On Tuesday, April 20 Dan May took to the Kimberley Cork Board Facebook page to share that two trailers on his property had been vandalized with “expletive Bill” spray-painted on them.
May and his family moved to Kimberley just over a year ago from Nakusp, where they ran the municipal campground for the past four years. They also ran a small mobile food business.
They decided to buy a house in Kimberley and reinvest some of their money into a new concession trailer and are planning to launch their new venture, The Last Great Fish N Chip Stand, in Cranbrook in May. That trailer and a camping trailer were both vandalized.
As he said on Facebook, “the worst part of all this is that this was an attack on Bill.”
“I’m just so happy that everyone in town now knows I’m not Bill, that’s my big thing from this, this is good,” May told the Bulletin with a laugh.
May has a remarkably good sense of humour about this incident, partially because of the tremendously positive outpouring of support he and his family have received since it happened.
The original post in the Cork Board has garnered nearly 400 reactions and nearly 200 comments at the time of writing.
“I had multiple people knocking on my door, and I had to write this all down, people dropped off: beer, cookies, pop, ice, flowers, multiple different products of cleaner, loads of people stopped by just to give us a wave,” May said.
“I’m just overwhelmed by the response from the community and we just feel really lucky to live here.”
He said a group of people even tried to mobilize to come and help him deal with it. May said he spent all day using the various cleaning compounds people dropped of and was able to get most of the paint off.
“I’ll have to touch it up a little bit too for sure, and I do have a couple dents from whoever vandalized it,” he said, “but all in all I think I’m pretty lucky, because somebody’s really gotta hate a person to do something like that.”
The Mays bought this concession trailer outright in November and have been working on it all winter. They are planning on launching The Last Great Fish N Chip stand in mid-May and May hopes this won’t set them back at all.
So while this horrible act of vandalism came was shocking and hurtful, the response from his new community has made it possible to turn it into a positive.
“I grew up in Vancouver and honestly nobody really cares in bigger cities, it doesn’t show like this,” May said. “My lady was actually in tears and not because it happened, but because of people’s responses and how warm and welcoming they were, it’s just wild.”
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