One of the first things now-Mayor Jack Crompton did as a new member of the Rotary Club of Whistler in the early 2010s was help paint the Muskoka chairs the charity raised funds for and had built in honor of a late Rotarian and tireless local doctor.
“We all worked out of [Rotarian and 2001 Citizen of the Year] Bob Calladine’s garage and those chairs were all done in honour of Dr. Ken Nickerson,” recalled Crompton of the surgeon and original Whistler Mountain medical patroller who died in 2010 at the age of 85.
So when Crompton learned the Resort Municipality of Whistler (RMOW) had mistakenly replaced the aging chairs this spring without notifying the club, it hit close to home.
“Needless to say, if we had a do-over, we would have been in touch about the chairs,” he said. “Rotary has been an amazing partner with the municipality over the years on all kinds of projects.”
The oversized, brightly coloured chairs were a fixture of Olympic Plaza for more than a decade, with countless locals and visitors using them as respite to read or eat lunch in on a sunny day.
“Every Rotary Club in Canada like to do community amenity projects, and before my time, probably about a dozen years ago, the members decided one contribution they wanted to make to the new Olympic Plaza were these chairs … and I think they built 18 or 20 of them and gave them to the municipality,” explained Ken Martin, former club president and current treasurer.
Emblazoned with the Rotary logo, Martin said the chairs were “a point of pride” for the club, and it wasn’t unusual for members to get positive comments about them, especially in those early years after they were installed.
“That was up until I was in the plaza and saw these chairs weren’t there anymore,” he continued. “That was a bit of a disappointing surprise.”
Martin did note the club had been previously told the chairs were past their lifespan and the municipality wasn’t “overly keen on them.” The RMOW confirmed the decision to replace them was driven by maintenance challenges.
“The wooden chairs required frequent painting—often multiple times a year—and the wood had begun to rot. After more than 10 years of upkeep, our team sought a lower-maintenance alternative,” read a statement to Pique.
This summer, the municipality installed 20 new chairs, with an additional four in reserve. The total cost of the chairs was $72,000, funded by the Municipal and Regional District Tax, generated from hotel stays. At $3,000 a pop, that might seem like a steep price tag, but the RMOW said it was less than the roughly $4,000 in yearly maintenance and labour costs the old chairs necessitated.*
Featuring a rust-proof, aluminum frame and “UV-resistant, post-consumer recycled plastic polymer,” the new chairs are low-maintenance and designed to last between 15 and 20 years. (If you’re curious, they’re also painted in three “vibrant” colours, the RMOW said: “Apple Red, Leaf Green, and Sunset Orange.”)
For his part, Martin acknowledged the RMOW made an honest mistake. He credited them for helping remove and transport the old chairs when the club wanted to auction them off, mostly as keepsakes to Rotarians, for $100 each.
One chair the RMOW won’t let go of? The one made specifically to honour Nickerson, who was known as a skilled pelvic surgeon, gynecologist, and obstetrician. The municipality will paint, restore and display the chair made to pay tribute to a man who volunteered more than 40 years of his life as a medic, patroller and mountain host for Whistler Blackcomb. In 2007, he was the recipient of a length of service award, then the longest Whistler Blackcomb had ever handed out.
“I think more people [volunteer] because they like to help out,” Dr. Nickerson told Pique at the time. “You love Whistler and you like to show people how nice it is.”
*An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated the chairs in question cost $4,000 in yearly maintenance and labour costs each. The RMOW has since clarified the costs to Pique. “All-in, the annual cost of maintenance of the wooden chairs was approximately $4,000, including labour and supplies,” a communications official said. “This was for all the chairs annually, not each chair.”
