A small group of people set up tents outside Victoria City Hall on Sunday in protest of city bylaws that regulate where people are allowed to shelter overnight in the municipality.
For close to a week, encampment organizer Martin Girard had been advertising plans for an encampment at the Victoria courthouse grounds in protest of city bylaws that restrict overnight sheltering in city parks.
On Sunday afternoon, it did not appear that he had the people or the equipment needed for a camp at the courthouse, where there were newly erected fencing and signage informing visitors that overnight sheltering was not allowed.
About 60 people showed up to the 2 p.m. pre-encampment rally at Centennial Square but few brought camping gear.
Only one person raised a hand when Girard asked the crowd who was ready to stay the night.
That number rose to five willing campers when Girard took another poll of the crowd 90 minutes later and announced that he was changing the encampment location to the grassy area next to Victoria City Hall.
Half a dozen police officers who were on scene for the anticipated march left when it became clear that no one was headed to the courthouse.
By 6 p.m., four tents were set up near the fenced-off sequoia tree in Centennial Square.
Close to a dozen people were in and out of the tents, chatting and resting. Music played from a nearby speaker and the glow from the Lights of Wonder installation reflected onto tent tarps.
Girard said about 10 people were prepared to stay the night.
Two officers on bikes came by after the initial group of officers left about 4:30 p.m., but there had been no bylaw officer presence so far, he said.
“When they do come, well, we’ll have to challenge them,” he said.
City of Victoria spokesperson Colleen Mycroft confirmed to the Times Colonist in a statement that city staff would be attending to anyone sheltering in Centennial Square “first thing in the morning.”
Asked whether the encampment would be taken down, Mycroft said sheltering is not permitted in Centennial Square.
After recent bylaw changes, only three Victoria parks with washroom facilities remain available for those seeking overnight shelter outside.
Girard, who said he had previously been homeless for five years, said those parks — Oaklands, Pemberton and Gonzales — are insufficient for those who are homeless.
“They’re really inaccessible. They’re far from any services, any accommodation,” he said, adding that seniors and those with disabilities simply cannot make trips from those parks to downtown Victoria, where many social services are located.
“These people need somewhere to go,” Girard said. “If city council will not give these people somewhere to go, then we will come to their doorstep.”
Encampment supporter Natalya Symon said she’s seen a dispiriting amount of vitriol toward homeless people in Victoria, including online posts that mocked recent deaths in the street community.
Everyone deserves a place to live, and it takes just “one mistake, one financial slip” for someone to become homeless in Victoria, she said.
“I wish that people who aren’t in support of what we’re doing here, if they would just come down and talk,” she said. “Sit down and talk to them for five minutes. … I think it put things in perspective.
“For a lot of people,” she said, “it wasn’t a choice.”
