I meet a colleague who refuses to shake my hand or kiss me hello. She has been body-checked by the dreaded lurgy… falling victim to the massive human petri dish that is the PNE. “But it’s okay, I’m not contagious anymore,” she assures me. My immune response is less assured. In a feverish sleep the next…
Tag: lisa richardson bylines
Master of the Still Waters – Touring the Schramm Vodka Distillery
Tyler Schramm is a quiet guy. When you take the tour of the world’s only certified organic potato vodka distillery, located in a non-descript building at the back of Pemberton’s Industrial Park, you get a sense that public speaking is his least favourite gig. But the master distiller has created a product that he’s proud…
Losing My Religion – or why I don’t ride in lightning storms
When Whistler Blackcomb launched their If Ullr Was a Girl campaign back in 2006, they got angry letters of complaint from people who found the whole suggestion that Ullr was responsible for snow, or was even vaguely god-like, to be offensively sacreligious. So I expected some heat when I wrote a feature on mountain biking…
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…
Local Beta on Whistler Gives The Inside Scoop
Travellers’ Law number 2 : “Get the scoop from locals” comes close second in global-hobo advice lore after Rule #1 : trust the universe. Or as Robin Esrock leads off, in his rules for the Gonzo Traveller – Never turn down a free drink. Everyone who has been either a traveller, a guest or a local knows that the…
Olympics won’t be thwarted by fickle snow gods
Whistler writer Leslie Anthony went looking for Ogopogo for Explore magazine last year, and placated himself re: his failed quest to find the Great Lake Snake by recalling the words of a famous sasquatch hunter: Although he spent huge amounts of time and money searching for the creature, in a moment of startling candour he’d told an interviewer: ‘It sure…
Canadian Olympic athlete doping ring exposed
When my brother and I were kids, we weren’t ever given cold and flu medication. Our dad was a pharmacist… a pharmacist who pimped litres of sugar syrup during cold and flu season believing it was the biggest rort on the planet. It drove him nuts to be asked by earnest customers, “Well, which of those 60 different cough…
Whistler’s Killer Highway is Born Again – The Kittens Are Safe Now.
It’s February 1996 and a high-pressure system has locked over Whistler and Squamish. My brother and I pile into my husband’s old Volvo and navigate the narrow winding highway for a day of down-clad rockclimbing. The highway’s canyon walls press so tightly against us that in places I suck in my breath. I’m driving, which proves what a high…
