New research underway at the University of British Columbia suggests those Olympic ski racers and aerialists preparing to hurl themselves down mountains were destined to seek out excessive speeds and massive air… they may be genetically pre-disposed to thrill-seeking behaviour. UBC PhD candidate Cynthia Thomson was encouraged to pursue her line of research when her…
Category: Uncategorized
Douglas Coupland would have been an Olympian…
Deborah Solomon puts her questions to Canadian pop-lit icon, Douglas Coupland in this weekend’s New York Times magazine, proving the man is as sharp as a kebab skewer, especially when he’s not being edited by a committee of VANOC-word-police, as one suspects happened in his Vancouver 2010 Official Souvenir Program piece. (For that story, Coupland…
Sustainable tourism is frog pose.
Okay, so technically I was procrastinating last weekend when I sat down at my desk and started thinking about what sustainable tourism means to me… Technically, I already had something I should have been working on… Technically, writing that article was going to contribute to my own personal fiscal sustainability. Inspiration strikes in this way….
2010 reasons to head to Pemberton this February
The inukshuk, an Inuit wayfinder, points the way to Pemberton. There are easily 2010 Reasons to Take a Road-Trip to Pemberton This February – lots of the community’s attributes were crowd-sourced at GamesTown2010 – almost 500 submissions were logged by local chest-beaters, and people are still posting… The Village of Pemberton, Chamber of Commerce and…
The Centre Cannot Hold – Olympics and Anti-comps put the squeeze on Freeskiing
The X Games takes place in Aspen at the end of this month, and 39 of the 250 competitors are past and present Olympians. The roster definitely skews to past Olympians, because X Games organisers have been burned by the Olympics in the past. I spoke with Chris Schuster, Competition Director for the X Games…
5 things I learned from Bob and Sue Adams about the entrepreneurial spirit
When Bob and Sue Adams were told they were the 2009 Lifetime Members of the Canadian Federation of Independent Grocers, they had to take each other’s pulses. “Life membership?” they joked. “Are we that old?” “I guess it’s the end of the road…” I sat down with them this summer for a hilarious tag-team conversation,…
How to Become a Pro Skier, with cheat notes from Malcolm Gladwell and TJ Schiller
Malcolm Gladwell wanted to understand why some people become super-successful. He believed that “the biggest misconception about success is that we do it solely on our smarts, ambition, hustle and hard work“, because there are more variables involved in individual success than we’d like to admit. So he wrote the number one best-seller Outliers. The professional…
Silver medal on World Cup for Alexa Loo throws down chin-up challenge
Canadian parallel giant slalom rider Alexa Loo has followed last week’s silver medal at the 2010 LG Snowboarrd FIS World Cup in Kreishberg, Austria with another silver on the Europa Cup – all good prep for Sunday’s World Cup – a race that can clinch her a spot on the Olympic team, if she comes…
Trish Jamieson dishes musical dirt on CBC
We were eight hours and counting into a gnarly drive from Nelson to Pemberton – extreme weather warnings were issuing up and down the province. Freezing rain dominated the forecast. Suddenly the radio crackled with familiar voices – CBC’s On the Coast broadcasting live from the Whistler Brewhouse, with Trish Jamieson playing her original tunes,…
Freeskier Mike Douglas hangs five in Hawaii… on skis.
Innovation is about synthesis, and imagineer Mike Douglas has upped the ante again, mashing up a Hawaiian surf Mecca with two boards… Hmm, if surfing inspired snowboarding, is skiing about to start a salt water revolution? Says Douglas, “If you never try things, if you never put yourself out there and try something new, then…
