A Vancouver Island town’s unique culture and frigid swell unlock the mysterious draw of the Canadian surf scene. A brief excerpt from a recently completed  article on Tofino, British Columbia.

“Anyone that finds the idea of getting into the water during a Canadian winter out of the question will have an equally hard time with the following phrase, written without a hint of sarcasm: you get used to it. If you don’t love being in the water in the first place, you certainly won’t enjoy it here. But as you might imagine, the climate breeds a surfer of a particular resilience, and the gum boot wearing locals take pride in the fact that though hooded wetsuits, sleet and snow may not be ideal, when you combine a passion for surfing and an appreciation for this unique environment, ideal is irrelevant.”

A piece originally produced as online content for the TELUS World Ski and Snowboard Festival.

While the Whistler Conference Centre ballroom boomed and flashed during the Follow Me Film Premier and the village stroll writhed with movement and color, a focused and carefully formulated grassroots debate was taking place underground. Oversized cue cards were tossed. Panelists sweated and jittered. The audience booed and cheered at their whim, and a controversial winner rose out of the pack.

Put on by the Whistler Museum during the TELUS World Ski and Snowboard Festival, Icon Gone gives local personalities the forum to argue for a Whistler treasure that they deem worthy of iconic status. Each entrant is given a maximum of five minutes to deliver their argument, and the presentation of anyone who goes over the limit is terminated with a cutthroat gong.

The Pique’s Andrew Mitchell borrowed Freddie Mercury’s swaying voice before launching into his argument for bikes in which he declared his love of the Loonie race, described the difficulty in riding the valley trail home from the afterparties, and put forth his incorrect but hilarious French to English translation of vas deferens.

Kevin Demaskie strutted across the stage in retro neon ski gear to argue for the Whistler Answer, and Cathy Jewitt, clad in a mink trimmed coat which she quickly shed under the theatre’s hot lights, made a passionate plea for the now defunct Dave Murray Downhill. Shauna Hardy-Mishaw argued for Hugh Smythe, and Nicole Fitzgerald’s beautiful voice filled the theatre with an impeccably crafted narrative about the life of Florence Peterson. Mike Berard took the podium clad in squeaky yellow and green waterproof apparel to argue hard for Whistler’s most hated four letter word: rain. Stephen Vogler made the final presentation with historic black and white photos to emphasize his argument for squatter’s cabins.

Judged by applause-o-meter,  Berard was in first place going into the finals with Vogler, Jewitt, and Mitchell to defend against. Stating that “I didn’t prepare anything because I didn’t think I’d make it this far and now I’m in trouble,” Berard wasn’t yet aware he had an ingenious Mitchell to contend with.

The champion for bikes invoked Godwin’s law, which states that the longer an argument goes on, the greater the chance that the topic of Nazis will arise. Pointing out that Hitler never rode a bike during World War One, Mitchell summed up his rebuttal with “Hitler bad, bikes good,” and clinched himself the win.

I sat down with Mike Berard to discuss his position after he’d had a few days to nurse his wounds (or more accurately, drown his sorrows).

Allie Jenkinson: I was secretly pleased to see that you lost, as we had planned this interview ahead of time and “Interview with a Loser” is a far better title than “Interview with a Champion,” don’t you think?

Mike Berard: If I wasn’t the loser I would agree with you.

AJ: Tell me a little bit about your experience in preparing for Icon Gone, and about how you chose your argument.

MB: My argument centered on the idea that Whistler’s unique element is the result of rainfall, the defining factor that separates it from other ski areas.

AJ: This is a controversial argument, as rain is the great adversary in these parts.

MB: Exactly. But anyone who chooses to pretend that it doesn’t rain here is a fool.  Rain is central to why we have amazing snow, trees, singletrack, lakes, rivers,  and people. Coastal BC relies on precipitation. When we curse the rain we are actually cursing the fact that we aren’t California, which isn’t our true intent.

Tourists won’t go up when it’s dark and cool and wet, but the locals will. Rain breeds people that appreciate adversity.

AJ: You’re one of a handful of Whistler locals that seems to relish in controversy. Were you looking for a controversial idea, which lead you to rain, or did the idea you had the strongest argument for just happen to be controversial?

MB: A little bit of both.  I do believe that rain is Whistler’s defining factor, and backed away from more controversial ideas because I didn’t find them as convincing.

