Tensions spill over on Vancouver homeless
A Tim Hortons employee who attracted nationwide scorn for a “moment of frustration” in which he allegedly splashed a homeless person with water also revealed a little-discussed truth about this city: the simmering grudges between business owners and Vancouver’s massive population of street homeless.
On Friday, Vancouverite Arianne Summach was among several witnesses who reported seeing an employee at a downtown Tim Hortons pour a bucket of water under a homeless man and his dog, soaking his blanket and possessions.
“He was sleeping when it happened. I can’t believe how disgusting some people are!” she wrote in a widely shared Facebook post that called for a boycott of the Robson Street location.
In response, Michelle Robichaud, manager of public relations for the coffee and doughnut chain, offered an official apology on Sunday.
“The regretful actions in a moment of frustration at one of our Vancouver locations [are] not at all reflective of our brand and restaurant owner values,” she wrote, adding the location’s owner would make a donation to a local shelter.
The incident occurred within sight of Vancouver’s Romanesque central library branch, a popular gathering place for the city’s homeless, which number roughly 1,800 according to the last count. On Monday afternoon, the Family Day holiday in B.C., the hightraffic sidewalks surrounding the library hosted about one panhandler per block.
At a curry restaurant near the library, an employee said that about once a week, staff find themselves confronting a homeless man who has come in to ask customers for change or aggressively demand food.
In an incident last week, a man started screaming when told to leave. “He said ‘ Call the police. I don’t care,’” said the employee. Staff handed over bread to get him to leave.
A couple blocks away, a grey-bearded panhandler whose street name is “Scruffy” said he has been clubbed, pepper-sprayed and splashed with cups of urine by restaurant employees and property managers in the area.
Amid the public uproar over the Tim Hortons incident, Scruffy said he was taking advantage of a de facto armistice to panhandle outside a 7-Eleven without fear of being driven away.
A panhandler identifying himself as “Pete” was interviewed by CBC as he sat outside the Robson Street Tim Hortons. Although he condemned the water-splashing, he said he sympathized with managers. “Some people sleep there all week long,” he said, adding that they will leave behind piles of discarded newspaper and cardboard. “So you got to understand the business. It takes away from their business.”
Homeless Vancouver blogger Stanley Q. Woodvine called water-splashing an “aggressive and hurtful thing.”
However, he admitted in a post that he threatened the same treatment while working as a custodian at a Vancouver parkade in 2009. Mr. Woodvine had come across a man being “very messy” while camping in the structure — and who became belligerent when asked to clean up.
“I then calmly explained that I was going to come back with a 20 kg pail of warm water to clean up the spot where he was making a mess,” wrote Mr. Woodvine. “If he was still in that spot when I came back then he’d get wet.”