For now going on 20 years, I have been an invasive species volunteer in Mount Douglas Park. For the past five years, I have worked in the “West Blenkinsop” side of the park, which runs from Blenkinsop Road to Whittaker Trail in the east. During these years, I have accessed the park using Mercer Trail for entering and exiting.
A couple of weeks ago, a fellow volunteer mentioned that the Parks Department’s “social distancing” sign had been tossed into the ditch beside the trailhead. I scrambled down into the ditch, retrieved the sign, and then, because the ground is hard-packed in that area, decided to jam the stake into the MDP map wooden frame. It was a bit of work, but eventually I got it fitted in.
Lo and behold, the next week, the sign was back down in the ditch.
So, I scrambled into the ditch once again, retrieved the sign and, for a second time, jammed it into the map frame. The next week, the stake was back on the ground but the sign itself was nowhere to be seen.
In a fit of pique, I decided to jam the unsigned stake back in the frame to see what would happen next. Well, not to my surprise, the following week the stake itself had disappeared.
Amazingly, over a several week period, a regular user of the park had continue to vandalize an advisory on an important COVID best-practice, placed at the trailhead by the Parks Department.
Since it has been said on several occasion that I always want to get in the last word, I figured a follow-up letter to the Saanich News was a good next step. Let him pull “that” out.
But seriously, I’m sure that many would all like to hear from the person who vandalized this sign over several weeks.
So, on the community’s behalf, I want to ask whomever this person is (or one of his fellow travellers) to respond to this letter to the editor with one of their own.
Make your case in the News to the greater public and let them decide on the validity – or not – of your reasons for removing this important COVID protection sign. I, for one, would be more than happy to read your justification to the larger Saanich community
And, if you’d rather continue to hide behind anonymity, then perhaps that won’t be too much of a surprise either.
Dave Poje
Saanich
