Many Fernie residents live in the Elk Valley city because they are snow worshippers.

They are people who dance and cheer and whistle loudly when the skies open and vast volumes of snow fall down. They are the ski and the snowboard people – those who relish the free days on the slopes defying gravity at high speeds.

Still, there are others who relish every day from mid-October onward where snow does not fall.

Those people were being teased and taunted this past week as downtown Fernie was once again being transformed into someplace else, with the arrival of the film crew making Santa Pups, a straight-to-DVD Disney Christmas movie starring former Charlie’s Angel Cheryl Ladd, daughter-in-law of the legendary western actor Alan Ladd.

Snow machines were brought in to crease a wintery atmosphere and numerous downtown establishments were sporting different signage and names, and a central set based around a radio station has been erected above the museum.

Plastic mounds of snow lined main street, giving off the perception that a healthy snowfall had been ploughed aside.

The city’s downtown was quiet on the morning of Oct. 18 when e-KNOW prowled with camera in hand, seeking to capture some images that reflect this briefly exciting change in the same-old same-old in the season leading up to ski season.

Fernie is quickly becoming a hot location for Hollywood, as it was the chief setting of the John Cusack comedy vehicle Hot Tub Time Machine and some scenes of Leonardo DiCaprio’s sci-fi thriller Inception were also shot in the town.

For more information on Santa Pups go to: http://www.acfcwest.com/productions/2011/current/santapups.html

Ian Cobb/e-KNOW

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