Subscribe to the print edition and enjoy The Republic in
your bathroom!
Plus, your subscription goes a very long way in helping to support The Republic and its writers and produces. It's like paying for the music you like.
Click here for details
|
Whistler
Super-natural British Columbia blasted out of the way
Introduction to scholarly anthropology work about Whistler resort brings deeper issues to mind on the eve of its Olympian exposure
By Lisa Vermeulen
|
It requires a two-hour journey along the Sea-to-Sky highway to get to Whistler from Vancouver. I have taken this journey several times over the course of the last three months to re-familiarize myself with a place that I called home for a period of five years during the 1990s.
Road construction along the Sea-to-Sky highway is a common occurrence, and it was therefore no surprise to have to wait some time at one particular section for the construction crew to conduct their work. Looking to the left of my vehicle, the landscape is beautiful: Howe Sound never ceases to amaze. It represents the province’s slogan “Beautiful British Columbia” in all its glory. Looking to the right of my vehicle, I am confronted with a stark contrasting view: the violence of tons of newly blasted boulders where only recently a bluff, so characteristic of British Columbia’s coastal landscape, stood.
Of course, these two aspects of the landscape blend in a forward-looking visionary field. The highway is being expanded and made safer to make Whistler more accessible for future visitors. It is being aestheticized and modernized in preparation of the Olympic and Paralympic games that Whistler will co-host with Vancouver in 2010.
The holy trinity
The slogan on the sign marking the end of the road construction zone sums it up succinctly: “Moving British Columbia Forward.”’ Nature, construction, and progress meet as a holy trinity in the marketable product called “Whistler”: a place that until 30 years ago was just another town representative of British Columbia’s hinterland development, “where the people endured a boom-or-bust economy dependent on the land’s natural resources,” as Bob Barnett put it in A Vision for a Valley.
“The Sky is the Limit” is one of those popular sayings often used in conjunction with economic expansion. It is perhaps no surprise that the highway to Whistler is called the “Sea-to-Sky.” After all, it leads—ever more directly and efficiently—to the base of one of the two developed ski mountains in Whistler, namely Blackcomb, from which point it is an easy ski-lift ride to one of the world’s best-rated ski areas, called Seventh Heaven.
Whistler, the Valhalla of leisure activities, attracted approximately 871,000 visitors in the 2003-2004 winter season, according to Tourism BC. This translates into an average of approximately 14,850 visitors per day. During last year’s summer, the resort attracted approximately one million visitors. The resident population is estimated at 10,000 people. Therefore, at any given time, there are more visitors in this place called Whistler than there are residents.
One of the main theoretical approaches to the anthropology of a place and its space postulates that the historical production of places involves various fields of power, such as the local and the global, which are articulated in the form of a struggle. Henri Lefebvre, author of The Production of Space (1974), argues that the emergence of leisure-oriented space (i.e., a space designated as a “non-work” space) is a consequence of the rise of the capitalist mode of production in which workspace and leisure space came to be separated.
The ritual of tourism
These different symbolic spaces, one associated with the quantitative aspects of “major industrial agglomerations,” and one associated with the qualitative aspects of leisure life, have become hierarchically ordered locations, whereby the working class’s engagement in productive processes in the quantitative space is off-set by the consumption of leisure space. Put another way, tourism, which involves a physical movement from one designated space into another, can be seen as a ritual response towards the alienation of modernity, as Kevin Meethan put it in Tourism in Global Society.
Leisure-oriented spaces may appear to be spaces outside of the governmentality of “the hegemony of the bourgeoisie,” says Lefebvre, but they are anything but that. In fact, “this seemingly non-productive [space] is planned with the greatest care: centralized, organized, hierarchized, symbolized and programmed to the nth degree.” Thus, they are at the same time localities that are defined by “a set of relations, an ongoing politics, a density, in which places are discursively and imaginatively materialized and enacted through the practices of variously positioned people and political economies” says Hugh Raffles in Local Theory: Nature and the making of an Amazonian Place. They are also spaces in which an “illusion of naturalness” is produced since it is the appeal to nature that is being marketed.
