When Nancy Wilhelm-Morden sees a problem that needs fixing, you can bet she’s going to roll up her sleeves and get to work.
When she learned, in 1984, the town council of the day was planning to introduce fees for cross-country skiing, she ran for alderman—and won. Foreseeing the persistent challenge housing would become, she played a hand in the establishment of the Whistler Housing Authority (WHA). Not wanting her first daughter to have to bus to Pemberton for high school, she spearheaded the effort to establish Whistler Secondary School.
Where others see the impossible, Wilhelm-Morden saw the probable, and her illustrious legal career and 17 years as an elected official are proof of that.
The resort’s former mayor received Whistler’s highest honour, the Freedom of the Municipality, at an Oct. 22 ceremony alongside ski-industry visionary Hugh Smythe.
“Since their arrival in the valley over 50 years ago, Hugh Smythe and Nancy Wilhelm-Morden have seen Whistler transform from a small ski area into an internationally recognized resort,” said Whistler Museum executive director Brad Nichols at the ceremony. “As Nancy described her earlier years in Whistler, ‘No one was really sure what the future was going to hold, but everyone was full of life and able to do whatever it took to stay. We knew something remarkable was going to happen.’”
A life in law
Wilhelm-Morden could have just as easily been describing her own remarkable life. While her Whistler origin story is familiar, the trajectory of her five decades in the resort is anything but.
Like many others her age at the time, Wilhelm-Morden ventured west from her native Kitchener, Ont., fresh out of high school, in August 1973. What was supposed to be a two-week stay to see her then-boyfriend and eventual husband, Ted, working in Whistler as a logger, turned into a lifetime.
Wilhelm-Morden’s early days in the resort typified the devil-may-care lifestyle of 1970s Whistler. She was a squatter. She bartended at the infamously raucous Boot Pub. She worked for the highways department, where she was tasked with handling and blasting dynamite.
Not exactly the picture you might have of a woman who would go on to such a distinguished legal and political career, but it was a prime example of the ways Wilhelm-Morden defied expectations and was never afraid to step out of her comfort zone.
Through it all, she never lost sight of her dream of becoming a lawyer. At the University of British Columbia (UBC), she helped produce one of Canada’s leading legal journals, UBC Law Review, alongside fellow student and future prime minister Kim Campbell. Initially specializing in municipal law, it was a formative time for the future town councillor.
“I came out of law school with a very clear and lasting sense of the overriding importance of ethical conduct and reputation. It's guided me ever since in my professional career,” she told UBC’s Peter A. Allard School of Law for a historical project.
In 1987, after her first term on council, Wilhelm-Morden set up her law practice in the heart of Whistler Village. With a basis in municipal law that served her throughout her career, she proved a skilled trial lawyer, and later moved into personal injury law. She was instrumental in a case in the early ’90s that fundamentally shifted how search-and-rescue operates in B.C. Involving a group of recreationalists that got lost in 100 Mile House, they couldn’t afford to cover the insurance costs of their rescue.
“One of the outcomes of that was to have the province agree to pay those insurance costs. That was a pretty important result,” she said.
A life of service
The motivation behind Wilhelm-Morden’s first term on council—when, in 1984, she ran to eliminate cross-country skiing fees at Lost Lake—is a microcosm of her entire time in office.
“I thought it was ridiculous, and I thought that the community’s needs, goals and aspirations were given short shrift by the council of the day,” she said.
Although she lost that battle—council kept the fees—it speaks to the big-picture thinking that defined Wilhelm-Morden’s municipal career.
Constituents, generally speaking, have a short memory, and the rhythms of government tend to emphasize the next thing: the next project, the next budget, the next election. Taking the long view, as it were, is not always politically advantageous.
And yet, Wilhelm-Morden never shied away from the long road if she felt it would ultimately lead to helping the community. After winning her second term on council in 1988 with the most votes of any candidate, she helped oversee the development of Village North, and began work on early housing policies, an issue that followed her (and virtually every other local official) throughout her career. After losing her first bid for mayor in 1990, she returned to council in 1996, a group that oversaw the formation of WHA, a municipal subsidiary, the following year.
“I’m very proud of having been involved in the creation of WHA, all the affordable housing initiatives we pursued in those days,” she said. “We never let up. It remains a focus and to this day it is something we are very concerned about—and rightly so.”
