The Back Story

The COVID-19 pandemic provided an opportunity to pause and reflect on Whistler’s forward trajectory and the inherent assumptions in the community. A series of online open houses were held to check in on the community during this unprecedented time of challenge. Out of those meetings, a group called the Whistler Recovery Working Group was convened to discuss how to respond to and eventually recover from the pandemic.

Through discussions the group could see that Whistler’s success had created some blind spots: tourism is assumed to continue to grow, the community is assumed to remain the same, the natural surroundings will continue to provide critical infrastructure for residents and visitors – trails, shade, wildlife habitat, views, air quality, and snow.

This led the group to consider what was being taken for granted in Whistler, how the community could think about the future in a more robust way, shift the way people work together, consider how to build back better and what does this look like?

Following collaborative work in the first six months of the pandemic, the group eventually expanded to a broader cross-community group of 40 people to engage in a transformative scenario planning exercise facilitated by Reos Partners and convened by the Resort Municipality of Whistler. The process was called the Whistler Sessions.

Creation of the Whistler Sessions Scenarios

Whistler faces uncertain times for which there is no pre-existing roadmap to guide the way. With an uncertain future, scenarios help build shared capacity to talk together about how things could unfold.

Thinking about the future together can help people collaborate to create the future. While some things about the future are constant, such as Whistler’s geography, the process to develop the scenarios was the chance to explore what is uncertain, considering both factors within the community and external to the community.

The work of the group culminated in the creation of the Whistler Sessions Scenarios, stories about what could happen in Whistler’s future, from 2022 to 2050. The scenarios are not predictions about what will happen (forecasts) or what should happen (a vision). Rather, the scenarios hypothesize different ways the future could unfold for Whistler’s communities, economy, environment, and culture.

The four scenarios are meant to be a catalyst for discussion and ask the question; how could our shared future unfold? And how do we improve Whistler’s future through more resilient and collaborative strategies?

Whistler organizations and community members are encouraged to use the scenarios in planning sessions or community discussions about the future.