Canada’s most passive-aggressive anti-smoking crusade

It all started small enough: On Jan. 23, Michelle Schile showed up at her regular smoking rock to discover it had been piled with a small arrangement of mud and manure.

Then, just to make clear that the offering wasn’t an accident, it was topped with an artfully placed sprig of fir.

“Now I understand smoking is a dirty habit, but someone felt it was their duty to send me a message in this way,” wrote Schile in a Facebook post.

An employee at nearby Lochside Elementary School, Schile had spent 15 years taking her smoke breaks at the nondescript rock. She chose the rock because it’s positioned behind a stand of trees that hides her habit from the children.

It’s also one of the few places left in Victoria where it’s legal to smoke. Smoking is banned in virtually all public places, including parks, bike trails and within seven metres of a doorway, window or air intake. Schile cannot smoke in her car, because it is parked on school property.

The rock qualifies only because it’s along a multi-use trail that is technically still rated as a roadway.

Nevertheless, Schile said it’s a twice-weekly phenomenon to encounter passing cyclists hurling abuse as they whiz by.

“Usually they’ll say ‘stop smoking!’ … and another guy, every time he went by, he would cough really loudly and aggressively,” she told the National Post.

But the offering of manure was different — and it was only first blood in a campaign of pestering that would spiral into untold depths of obsession.

Another offering of mud was there the next day, followed later that week by a particularly large quantity of mud virtually burying the rock.

Each time Schile swept the rock clean, though, it would eventually be resupplied with filth, sometimes within hours.

As the months progressed, the displays became ever more elaborate, showing eerie levels of preparation. The vandal covered the rock in crab shells.

The rock was stained with house paint, piled with horse manure, poured over with oil, smeared with bacon grease and strewn with random garbage from rotting cabbage to old milk cartons.

One time, though, the vandal simply sprayed the rock with water.

Schile attempted to photograph the vandal by installing a game camera. Each time she would review the footage, however, she would discover that the angle had been wrong. Ultimately, the camera’s SD card was stolen.

So far, the only certifiable image of the rock vandal is a grainy photo of his legs. He’s shown wearing running shoes, white shorts and yellow work gloves as he builds a new pile of unpleasantries.

Schile believes she has met the vandal once: An older man who once stopped reading his book asked her “why don’t you just smoke in your car and keep the cancer in your own family?”

While there was a time when Schile discarded her butts on the ground, she now gathers them up in a portable ashtray. No cigarette butts would have been littering the ground since well before the rock-defacement began.

But the man left a more detailed manifesto on March 12. That was the day Schile left the vandal a note emblazoned only with the dictionary definitions of the words “passive aggressive” and “petty.”

Schile has contacted Saanich Police, but investigators said the actions do not meet the standard for a criminal charge.

However, the constant emptying of oil and other chemicals is almost certainly violating municipal bylaws against illegal dumping.

And so, six months after it began, the campaign continues. Most recently, it featured a dead snake folded into the shape of a heart.

“Do I feel that my life is in danger? No,” said Schile. “He’s obviously a passive aggressive person, so I don’t really think he’s going to approach me.”