Destination resorts such as Whistler often exhibit a great transitional quality as visitors as well as seasonal workers come and go and make up a considerable portion of the inhabitants on any given day of the year. With increased technology, possible travel routes and vehicles, international tourists, and international stakeholders, such as tour-operators, bankers and entrepreneurs who hold a vested interest in the production of these types of places, they have also become transnational places.
Such special places have caught the attention of socio-cultural anthropologists and geographers, many of whom have been concerned with the socio-cultural relationship between hosts and visitors in these designated leisure spaces, and the way that these are articulated and become anchored in the discourse of place and space.
Recombining work and play
However, little attention has been given to leisure places that have been specifically staked out, designed, and produced as a marketable product, and in which many residents choose to live with the intent of combining both work and play.
My case study examines how the production of Whistler came into being and has been actively pursued by various actors. It will also examine the current discourses and narratives about spatiality as expressed by Whistler residents. It is in these discourses, which express a need to combine values of nature and profiteering, that the struggle to strike a balance between nature, “the ‘raw material’ from which [spaces] are produced,” as Lefebvre puts it, and leisure, is most apparent. It is through this combined discourse that the people who make up the locality of Whistler construct and contest the boundaries between “local” and “visitor.”
|
Read more by this author
The Republic
print version is generously supported by the following regular advertisers:
Storm Brewing
604-255-9119
Dan's Homebrewing
692 E Hastings
Co-operative Auto Network
604-685-1393
Turk's Coffee
1276 Commercial Drive
Dutch Girl Chocolates
1002 Commercial Drive
Magpie Books and Magazines
1319 Commercial Drive
Artrageous Pictures & Framing
1256 Commercial Drive
Bouzyos Greek Taverna
1815 Commercial Drive
Magnet Hardware
1575 Commercial Drive
Uprising Breads
1697 Venables
Highlife World Music
1317 Commercial Drive
Mark's Pet Stop
1875 Commercial Drive
Abruzzo Cafe
1321 Commercial Drive
Our Community Bikes
3283 Main Street
Does Your Mother Know
Magazines Etc
2139 West 4th Ave
Kali
1000 Commercial Drive
Uncle Don
Freelance Curmudgen
on CFUR Radio, Prince George
Receptive Earth
Hemp & other Earthly delights
4168 Main Street
Geist
Magazine of Canadian ideas & culture
Momentum
Bike magazine
West Coast Seeds
Where to find the print version of The Republic:
Vancouver
Aboriginal Friendship
1607 E Hastings
Bean Around the World
10th & Trimble
Benny’s Bagels
Broadway & Larch
Big News Coffee Bar
2447 Granville
Black Dog Video
Cambie & 19th
Book Warehouse
550 Granville
632 W Broadway
2388 W 4th
Cambie Hostel
300 Cambie St
Capers Community Markets
2285 W 4th
1675 Robson
Carnegie Comm. Centre
Hastings & Main
City Square Mall
Cambie & 12th
Cuppa Joe 189-175
E Broadway
Dadabase
Broadway & Main
Danny’s Coffee
Denman & Pendrell
Denman Community Ctr
Denman & Nelson
Denman Mall
Denman & Nelson
Drive Organics
Commerical & Napier
Does Your Mother Know?
