Have been thinking a lot lately about holding space, about opening, and the discomfort that comes leading up to release. (And about how overdue I am for my next appointment with the yoga mat.) So dug out this piece I wrote last year in response to an online call for contributions on “sustainable tourism” for…
Category: whistler writer
Artist Scott Dickson in 3 Words: Pretty Awesome Talent.
I interviewed Scott Dickson by email last week for an artist profile for the Kokanee Crankworx Event Guide. Dickson’s art brings a vibrant and vivid energy to the 2011 event poster – it’s a refreshing alternative to the photo-heavy approach that event posters often resort to. Sometimes the freeride world with its gladiator vibe and…
Whistler Mountain Bike Park Opening Day means Crankworx is 53 days away
I recently pulled the dusty old hypewriter from the back of the closet, where it was languishing in semi-retirement, to crank out some verbiage for service as boilerplate and taglines for a somewhat large and kickass mountain bike festival known as the Kokanee Crankworx. (I thought I’d reformed my ways and sworn off hyperbole forever, but…
Busting through heliskiing’s powder ceiling – chicks in the chopper
There’s nowhere else that men will look you over so aggressively, quite as overtly, as when you walk into a heliskiing operation. They are trying to suss out if you are one of the support staff – a cook, a massage therapist, an assistant – because that’s what most of the women are. (Of the…
A different way of looking: the Squamish Lil’wat Cultural Centre
Without textbooks or diagrams, an oral culture shares technology by apprenticeship. Working alongside a master. A direct transmission of knowledge, person to person. It’s a slow-paced way to accumulate expertise, and vulnerable, but that sense of steadying slowness infuses the Squamish Lil’wat Cultural Centre from the moment one pushes open the huge carved entry doors…
Releasing my inner Evil Knievel is as easy as lying down and letting go
One year after Jon Montgomery won his 2010 Olympic gold medal, I lower myself face-first onto a narrow metal toboggan. Called a skeleton because its 1892 prototype resembles a human bone-rack, the 80 pound frame is more like an exo-skeleton and I am counting on it to keep all my bits properly in place, as…
“Celebrating” the one year anniversary of the 2010 Winter Olympic Games
This time last year I was cursing El Nino, stalking the Weasel Workers and realising why the world has such a crush on Lindsey Vonn as I donned my best “I’m a serious sports journalist” face and joined the online reporting team covering the Games for NBCOlympics.com. It was, in all likelihood, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity….
In Defence of App-less Skiing
I wrote a rant for Skier magazine recently, arguing that ski days should be app-less and device free. I wasn’t being deliberately provocative. I really do think that app-games, of which Vail’s new Epic Mix is the Grand Poobah, take away some fundamental aspect of the mountain experience. But as I wrote, If you need a…
PR is dead. Long live the storytellers.
I didn’t decide to wrap up my 4 year tenure as the Communications Director of the TELUS World Ski and Snowboard Festival because PR is dead. (Although Mat Wilcox closing down her firm rang like a bell from the heart of Vancouver : ding, dong, the the game is forever changed. Start over. Start over.)…
Me! Me! Me! Stoking social media savvy at the Whistler Writers Festival
Honest. I’m not an egomaniac. That’s why I thought it was so funny to tell Stella Harvey, the Whistler Writers Festival director that I would present a session called “Me! Me! Me! How to build your social media savvy for wanton self-promotion.” But now the gig is imminent, (and even has a presenting sponsor in Street…
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