Vandals went well out of their way to dump two sofas and a chest of drawers off the main trails of Mount Douglas this week.
Longtime park steward and president of the Friends of Mount Douglas, Darrell Wick was saddened to find pillows, drawers, shelves, and a dining table and chair set all strewn about next to the Churchill parking lot on Wednesday, Jan. 9.
Broken drawer panels, pillows and chairs were thrown into the mix.
“It wasn’t here Monday,” Wick said. “It’s like they dumped the whole living room, dining room set in here.”
Read More: Mount Douglas Park is not a garbage dump, its firs are not Christmas trees
For far too long the park has been a dumping ground for old freezers, bed frames, couches, boxes of belongings, and particularly clothes. It’s also subject to theft as young and native plants often disappear, such as fiddleheads, saplings and sections of fallen cedar, which are all part of the ecosystem.
“It’s vandalism,” Wick said. “This [is beyond] littering, or dumping, it’s vandalism.”
While most of this week’s debris is within arm’s length of the parking lot fence, it is clear that the perpetrators put in a serious effort to carry both the main sofa, the love seat and the dresser over a fallen log at least 10 metres off the trail and about 30 metres from the parking lot.
That’s what really stumps Wick.
“I can’t understand the effort they put in. Why bother.”
Two of the sofa pillows were even stuffed between the base of a double-trunked tree.
Removal of the debris will fall on Saanich parks staff.