AJ: What was the greatest challenge going into the debate?

MB: The biggest challenge seemed to be that I had to defend myself as a relatively new resident. I didn’t know how much of the contest would revolve around the ski town’s infamous localism. I thought I might get called out on being a tourist. Everyone was really cool though. In the end my perspiration problem under hot lights in raingear was the real challenge.

AJ: How did you feel about being stripped of the win?

MB: I didn’t mind losing to Andrew Mitchell because his rebuttal was hilarious.

AJ: It’s a very humorous event, but at the same time it has a distinctly bittersweet undertone.  You have a panel of dynamic people living in a place that they are clearly invested in and passionate about, discussing a lack of appreciation for or loss of the elements that they believe make Whistler what it is.

MB: In my eyes that’s the beauty of the event. It doesn’t simply exist for a good time. These people are addressing in their own clever way the changing of the guard in Whistler. It’s a way for the local mouthpieces, outside of their careers, to voice these opinions. Take the Peak 2 Peak Gondola. So many people in the valley make fun of it, but sometimes because of person’s career or political ties it gets complicated when we try to speak publicly about it. It’s a classic ski town dynamic. We’re here because of the tourists, but not for the tourists.

AJ: Would you do Icon Gone again?

MB: It’s tricky to pick that one single element and argue with your heart and soul, and then come back next year and argue for another one. But I’d love to try.

AJ: The panelists weren’t too rough on you, even though you made yourself a bit of an easy target.

MB: Maybe, but I think the most important thing to remember is that without rain the people would be different.

AJ: But for the sake of argument, doesn’t the rain account for some of the elements that the locals view as negative? Isn’t it the rain that keeps tourists out for most of the season, leaving us with a jacked up cost of living that results from communities full of empty mansions?

MB: Those mansions don’t bother me.

AJ: But they bother Stephen Vogler.

MB: Right. Unfortunately they make it hard for the rest of us to afford living here, but those people don’t effect us because they are never here. It’s a sign of indulgence, but I don’t think it changes who we are as Whistlerites.

AJ: Perhaps it ensures that the people who live here are committed,  because they have to make sacrifices.

MB: Maybe that’s my next Icon Gone argument: massive empty mansions.

Mike Berard is a Whistler based writer and editor of The Ski Journal. Read his full Icon Gone argument here.

and

See the original wssf article here.

It happens on a day that starts off like any other, most likely one at the end of a week that has dragged on from monotonous tasks and endless to-dos. You may be getting over the flu, or you may have finally finished a project that’s been hanging over your head for months. It may be a sunny, spring-like day after months of rain. It may be triggered by a joyous conversation with an exceptional person, or a simple photograph or articulate article you found in a travel magazine. It might be the result of reading about the momentum of a person you’ve never met.

You may not know where it came from, this pure and crisp voice that miraculously rises out of your subconscious through layers of negativity, responsibility, cynicism and obligation that can build over time unchecked. It’s that small tickle of nervous excitement that pinches you in the stomach when you realize there is something incredible on the horizon that you could actually make happen of your own volition with a little change, a little risk and a significant amount of enthusiasm. It’s the sudden and often overwhelming awareness that the only thing keeping you from unqualified joy is, and has always been, you.

The resulting fruition of this moment- the business started or abandoned, the trip taken or not taken, a goal met or altered, is not nearly as important as the seed. Because that light feeling—the feeling that you have more lifting you up than weighting you down—is an assurance that your heart is in tact and that no matter your age or your circumstance, the time you have left to live has as much promise and possibility as the time you’ve already lived through.



I wake in the morning and roll onto my back, gently rubbing my eyes and grasping at the tails of hazy dreams racing from recollection. I try to come to terms with what today means based on what yesterday had been. What is there to do and how urgent is it? Are my obligations many, or have I earned a day of rest? For as long as I can remember I’ve been aware that time limited.

I come across small pieces of paper ripped haphazardly and placed deep into the bindings of my own books. Scanning the marked page, I can’t find the sentiment that once sparkled, yet find a notable sentence a few pages later that somehow escaped detection.  Flipping through papers I wrote a short time ago, I’m unable to follow the logic of my own arguments. For all intents and purposes these pages were constructed by the mind of someone else; someone with a singular, defined focus, living and breathing the context they were written in.

