Given the town’s roots as a purpose-built resort community, I’m always curious to hear people’s stories about how they ended up living at Whistler. Whether following their heart, escaping the vicissitudes of urban life, or looking for new adventures, the reasons local residents have given me for moving here are legion. But even among these, Cheryl Massey’s story remains unique. “You know,” says the popular actress/model/artist, “it was getting pregnant that got us to Whistler.” And then she laughs, high and happy and totally Cheryl-like in its lack of guile. “Yep. It was Tyler that got us here. No question about that…”
She stops speaking. Sighs. And then laughs again. “It’s not like we planned it or anything,” she says, “It was the fall of 1984. Binty (husband Vincent Massey) and I were living in a little cottage across the street from the West Van Yacht Club. I was still modelling some and taking acting classes and way too young to be a mom…”
And then in a rush of words, she’s off. All I can do is grab the hem of her magic carpet and follow along for the ride. “I never planned on becoming a model,” says the still-striking fortysomething. “But I also knew I wasn’t meant for a conventional 9-5 existence. Back in 1978, a friend convinced me to appear as the Sunshine Girl in the Northshore News.” She smiles, almost a little sheepishly. “The photographer told me ‘you work very well with the camera. You should do more of this stuff’.” She stops. Laughs again. “I knew nothing about modelling. After all, I was a jock in high school. But the money looked good. So I decided to take some courses and see some agents.”
Although short for a runway model — “I’m only 5’6’’, but I always said I was 5’7”,” she admits with a bit of a giggle — Cheryl’s fresh-faced West Coast look and positive demeanour was a big hit with booking agents looking for the next great star. And thus began a four-year modelling odyssey that took her from Milan to Tokyo by way of New York, Munich and Paris.
“Here I was, this innocent young thing from West Vancouver and traveling the globe,” she says. “I’d always had a desire to see the world. That was a big part of the reason for taking up this modelling gig. But I soon realized how fantasy and reality often collide. It was a very steep learning curve for me.”
On Cheryl’s first trip to Italy, for example, she was shocked by the lifestyle of her cohorts. “It was the late ’70s. Sex, drugs and rock-and-roll were rampant in the modelling industry. I had strong roots — good family ties, positive values and such — and that helped me keep my feet on the ground. But there was something about being a model in Europe that never made me comfortable. There was a real sense that you were always vulnerable. And I just wasn’t enough of a hardened urbanite to handle it long term…”
Working in Japan, on the other hand, was a hugely positive experience for her. “Tokyo is such a fabulous place for a young girl,” she says. “You’re not harassed like you are in Europe.” She giggles again. “I remember getting off the plane on my first visit to Japan. I thought to myself: ‘wow, I like this place. Everything is so clean. Everyone is so nice.’ And that feeling stayed with me.”
Maybe her positive feelings for Japan also had something to do with her first assignment there. “I’d barely gotten off the plane when my agent told me: ‘Cheryl-san, we have arranged for you to travel to a beautiful tropical island to model swimsuits.’ Heck, I thought to myself, that’s not so bad. But then he told me: ‘your first job, Cheryl-san, will be to get a suntan. Do you think you could do that for us?’” A sun-worshipper all her life, Cheryl was only too happy to oblige. “I figured, if this was work, then bring it on!” And a long happy laugh ensues.
It was on a trip to Manhattan to visit a friend that Cheryl finally began to question the model/celebrity life. “Jeannie and I had shared an apartment in Tokyo,” she recalls. “She was a born and bred New Yorker, so I was really excited when she invited me to come visit her. On my first night there she announced: ‘we’re going downtown. You’re going to have the night of your life.’ And all I could say was OK…”
As it turns out, it was quite a night. Maybe too much so. By the time she found herself sharing a limo with OJ Simpson and his entourage (this was before he became “infamous”) watching everyone snort coke and down champagne, she’d had enough. “It was fun,” she admits. “But all that flash just didn’t turn me on. It really wasn’t who I was. And that was a great lesson for me.”
So Cheryl headed back to Vancouver, and on a whim, decided to drop in on a girlfriend at Whistler. “It was March of 1982, I think. It was a beautiful day, I was riding the village chair, and I thought to myself: ‘I’m going to live here one day…’”
But meanwhile, life in the city was keeping her busy. “I really started concentrating on broadening my repertoire,” she explains. “I took acting lessons, continued to work on local modelling gigs, and generally just kept my eyes open for my next opportunity.”
Which happened along without anybody really noticing. “I had this group of friends that would get together and make meals,” she tells me. “Binty was a member of that group — part of the gang I hung out with.”
Although she’d met him a few years back, Cheryl hadn’t really had much of a chance to get to know the young potter. After all, she’d been busy modelling and he had been away in school in England. “But suddenly we were spending a lot of time together — skiing, partying, hanging out in his boat Bob (named after Bob Marley). And I started thinking: ‘hey this guy is pretty cool…’”
They started dating in the spring of 1983. But Cheryl decided to take one last kick at the big-time modelling world. “So I packed up my Renault Le Car,” bought after her first job in Japan, she says proudly, “and headed to Toronto.” She sighs. Smiles a little sadly. “I tried to make a go of it. I really did. But on a trip home for the Labour Day long-weekend, Binty took me on his boat to Cape Roger Curtis on the southwestern tip of Bowen Island and I was totally smitten. That’s when I realized: this is what I want to do. This is where I want to live.”
Soon after her return to Toronto she called up Binty and asked him if he’d like to come out east and help her drive back home. “The trip across Canada was very special for us,” she says in a semi-dreamy voice. “It was a real opportunity to get to know each other.” Another burst of happy laughter. “From the moment we got in the car, I was like ‘babble, babble, babble…”
Some special magic must have been at work on that trip. For they’ve been inseparable ever since.
Which brings us full circle to that fateful day in the fall of 1984, when Cheryl discovered that she was pregnant with her son Tyler. “It was a bit of a shock,” she admits. “I certainly didn’t feel ready to be a mom. But then, sometimes in life you just have to say ‘giddiyup’ and take what life gives you.”
Binty and Cheryl were married on Feb. 16, 1985. “The marriage ceremony was on a sailboat, the Island Roamer, and the reception was at the West Van Yacht Club.” She laughs. “Everyone partied hard that night — except for the bride of course. I was already on a mission…”
And part of that mission was finding a place to nest. “Binty wanted to move to some remote island in the Strait or set up a potting studio on the Sunshine Coast,” explains Cheryl. “But I knew that wasn’t going to work. I just couldn’t see myself as a young mom stuck in some little community on the Sunshine Coast in the middle of winter. So instead, we decided to give Whistler a try.”
She says it was a great decision. “We were so fortunate. It worked on all counts: friends, environment, sports — even work. I’m really thankful we chose Whistler.”
But they continued to nurture their coastal dreams. “Our plan had always been that once Tyler and (younger sister) Michela had finished school and moved out we’d sell the Whistler home and move to the sea.” She smiles. “But when that time came, we realized that we just weren’t ready to leave this place. Our network, our friends — they were just too important to us.”
Why not have both? “I’ve always had a vision of standing in my kitchen watching the sun glinting off the sea,” says Cheryl. “So when the opportunity came to buy land up the coast, we jumped at it.”
Today Binty and Cheryl spend half their year at Whistler and the other half on their idyllic island getaway in the Georgia Strait. “Whistler is home base,” she says. “Whistler is where my kids were brought up. But my heart was never in Whistler in the summer. I felt too hemmed in by the mountains. Now when I get back in the fall — and getting ready for winter and snow and skiing — I’m really excited to be here.”
