“There's an invisible magical factor in Fernie with the combination of the people, place and determination,” says Nelson, the artist. “From all those hard times, a definite spirit lingers in the old Fernie-ites. People try to make a go of it in Fernie, and that means being creative.”
Several years ago, volunteers saved a crumbling railway building by moving it across the tracks and transforming it into the Arts Station, where paintings surround diners in the popular breakfast spot, the Blue Toque. The community effort triggered a movement that now appears full steam ahead as people migrate to Fernie to take up permanent residence. Once a meat-and-potatoes, rough-and-tough mining town, Fernie is in irrepressible transition.
At the Beanpod, raw cacao beans are stone-ground in a 1948 granite mélangeur and turned into $7 bars over five days. An individual melt-in-the-mouth bonbon tasted so incredible it made me yearn for a glass of Okanagan cabernet. Grand Fromage makes its own cheese, the Essential Yoga Studio offers more than 30 classes a week, and microbrewer Fernie Brewing Co. fills 1.98-litre “growlers” on the spot, European-style. (You won't ever go wrong with the Buck Wild lightly hopped golden blond.) The Yamagoya sushi restaurant still serves the “best rolls this side of Vancouver” (as deemed by aficionado Bruce Dowbiggin, The Globe and Mail's sports media columnist), the new Fernie Cattle Co. restaurant advertises grass-fed SPCA-certified meats and sustainable seafood, the Picnic Restaurant serves house-made elk chorizo, and the Northern Bar & Stage is a first-class sports bar with live keno and (eat your heart out, Ontario) a half-price wine night.
Aside from Albertans, the resort attracts skiers and riders from Britain and the American Midwest, and visionaries – led by eightysomething Heiko Socher, who took the first chair up this season at the resort he developed – who see even greater potential. Island Lake Lodge, accessed on the north side of town, already offers world-class cat-skiing and has received regulatory approval to install a chairlift and expand hilltop accommodations. Get this, though. Socher has proposed a development, Heaven's Gate, to transport skiers from a downtown gondola to Coal Ridge south of town, as you might experience in Italy or France.
While oil-and-gas companies dream of coal-bed methane production out in those hills, others, in this evolving ski village, see a different future, this one fuelled by a snow-white dream.
IF YOU GO
Getting there
From Calgary’s airport, it’s a three-hour drive southwest; from Cranbrook, B.C., it’s a one-hour drive east or you can take the Fernie Connector shuttle.
Where to stay
Cornerstone Lodge is a luxury condo at the base of the mountain with a Kelsey’s on the main floor. From $296 a night. 888-423-6855; cornerstonelodge.ca
Timberline Lodge has condos a short uphill walk away from the lifts. From $205 a night. 877-333-2339: skifernie.com/vacations
Skiing
Lift tickets are $76.95 for adults. 1-877-333-2339; skifernie.com.
Tired of skiing?
The Fernie Aquatic Centre (downtown on Pine Avenue) has a six-lane, 25-metre competition pool with a one-metre diving board and Tarzan swing, a 15-metre leisure pool with spray fountains, a 25-person hot tub, a 15-person steam room, and a 45-metre waterslide. 250-423-4466; fernie.ca.