My preferences are dubious at best. Though I left Alberta nearly a decade ago, images of Banff and the foothills of the Rocky Mountains make me long to return as if they no longer exist: a lost Atlantis wiped from the prairies.  The notion of moving to Europe or Central America to embrace a rich and joyful culture provides a rush of excitement. Yet the thought of living out my days in a modern, wide windowed house somewhere along the open stretch of subtle land in the East Kootenays seems to me to me good as anything else.

I’m suspicious of my own ambition— of how much I possess, and what purpose it serves.  Would great success as a writer put me at ease, or make me more restless? Would it liberate me with doors swung open and offers at my feet? Or would I feel shackled by responsibility and a pre-existing standard? I’d like to say that it’s a matter of perspective, but I’m certainly not sure enough to put the weight of my life on it. I’m often reminded of what A.R. Ammons wrote at the age of 63: “who has done, or am I likely to do / anything the world won’t twirl without” but temper his sentiment with the knowledge that the line is part of an award winning poem he still found reason to write.

I feel myself changing by the day, as if my regenerating cells aren’t passing on adequate memory and information, rendering me unrecognizable to myself, over and over again.  Perhaps it’s relative youth that’s responsible. Perhaps I will settle as I get older, and my mind will slow down. This hardly consoles me, and I still feel myself searching for something internally consistent. So I wake in the morning with intention of a different kind. I aspire to elegance and kindness: to handle ambitions, relationships, and the shortcomings of myself and others gracefully. To create a circle of warmth from the love in my life that isn’t diluted by obligation or geographic location. My motivations are precarious, yes. But no more precarious than working towards vague notions of contentment, happiness or success. I feel the support of this effort straighten my spine and guide me through the choices I make and the words that I speak (or more often, choose not to.) I Strive to be the woman I would want my own daughter to be: positive, luminous and adventurous, whether she’s 15 or 30, a writer, a wife or a waitress, all of the above or something else entirely.

Heading into the water, we tossed towels onto the largest rock to be picked up on the wet way back, past tall grasses sometimes stinging salty, sticky legs on a pathway lined with dried seaweed. Each step in the grass produced grasshoppers, sparking off in all directions. Wrapped and dripping, we’d take turns rinsing our feet in the bucket beside the faded deck. Underneath the graying slats lay piles of rounded glass: broken bottles and plates fallen off or thrown over the edge of a fishing boat. Each piece was worn and softened by the oceans bottom before an eventual harvesting by little hands. Favourite pieces were pushed into piles of sand and clay, instantly transforming the dark mounds into jeweled castles. Looking back at old photos, my brother commented on how ugly our creations really were. We’ve lost the ability to see in some things what we saw back then.

Days were filled with reading and croquet, swimming and inspecting ill-fated jellyfish, each head of brown hair turned white from the sun. Now and then we would dutifully crouch in the blueberry patches. Plucking each one fat and wild, we’d fill any container we could find that wasn’t yet committed to the cause. We could never pick them all and we could never pick enough. They were passed around by the handful, or shaken onto cereal in the morning. At their best, they would show up in my grandparent’s pies and pancakes.

At dinner we would slide into the corresponding benches of two picnic tables pushed together on the lawn in an attempt to make enough room for all. Dinner was cooked on a green Coleman stove outdoors before an oven attached to a propane tank was installed in the cottage. I recall eating corn on the cob as if we ate little else. On the very best nights we would drive to the Escuminac pier for ice cream, and on the way my Uncle would stop at a tiny store beside the main road. Each cousin would buy a grab bag containing hard candies, small plastic toys, Goonies trading cards and stale gum. My mom remembers a dark and dusty interior, with everything you could ever need stacked somewhere on the shelves. I remember firecrackers.

The time we would head into the cottage or back to our tents was determined by the drop in temperature and the dying down of winds, both factors responsible for the eerie increase in mosquitoes and deer flies. Nights were spent playing cards or Chinese checkers in the faint glow of oil lanterns and applying afterbite to impossibly itchy knees and ankles. Moths bumped the lamps and screens. Metal sailboat and airplane mobiles bounced on a breeze. During thunderstorms we would blow out the lamps and watch lightning touch down across the water.

