2.5°C Light Rainshower 
The ironies of the new reality facing Kirby Brown last week were not lost on the Panorama Mountain Village president and chief operating officer.
On Thursday (Jan. 28), Intrawest — the Vancouver-based company that he says “rescued” the ski resort in the B.C. Rockies from bankruptcy when it purchased the operation in 1993 —sold the resort for an undisclosed amount to a group of local investors as part of what appears to be an effort by Intrawest to stave off bankruptcy or some similar fate of its own.
In another bit of irony, the former tour guide from Lunenburg, N.S., whose father managed the Bluenose exhibit, the sale left Brown suddenly cast adrift from the mother ship he first boarded in 1993. That’s when, in a tale similar to that of so many others, he arrived in Whistler “with a backpack and a $600 tax refund in my pocket” and went to work as a cleaner in the offices of Whistler Mountain.
Brown officially joined Intrawest when the company bought Whistler Mountain in 1997 and merged it with Blackcomb to create Whistler Blackcomb (WB), now widely regarded as North America’s No. 1 ski resort.
By that time Doug Forseth had named Brown to the position of quality assurance coordinator for Whistler Mountain. When Intrawest bought Whistler and merged the two mountains into one, Brown was appointed to coordinate the merger.
“I was in the office the night when (Forseth) had to decide to be part of this new entity called Whistler Blackcomb,” Brown said. “He and Dave Brownlie, the two senior VPs, had to find someone to coordinate the whole merger and I was dumb enough to take it on. It was an adventure, but I got to see and learn a lot about how the company works.”
Brown continued his education over the next decade, also serving as WB manager of employee housing and employee services, then in 1999 as manager of human resources. He stayed in that position until 2007, when Brownlie asked him to take on the leadership of Intrawest’s operations at Panorama.
“I came in after a failed attempt to sell it, so I came in with my eyes wide open,” Brown said. “I’ve got 17 years with the company. I have no regrets whatever, just incredible gratitude to the folks at Intrawest. For example, I got to be in the room when the decision was made that the Peak 2 Peak was a go. So I got to spend some time with those luminaries and it was great.”
Brown now finds himself in a bit of an awkward position — suddenly cut loose from Intrawest in a move that wasn’t of his own making. A huge booster of both Intrawest and Panorama, he planned to enter discussions immediately with the new ownership group about his future with the East Kootenays resort.
“I came to Panorama because it’s the kind of resort you can kind of wrap your arms around. With a little over 500 employees, you can see them all in half an hour and really get to know them,” he said.
Brown said the feeling in Invermere and the region is one of both gratitude and optimism — gratitude toward Intrawest for having spent “tens of millions” to build Panorama into a first-class resort, and optimism about the potential for local ownership to provide stability for the long term.
He described Rick Jensen, a developer and former Cranbrook mayor who is heading up the new company Panorama Mountain Village Inc., as a “great, principled, visionary leader. He’s built a lot of houses and second houses for people up here, and a lot of those people are among the new investors.”
Added Brown, “I don’t think I’d be exaggerating to say that it’s 100 per cent positive. Y’know, people really appreciate what Intrawest came in here and did. They really saved the day. But it’s a real positive feeling about what local ownership can do for the hill and the community long term.
“For a ski hill of this size, it’s a dream come true.”
