voice:

"Hey Dudes, please don't do that, you''ll get an awful fine and we'll get into big trouble."

And one of the lads, the one with the Afro yells in a scene straight out of a movie,

"So where're we supposed to take it, BITCH!"

I just stood there with my mouth open - he hadn't said it in a derogatory way - more like Eddy Murphy or Will Smith in an action movie - and then I cracked up. I have never been spoken to in that fashion.

Everybody else who was witness to this cracked up as well and one commented,
"Some people's children, eh!"

The funniest thing is that the guy who shouted this profanity, also cracked up laughing at my reaction.

A couple of saucy responses raced through my mind, like:

"Why don't ya take it to yo Mama's house, Dog!" or better still,

"Yo, you can jus' shove that mattress where the sun don' shine Sugar!", but my strict upbringing got the better of me and I just reminded them that the Waste Transfer station was only 7 minutes down on Highway 99.

So we all giggled for the rest of the day and when I told my hubbie that evening he said he just might have tossed the lads into the garbage dumpster, but he couldn't help giggling himself when I reenacted the scene.

What would we do without our sense of humour here in Whistler?

Bill Jensen is Moving to Whistler. Who's He?

Bill Jensen, who was the President and CEO of Vail Mountain ski area, is on his way to settle here in Whistler as the CEO of INTRAWEST.
Mr. Jensen will be on active duty from the end of June 2008.

For those of you who don't already know, Intrawest is a private Vancouver company
that operates Whistler Blackcomb resort here in Whistler, as well as Steamboat and Copper Mountain ski resorts. As Whistler Blackcomb is one of the key venues for the 2010 Olympic Games, we imagine that Mr. Jensen is going to be a rather busy man.

Rob Katz, CEO of Vail Resort and major competitor said of Jensen:
“a true leader within both the Vail community and the U.S. ski industry” who has “contributed greatly to the success of Vail Mountain.”

Mr. Jensen is also the present chairman of the National Ski Areas Association.

“I have the unique opportunity to join a company with a dynamic culture, leading market share and tremendous momentum,” Jensen said in a statement released by Intrawest.
Mr. Jensen taks the place of Alex Wasilov, who was CEO of Intrawest for over a year, while Mr. Wasilov returns to Intrawest's Board of Directors.
of directors.

NYSE 16:02 04 Feb 08Symbol MTN
Last Trade US$49.56
Close $49.56
Change +0.21 (0.43%)
Volume 516,500

Website http://www.vailresorts.com
Industry: Hotels
Issue Type: Common Stock
Country of Origin: United States
Listing date: 04 Feb 1997