In 1981 Allison MacDonald built a cottage in Hardwicke, on the East Coast of New Brunswick. A navigation instructor during the war, my grandfather retired from his job as a personnel manager for Air Canada in 1975. He was drawn to the water and chose to buy property on the coast best suited for sailing, returning to the province in which he was born. He based the cottage’s design on the Douglas Fir Chalets of Tunnel Mountain in Banff, which included four large windows purchased second hand that have since framed a view of the Miramachi Bay. The cottage was built completely by hand, with no power tools, and remains without plumbing or electricity. He also built a small sailboat, The Owl and the Pussycat, and a large white Trimaran, The Wichousen, which would carry us across the bay to Fox Island.

I have often marveled at my inability to recall events in any kind of detail, though I remember many of the things that occurred on those acres of property with a clarity my memory doesn’t often allow. It’s a surreal place to visit now that I’ve grown. Family members show up at different times, in smaller numbers. The grocery store is boarded up. My grandfather’s Trimaran no longer breaks the horizon, but I feel him in what remains. A mental adjustment has to take place while driving through the trees and up to the clearing, so I can properly enjoy the things so closely associated with my childhood. And promptly get on with doing childhood things. –Allie Jenkinson

When leaving my hometown, I most often head west. And since any distance west of Calgary is driving distance, I have come to know the highway well. The gentle sways that lead to Banff, the sharp turns before Golden that scrap the thought you had around Lake Louise about making good time. The tourist buses at Rogers pass and the earth toned bands of the Kamloops hillside before the straight, smooth width of the Coquihalla. But before counting off any of these familiarities, I scan the area past Bragg Creek for two simple, uniform shacks sprouted from the ground before the fields turn to foothills. My appreciation lies in recognizing, due to their solitary vulnerability, that they can only withstand prairie winds for so long. Once I see them I nod and press on, officially beginning my journey.

And each time my mind wanders towards the notion that no amount of faith in the future or study of the past can guarantee what will exist tomorrow. Every day we make subconscious assumptions about what is permanent, until we are reminded of how fragile even the most epic presence may be. The altered New York skyline is a testament to this; without knowing it, we assumed these buildings would always be there. The idea of permanence is easier to grasp within a given time frame; this highway was here when I was born, this bridge will be here when I die. Yet this method is contrary to the notion of permanence. We have no way of knowing what is eternal if we are not.

Urban environments seem permanent because steel and concrete seem absolute. Natural environments seem fragile because of certain characteristics belonging to organic matter; lakes swell and recede, trees grow and sway. Entire landscapes weaken under a thick snowfall, but return to life in the months to come. It seems as though anything that can change will be affected or altered, anything with mobility can be hindered or broken, and anything that can grow will eventually pass. Yet the natural environment doesn’t depend on us for creation and maintenance. Maybe what is truly permanent is what exists despite us, and what would flourish in our absence. Or perhaps permanence describes an idea and not a condition; maybe nothing can exist indefinitely, and acknowledging precariousness is a step towards ensuring that something doesn’t slip away.  Buildings are built with give to stand up against the elements: buildings move like trees.

We are all, in our own way, trying to endure. We talk of living on though our work and through our children. Engineers turn old into new and contractors and artists strive to create something that will last. Photographers are simply trying to capture what would otherwise be fleeting. But prints fade and negatives age. Photographs are no more permanent than the subjects they share.

I drove by these shacks 6 months ago. They were leaning towards Calgary. I drove by a month ago and they were gone. -Allie Jenkinson

Photo: Mike Berard

A short piece recently published in the 2010 Edition of the Snowboard Canada Women’s Annual.

Leveled by a compulsive carpenter and as yellow as the liquid surrounding his infallible bubble, the prairies are submissive. The mountain peaks are visible in the distance, revealing more of themselves with each section of the asphalt’s broken line. Though burdened by a garage sale worth of clothing and equipment, her car moves forward with a loyal purr. The clouds along the horizon are blue and swollen. Crows hop and stare from the roadside, perhaps made wise by millions more years of experience. “We were here before you and would be here after.” The air is dry and feels electric.

Born and raised in an ever-expanding sprawl of concrete and glass, her love of the mountains is rooted in weekend trips and childhood awe; sitting in the back seat of a station wagon, glancing away from the profile of her parents faces illuminated by the dashboard lights, way up through the moonlit sky and squinting to make out their jagged silhouette. Even when the ominous outline disappeared into blackness she could feel the imposition of their size, like monsters quiet and still in the darkness, not wishing to be found.

