Operation Campout in Victoria
Bylaw says only homeless people allowed, but that’s not stopping tourists
VICTORIA — It was well after midnight. I lay wide awake on the ground, deep inside Beacon Hill Park, not far from the B.C. Legislature. Someone — or something — was creeping toward my tent, I felt certain. I hoped it wasn’t one of the characters I’d encountered just before sunset, while searching for a place to make camp.
A man on a bicycle had come at me, warning me off a grassy patch I’d been circling. His turf, I guess. Two other men appeared at his side. They glared; I backed off. Up went their tent, and a cloud of marijuana smoke.
They seemed like regulars. But I was just passing through, another cheapskate traveller looking to bed down in scenic Victoria for a couple of nights, sleeping for no charge, under the stars. Camping in a city park, as if I had the right.
Technically, I did not. Erecting an overnight shelter in a public park is for “homeless” people only, according to Victoria’s unique parks regulation bylaw, amended seven years ago after a battle between a group of homeless campers and the city played out in B.C. Supreme Court.
In her controversial decision in favour of the homeless plaintiffs, Madam Justice Carol Ross found prohibiting them from erecting shelters in Victoria parks was “arbitrary and overboard and hence not consistent with principles of fundamental justice.”
Victoria’s parks bylaw was thus rewritten to read that any “homeless person” may secure “a tent, lean-to or other form of overhead shelter constructed from a tarpaulin, plastic, cardboard or other rigid or non-rigid material” within a park boundary between the hours of 7 o’clock at night (8 o’clock daylight time) and 7 o’clock the next morning.
The result: The city has become a welcoming “mecca” for the homeless, some residents claim. That, and a sprawling urban campground for budget-minded sightseers. Separating “legitimate” homeless campers from tight-fisted tourists is proving difficult.
“There seems to be a real mix now of people that are truly homeless and people that are using our parks as free campgrounds,” Victoria police chief Frank Elsner complained last fall, after another batch of camping-related complaints landed at city hall.
“There’s a tremendous amount of backpackers, European backpackers or international backpackers, who are using our parks as de facto campgrounds,” groused one councillor. “I don’t think that’s what the Supreme Court ruling was meant for.”
This month has been exceptionally warm and dry in Victoria; no surprise, then, that tents can be seen inside public parks all over the city. The camping issue is again front and centre.
“I’ve seen German tourists coming out of Beacon Hill Park with their nice backpacks and tents,” the city’s mayor, Lisa Helps, told me. “People speaking German, with nice backpacks.”
This has to stop, she says. There is no “free camping” in her city. “We have no campgrounds here,” the mayor declares.
There’s a legitimate camping space not far out of town, called Goldstream Provincial Park, she adds. “The bus can take you right there. That’s where you can camp.”
Mayor Helps isn’t thrilled when I explain that I have just spent two nights camping in different city parks. “We should have given you a fine for 150 bucks,” she says.
But how does one determine who deserves a fine, like me, and who is legitimately homeless and thus allowed to pitch a tent in a park? “The police know who the people are,” the mayor replies.
I’d have been happy to have seen officers making the rounds inside Beacon Hill Park when I camped there. The few humans I encountered seemed either creepy or ill, or both.
After getting chased from the first site I had scouted, and skirting past men sleeping in bushes, an animated self-talker camped on a bench, and a nice tent — one of those Germans, maybe — boldly pitched at a main park entrance, on a carefully manicured lawn, I settled on a section called “The Mayor’s Grove.”
I left my rental car in plain view and pitched my bright orange tent between a tall cedar tree and a towering oak, planted 79 years ago by London’s then-mayor, Sir Percy Vincent.
Despite its exposed position, the site seemed ideal: flat and dry. Videographer Mark Yuen arrived after dusk and without too much trouble pitched his small tent next to mine. Strength in numbers; we were secure. All was calm. Free urban camping at its best, I thought to myself.
Then the peafowl began shrieking. There were dozens of them, or so it seemed. Freed from the park’s petting zoo, they darted here and there, causing an awful racket and making me wish I had a slingshot. They screeched all night, those cursed birds. Their noise — and the unshakable feeling of being approached by other, more menacing creatures — spoiled the night.
“Sleep well?” I asked Yuen, the next morning at dawn. “Hardly at all,” he replied. “Me neither,” I said, rubbing a sore neck and jaw.
We decided to switch locations for the second evening, and with some trepidation chose a small, nameless park behind the city’s law courts. It’s inhabited by some of Victoria’s most veteran homeless and the hardest to house. No tourists there.