Wilhelm-Morden recalled a council trip to Colorado in the late ’90s that left a significant impression on Whistler officials.
“I remember we were three days in Aspen before we saw a child on the streets,” she said. “It was just so clear that if we didn’t preserve our community, something fundamental and key to the success of Whistler would be lost.”
Although she is closely associated with her time in public office, Wilhelm-Morden also found ways to contribute behind the scenes to the community she loves. In 1999, she helped launch the Whistler Community Foundation and served as its founding president. In 1988, she joined a newly formed education group that explored the building of new schools in the resort, playing a key role in the relocation of Myrtle Philip Community School, and the eventual establishment of Whistler’s high school.
In fact, Wilhelm-Morden has sat on the planning committee for each of Whistler’s three public schools, and in each case lobbied for those facilities to double as viable community spaces for Whistlerites of all ages.
“That was very important to Whistler because we had community facilities at the time, but not as many as we wanted or needed, so I was very proud of my involvement,” she said.
The mayoral years
Wilhelm-Morden returned to office, this time as mayor, in 2011, at the height of Whistler’s post-Olympic slump, when voters wiped the slate clean without a single returning incumbent.
It also meant the new mayor was working with all first-time councillors. Wherever you stand on the value of differing viewpoints in public office, it was clear Wilhelm-Morden took her leadership role seriously, and council went months without a single opposing vote.
“We had a team who worked extraordinarily well together. In the first three months, we didn’t have a dissenting vote on council,” she said. “We were really focused on getting things done, moving things along and doing so in a good way. It wasn’t slapdash, it was thoughtful. We got a lot done.”
Like she’s done throughout her life, through her two terms as mayor, Wilhelm-Morden certainly got things done. She helped secure Whistler as the site of the Audain Art Museum. She signed the first proclamation of Pride Week. She oversaw housing policy and the launch of the Mayor’s Task Force on Resident Housing. She supported the municipality’s purchase of the Parkhurst Lands, preserving waterfront and vital greenspace along Green Lake.
It wasn’t all smooth sailing, however. Even with her stellar track record, Wilhelm-Morden still had her miscues. The one that sticks out the most? The infamous “brown-bagger” gaffe. In a 2017 CBC interview about overtourism, she made an offhand comment about day trippers from the Lower Mainland—“packing a bag with their lunch in it”—not being the market that fuels Whistler’s gargantuan tourism engine. Much outrage ensued.
“I was super disappointed with the reaction to that because I was actually on the right side of that issue, in my opinion, but my comments were not made very gracefully. I think it made national news at one point. That was very hurtful, but I survived,” she said.
The backlash pointed to a rising tide of political reactionism that wasn’t as prevalent when Wilhelm-Morden first ran for office, or even when she first ran for mayor.
“It’s really tough to be an elected representative these days because of social media,” she said. “Everything happens so quickly and you have to have time to digest things as matters proceed. You have to be able to sit and think about things before moving forward, and with social media, that’s really tough to do.”
A shining example
That 2011 election made Wilhelm-Morden Whistler’s first and only female mayor. For a woman who consistently broke barriers throughout her career, who still remembers the Rotary Club of Whistler refusing her membership because of her gender in the ’80s, it was no small feat.
“I’m proud of it,” she said. “I’m not going to downplay it. It was very important and I’m very proud of having achieved that milestone.”
Wilhelm-Morden has spoken at various times about wanting to be an example to young leaders, particularly young women, an effort that came full circle in 2022 with the election of her daughter, Jessie Morden, 36, who achieved a milestone herself as Whistler’s first-ever born-and-raised councillor.
“It’s a thrill,” Wilhelm-Morden said. “I’m really, really proud of her and actually I thought it was going to be Sarah who would pursue the political life, so I was quite surprised that Jessie expressed interest. From what I can see, she’s doing a very good job. She very much enjoys the job, and she’s doing it for the right reasons.”
Asked what she wants her legacy to be, Wilhelm-Morden went back to the community she has loved and served since those early days as a budding lawyer and councillor.
“I hope that people realize I did the best I could, and I always had the best interest of the community at heart, and that I achieved some very good things as far as the community is concerned over time,” she said.