She tries to imagine the future as if possibilities are isolated, but has been unsure enough to makes quizzical family members squirm with discomfort. How do you explain to the uninitiated that not knowing how some things will turn out is what makes them worth doing? Taking the disapproval of others as an affirmation, her response was simply an unconstrained smile, each Cheshire tooth blazing.

She has always wanted to move to a mountain town, but the pressures we are often burdened with at far too early an age were present, and investing time into the future often requires postponing desire. Instead of following the clichéd path of self-discovery at a younger age, she was renewed by the sensation of having paid her dues. As her car rolls slowly over the foothills, joy is foremost in her mind.

She anxiously imagines her newfound priorities; the moments she has only been able to experience a few days at a time or worse, vicariously. Powder days and early mornings. The energy of a town that is rooted in pure, unabashed elation. Pubs overflowing with gregarious faces that glow with the childlike excitement of a day spent the best way they know how. Possibility. Windburn. Beers chilled in snow banks. The exchange of mental fatigue for physical exhaustion. She imagines herself seeking out the fertile soil beneath a canopy of trees, sheltered at the foot of something permanent and grand. The ideal place to stregnthen.

She has been planning and willing this move for years. She sinks into her seat and resigns her mind to feelings of hope and liberation, for she knows that though she pictures herself driving towards tomorrow in a very literal way, all time hereafter will, in truth, recede like the horizon in relation to the speed at which she approaches it. -Allie Jenkinson

The second installment of the fiction piece 5 Lovers.

Our friends informed us that we were visiting the same city at the same time, a remarkable coincidence, considering. You managed to get the name of my hotel and showed up unannounced, a blessing since self-doubt would have accompanied anticipation. Our nights were a blur of cocktails, color and corner booth conversations. You would stretch your arm out for my hand and pull me forward after we closed the taxi doors, heading towards the restaurant, martini bar, or nightclub entrance, heels clicking on cobblestone, our jackets open to the wind. We went out with the people you were there to see, but you made it seem, in your own natural way, that you had flown in just to see me.

We spent our nights together as if it was inevitable, and maybe it was. You were sweet and gentle and granted me every possible consideration, and the day that you left I was elated that, for the brief period of time that we came together, it was perfect. Yet when I returned to my regular rhythm and your afterglow had faded, I began to mourn what is lost when long time desire is satisfied.
-Allie Jenkinson

The first installment of the fiction piece 5 Lovers.

We met in the living room of a mutual friend whose parents were off somewhere, and spent the rest of the night sitting on the back patio drinking from bottles and swinging our feet. Our conversation was occasionally interrupted by bursts of laughter from inside or the calls of someone who noticed we were gone. Smiling in the dim light, we waited them out, choosing not to be discovered. You acted as if you were grateful that I let you hang around, and I was attracted to your softness and sense of humor. We were inseparable immediately.

You had a car long before I could drive, and I had shotgun, always. You took me everywhere you went, and sideways glances and teasing punches filled the space in between us. You took a lot of things seriously that I didn’t understand. I would call you often with a restlessness that would haunt me for the next decade, and you would laugh and ask me if I ever studied. I didn’t.

You were deeply bothered by my indifference to music, and took it upon yourself to educate me. We lay shoulder to shoulder for hours on your bed, staring at the ceiling, listening, whispering, laughing, and listening. Whenever you drove me the short distance to my parents house you would take the long way, past the elementary school and along the arching road on the edge of the city. I lay across the bench seat with my head on your lap, trying not to visualize our progress. I grew insecure as I got older and your friendship consoled me.

Somewhere along the way you lost your vulnerability and your gentle nature followed. I tried to resist and hung on for too long, until one night you told me in frustration that you don’t love me anymore. I stood beside my car in the cold while you watched me from the window. The next time we spoke was months later, when you called to ask why I didn’t tell you I was moving away.

So many years later, in the corner of a crowded bar with sticky floors, I stole upward glances at the arch of your brow and the dark in your eyes; intimately familiar with the face of a person I do not know. I listened in awe as you recounted memories of us that I didn’t remember, while I silently wondered how the people we think we can’t live without become strangers. -Allie Jenkinson

Inspired by a discussion about classic novels initially being published as serials, I’ve decided to post a piece of fiction I have been working on in increments for the sake of nudging its development. (Is anyone else feeling unmotivated and hyper-philosophical as the result of the low wind chill high humidex heatwave warm temperatures?) Stay tuned for the first installment of “5 Lovers”.