2139 W 4th
Duthie Books
2239 W 4th
East End Food Co-Op
1034 Commercial
Elysian Room
1778 W 5th
Food Stop
Commerical & Venables
Gemeral Store
312 Cambie St
Gold Coin Laundry
B-way & Waterloo
Granville Island
Public Market
Grind
4124 Main
Higher Ground
Broadway & Vine
Il Mercato
1641 Commercial
Joe's Café
1150 Commercial
Laughing Bean
Hastings & Penticton
Lugz
2525 Main Street
Magpie Magazines
1319 Commercial
Our Town Cafe
245 E Broadway
Pacific Central Station
Bus Depot
People's Co-op Books
1391 Commercial
Polonia Sausage
Nanaimo &Hastings
Rebound Health
Hastings & Kamloops
Receptive Earth
Main & King Edward
Rhizome Cafe
317 East Broadway
Simon Fraser
Downtown Foodfair
Soma
2528 Main Street
Sweet Tooth Cafe
Nanaimo & Hastings
Turk's Coffee
1276 Commercial
UBC
Student Union Building
Union Food Market
810 Union
Uprising Breads Bakery
1697 Venables
Vancouver Community College
250 W Pender
Vancouver Public Library
350 W Georgia
1661 Napier
2425 MacDonald
370 E Broadway
West Vancouver
Capers
2496 Marine Dr
West Vancouver Library
1950 Marine
Duncan
Community Farm Store
330 Duncan St
Victoria
Bean Around the World
533 Fisgard
Munro’s Books
1108 Government
University of Victoria
Graduate L0unge
Victoria Public Library
735 Broughton
Powell River
River City Coffee
4801 Joyce
Local Loco’s Music & Arts Cafe
Flying Yellow Breadbowl
4698 Ewing
Powell River Library
4411 Michigan
Kaslo
Blue Belle Bistro
302 Fourth
SunnySide Naturals
404 Front
Nanaimo
Nanaimo Public Library
Harbourfront Br
Port Place Shopping Ctr
650 S Terminal
The Green Store
Port Place
Mermaid’s Mug
357 Wesley St
Nelson
Mountain Pass Imports
402 Baker
Toronto
Moonbean Cafe
30 St. Andrew St
Future Bakery
483 Bloor St West
Oakville Peace &Ecology Centre
148 Kerr
|
The Republic of East Vancouver masthead
The Republic of East Vancouver supports no party, advocates
for no cause, represents no group, serves no master, and considers
problems with no preconceived notions. We hope to afflict the comfortable,
both materially and intellectually, and comfort the afflicted—of
both kinds as well, and we are trying to do both things at the same
time.
Publisher, Editor
Kevin Potvin
Managing Editor
Kara Foreman
Copy Editor
Janis Harper
Website
Chris Lavigne
Advertising
Chris Richmond Kevin
Potvin
Support
Dan Crawford, John Daigle,
Jack Etkin, Janis Harper, Carl Johnson, Hilary Jones, Chris King,
James Mecham, Albrecht Meyers, Peter Miller, James Pope
Contributors in this and recent issues
Bruce Alexander, Dan Adleman, Toby Alford, Kevin Annett, Santo Barbieri, Bob Broughton, Mike Bryan, Stephen Buckley, Matthew Burrows, Maria Calleja, Ron Carton, Chad Christie, Joshua Corber, Dan Crawford, Gail Davidson, Eric Doherty, Joe Donaldson, Lorena Jara Patty Ducharme, Shadia Drury, Taivo Evard, Reed Eurchuk, Farnaz Fassihi, Thomas Feakins, Anthony Fenton, Reza Fiyouyzat, Andrew Gordon Fleming, Ryan Fugger, Sasha Gagic, Matt Goody, Guy Hawkins, Spencer Herbert, John Irwin, Nick Istvaniffy, Junius, William Kay, Mike Keep, Kate Kennedy, Donald Kropp, Chris LaVigne, James Lindfield, Brian Lindgreen, Karen Litzke, Keith MacKenzie, Michael McLaughlin, Sonya McRae, Rafe Mair, Sonia Marino, Jennifer Matsui, Michael Millard, Isaebel Minty, Michael Nenonen, Wendy Nylund, Derrick O’Keefe, Stephen Osborne, Sean Orr, Evan Augustine Pederson III, Stephen Peplow, Kim Peterson, Kevin Potvin, Mary Rawson, Andrea Reimer, Erin Riley, Phil Rockstroh, Becky Scott, Jason Scott, Chris Shaw, Jeff Steudel, Alex Tegart, Scott Turner, Elbio Grosso Trentini, Patrick Vert, Chris Walker, Sean Wilkinson, Brad Zembic
For comments or suggestions, please contact the
Republic Webmaster
|
