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Small Town Generica

Why alpine resorts are a bad thing.

Evan Spence | 2003-01-14

For the past dozen or more years, my friends and I have had an off-and-on relationship with Fernie Snow Valley and New Year’s. This year was back on, and I had a chance to make a few observations.

First, Fernie isn’t what it used to be. For starters, it’s actually no longer Snow Valley. They recently dropped the folksy moniker in favour of the tagline Alpine Resort. Not meant as a grim portent of anticipated precipitation, the name was changed for marketing reasons. Snow Valley implies winter-only activities, whereas the much more pragmatic (and dry) Alpine Resort means there’s year-round fun to be had. How can I argue against this loss of tradition when online usability guidelines state that clear labels are essential to accessibility. Never mind that every mountain town is now an alpine resort of some sort. (All it takes is a nine hole golf course.)

In lockstep with this improved image comes increased traffic. The sedate ski village of the eighties—where it was customary to close all the businesses after a large snowfall so the proprietors could hit the slopes—has been replaced with a much larger and more generic centre of commerce. Now, shops don’t close when it snows, because the owners of the new chain stores don’t live anywhere near Fernie. They probably don’t even ski. This got me to pondering about the nature of the emergence of the eponymous chain outlets, and how this has transformed Fernie Alpine Resort née Snow Valley.

We started with a unique little town, with a fantastic local ski hill that just happens to receive twice as much snow as any of its nearest competitors. Its distance from the closest major centre, Calgary, at almost four hours, made it generally unsuitable for day-trip skiers. Another deterrent was the sometimes hazardous conditions of the largely unserviced roads between the two. To Calgarians, Fernie was an exotic and infrequent ski destination. In the last decade however, Calgary has grown and stretched its metropolitan area closer to Fernie. Commuters in south end feeder communities see a choice between a three-plus drive to southern BC, and a three hour drive to crappier Alberta resorts. The privatization of highway maintenance has also contributed to the increase of southbound traffic, as Volker-Stevens has kept Highway 22 through the Whaleback in silky-smooth condition. This is the most gorgeous highway in Alberta, through the greatest scenery in the world, so why wouldn’t skiers choose Fernie?

So traffic in town is up. New hotels have sprung up, and the once solitary Griz Inn on the mountain has been joined by numerous other condos. Enter the chain outlets.

Now, in addition to the traditional foil-wrapped cheeseburger at the ski base cafeteria, there is a Kelsey’s and a Starbucks on the mountain. In town, the standard western Chinese place has been joined by a Subway, Smitty’s and most recently, the ubiquitous Golden Arches. As this latest entry is now the first and last thing you see entering or leaving the west end of town, I see it as the final sign that Fernie has arrived, fully laden, with the expected amenities in Generica, and is no longer different than any place else.

What attracts the chains? When I first started thinking about this, I had a tendency to picture them as carpet-bagging leeches. We had a good thing going in Fernie, and none of them seemed interested. Then a magic threshold of visitors was breached, and presto, Snow Valley became an untapped alpine market. I moaned about the injustice brought about by these Johnnies-Come-Lately, despoiling the pristine Fernie experience with their big city offerings.

But this is specious. The fast food outlets and chain hotels are only there because the demand sustains them, even if it didn’t necessarily bring them in originally. (This could very well segue into a future rant on the fulfilling versus the creation of consumer demands.) I also have to admit that my life was once saved on a cold New Year’s day by my esteemed friend Mat, who braved the cold and total lack of available, working transportation (mostly my fault), to return laden with the fruits of both Subway and A&W. I’m not sure, but it was probably the best cheeseburger I’d ever had in my life. It was certainly the most timely.

So the only people I can blame for the diseased state of Fernie’s main drag are the consumers, myself included. But there is still a tremendous opportunity to undo this mindless damage.

Unlike Calgary, where some chains have replaced local-grown establishments in recent years (Starbucks supplanted Katmandu on 8th, Kensington’s great Berliner has been replaced by the chain-ish Nellie’s.), the much loved originals still exist in Fernie. Demand currently exceeds local supply, so there’s plenty of business to go around. Today. But the Home Depots, Wal-Marts and Starbucks of the world espouse a business plan dedicated to over-saturation. They deliberately build up outlets in a given market until they can detect their most recent stores are cannibalizing the sales of their earlier locations. This is the only way they can be sure they’re collecting every possible available hardware, home-necessity, and coffee dollar respectively spent in a geographic area. This is why that Seattle company thought it was good business to plant three identical coffee shops on different corners of the same Vancouver intersection. They’re after every last cent of demand, be it real or impulse.

So the solution for Fernie is obvious. I simply have to behave as though nothing has changed, either frequenting the original establishments, or arriving in town more adequately prepared, like once was necessary. And as long as a enough people do the same, and turn a cold shoulder to all the familiar trappings they can find in the big city, Fernie Alpine Resort doesn’t have to become a shadow of Snow Valley.

Am I once again being naïve and optimistic? Yes, but deliberately so, to illustrate the point that unless we actively choose otherwise, every place we visit will be exactly the same as the place we left.

Evan Spence

Tuesday, January 14, 2003
PD DLXXXII

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