When Whistler Mountain grooming supervisor D’Arcy Burke lost his battle to cancer last July, his colleagues never got a real chance to pay a fitting tribute.
“[The mountain] got shut down last year in March and we knew he was in rough shape, but there was no way to stay connected,” said Marty Elston, Burke’s co-worker for the last six seasons. “Most of us found out about his passing on Facebook.”
So, when the 2020/21 winter season rolled around, the fleet department came up with a lasting, fitting tribute to the well-respected local who was dedicated to his job, loved his mountain, and inspired others often.
“D’Arcy’s thing was he always wore a plaid shirt and had dark-rimmed glasses and he really was a professor-like guy,” Elston said. “Very intelligent, extremely well spoken, extremely talented in his skills in his snowcat. But he was incredibly easy to work with.
“I never saw D’Arcy without a plaid shirt on.”
The tribute: a snowcat that’s permanently adorned in a plaid design. (If you didn’t get a chance to spot it this season ahead of the sudden closure of both mountains on March 30, it will be around next season—and, the crew hopes, until the cat is retired.)
“This was all paid for and done by the fleet department,” Elston said. “They felt it was a fitting way to honour D’Arcy.”
“From my perspective, what made D’Arcy different was his relationship with the mountain. I can’t stress that enough. He would go out of his way before his shift to ski the mountain, to find the problems, to address concerns. He was extremely hands-on with the terrain. He offered a fresh perspective on old-school thinking. He was always pushing us to rethink how we think about things.”
For his part, Elston—who has worked at several other resorts across the country—said Burke was an expert on Whistler Mountain and, as a colleague, provided a great deal of guidance.
“With his passing, I’m not going to say we’re lost, but we’re lost without him,” Elston said. “He kept it all together for us on the Whistler side.”
In the summer, Burke was well known in the mountain biking community as an exceptional bike mechanic.
That community organized a fundraiser to support him through his battle with cancer. At Whistler Blackcomb, another internal T-shirt sale to raise money for prostate cancer also quietly took place.
“We have a saying,” Elston said. “What would D’Arcy do? A great number of us, that’s our mantra. When we’re a little unsure, a little hesitant, we stop our cat and say, ‘What would D’Arcy do?’ That speaks volumes to how much respect we had.”
