Most of us look forward to the May long weekend, but for some who live and work in Whistler, it’s just the opposite.
For the last several years, business owners and employees in Whistler village have come to work only to find vandals have damaged their properties.
And once again this weekend, history is repeating itself.
“May long weekend always draws a different crowd,” Colleen Schwab with Inside Out Boutique tells Global News. “It is scary, violent and we don’t like it.”
The end of ski season is traditionally the start of a stretch of graduation parties, while others are taking advantage of cheaper off season room rates.
It’s a different crowd, but the result is always the same.
“As locals we kind of just come to expect that it is going to be coming. A lot of people like to skip town for the weekend or make other plans to stay indoors,” says Whistler resident Eric Smith.
Some won’t do business at all with the May long crowd.
“After many, many years of experience, I decided to just close them up and not rent on this weekend because the caliber of the guests over this weekend is unsuitable and unfit to live indoors,” says Whistler rental property owner Allan Landy.
This year a rash of vandalism has enraged residents after several businesses were damaged Friday night.
Hotels were left with boarded up broken windows, and a newspaper box was hurled through the front door of a coffee shop.
On Friday night, Whistler RCMP received 14 reports of mischief.
“The damage took place over a wide area. It went all the way from one end of the village to the other end and up into the Benchlands area,” says Sgt. Rob Knapton with Whistler RCMP. “We have not ruled out the idea that one group may be involved or responsible for all of it. But we don’t have any information to support that either.”
The May long mayhem is an issue acknowledged by RCMP.
The resort has 25 regular officers, but several more were brought in to keep the peace this weekend.
Five alleged vandals have been caught on tape, but no arrests have been made.
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