It’s kind of nice having the mountains in your backyard.
For one thing, you always know where you are: the mountains are north. This is handier than you might think. Just try to figure out where you are in Toronto, of which somebody famously said, “It has no geography.” Well, geography R us.
But there’s more to it than that. Look one way (south) and you see a wall of glass towers teeming with the ambivalent pleasures of civilization. Turn around (north) and you gaze upon the gateway to a wilderness that goes all the way to Alaska, with precious little in between. It’s one of the world’s last great wilderness areas featuring prodigious peaks, vast forests, mighty rivers and kermode bears.
And it’s ours.
At least it was. Turns out the world’s last great wilderness is for sale. And the buyers are lining up.
A few weeks ago, Whistler Blackcomb was sold to an American company, and now a group backed by a humongous Chinese conglomerate has bought Grouse Mountain, which has long enjoyed the status and affection afforded the Official Mountain of the North Shore (part of a triple crown that includes Cypress and Seymour).
Every North Shore kid who ever slapped on the boards learned to ski on Grouse. World-class mountain bikers hone their skills on its slopes. Daily, a herd of masochists trek to the top of the Grind because it’s there, dammit.
We tend to take Grouse (and Seymour and Cypress) for granted. We expect it to be there. But does that expectation stand up in the face of the Brave New Reality that is Vancouver, 2017?
The new owner, GM Resorts, is making all the right sounds, its news release resounding with reassuring declarations such as “business as usual” and “the Lower Mainland’s number one natural attraction will be preserved and enhanced for generations to come.”
Not sure you can preserve and enhance something at the same time, but I’ll keep an open mind.
Lurking at the back of that mind, however, is the fact that one of the investors in the deal is the China Minsheng Investment Group, of Shanghai, a consortium of 59 companies, valued at $37 billion, which calls itself “the largest privately owned investment management group in China.” And it just aims to get larger, growing to $188 billion by 2019, according to the Globe and Mail.
Various reports put the deal for Grouse at or around $200 million, and considering the size of its investor and the size of its appetite, you can bet the new owners won’t be satisfied with just jacking up the price of a cup of hot chocolate.
For its $200 million the new owner gets more than 1,200 acres which, if the sales brochure is any indication, could feature enhancements such as a hotel, spa, and conference centre. Details to follow, but you gotta think condo enhancement can’t be far behind.
Oh, and while the Minsheng group likes to characterize itself as “private,” it was created in 2014 as the brainchild of Chinese Premier Li Keqiang, so the company has strong ties to the er, public domain of China. It’s as if Justin Trudeau got together with Jimmy Pattison and Galen Weston and a few other billionaires, put together a company and went out and acquired the landscape.
Whatever. Grouse’s new owners will have some comfy shoes to fill: those of Stuart McLaughlin from West Vancouver and his family. For 30 years, the McLaughlins have been the poster boys and girls for local mountain stewardship.
Thanks to them, Grouse is a sanctuary for a couple of grizzly bears who earn their keep by growling convincingly at the tourists and features a solo windmill poetically dubbed Eye of the Wind on its highest point. Apparently, cute little pikas have made a home at the base.
Somehow, I don’t think this is the kind of stuff Minsheng has in mind on its way to assets of $188 billion.
OK, Grouse Mountain isn’t exactly pure wilderness. The wilderness doesn’t usually come with a gourmet restaurant and a gift shop. But it’s a reassuring combination of accessibility and inaccessibility. So I’m going to hang on to the GM Resorts news release, ready to whip it out as a reminder if preserving gives way to enhancing.
As these things have a tendency to do.
Journalist and communications consultant Paul Sullivan has been a North Vancouver resident since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the rise of Madonna. [email protected]
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