Sunday January 18, 2009
Mindless vandalism deserves contempt
They are definitely not candidates for Canadian Idol. A week ago, a group of vandals – at least two, perhaps more – trashed Easter Seals Camp Winfield.
Early in the morning Thursday January 8, they smashed through a side door. Once inside, they sprayed fire extinguishers around the dining hall and kitchen. They smashed bottles used for water coolers. They emptied the freezers. They dumped hot chocolate, breakfast cereal, and cake mix, spices, cookies on the floor.
Remember images of the damage Hurricane Katrina did to homes in New Orleans? That\’s what the Easter Seals Camp looked like.
The piano took a particular beating. The vandals poured ketchup, mustard, mayonnaise, and even parmesan cheese into its guts and over its keys.
“It\’s destroyed,” said camp caretaker Jean Claude Leblanc. “It can\’t be saved.”
“It was purely malicious damage,” said Rick Harker, properties director of B.C. Lions Society for Children with Disabilities.
Repairs and cleanup will probably cost $10,000, explained Peter Loewen, treasurer of the Lions Camp Improvement Committee. About $5000 worth of food will have to be replaced.
“But we won\’t know the full costs until all the bills come in.”
Unlikely target
Camp Winfield hosts over 200 children with disabilities every summer. Up to 45 children – roughly grouped by age and disability – attend each of five week-long camps, absolutely free.
It costs about $2000 per child, estimates Harker. That covers food, full time nursing staff, camp counsellors, and use of the pool, climbing wall, waterslide, and canoes
It\’s not just children who benefit from the camp, though. Parents do too. As the parent of a child who had an invisible disability – cystic fibrosis – I know the value of being freed, even for a week, from constantly monitoring therapy and medication.
Camp Winfield also rents its facilities to church and community groups for retreats, conferences, and reunions.
In other words, it would be hard to find a more worthy cause.
Which makes it equally hard to imagine reasons for trashing such a facility.
I can understand, even sympathize with, those who break into a place because they need food, clothing, or medicines.
I can understand, although I can\’t condone, violence induced by anger or passion. I can dimly remember a time when I too had rampaging hormones.
I can even understand that people may sometimes resort to violence for a cause that they believe in – whether I personally consider that cause justified or misguided. The American Revolution was one such cause. So was World War II.
But I cannot understand, I cannot condone, and I cannot sympathize with those who commit acts of violence for no reason at all.
So I have nothing but contempt for the people who trashed Camp Winfield.
Punitive laws
The current federal government seems to believe that tougher penalties will cure such problems. I don\’t. The kind of people who commit acts of mindless violence don\’t bother thinking about consequences.
In one of my early books, I wrote about people who demanded vengeance. “How would you feel if your sister were raped or murdered?” they argued.
I suggested they should turn the question around: “How would you feel if your sister committed the murder?” Suppose, I hypothesized, her husband beat her mercilessly. She mashed his skull with her Mixmaster. Would they still demand the maximum penalty?
Or suppose their son were charged with attempted rape. Would they insist – to quote one man\’s rant — on “castrating the sonuvabitch”? Putting him away for life?
If my son had helped to trash Camp Winfield, I would not shelter him or make excuses for him. I would require him to clean up his mess, and to pay for any damages.
But I would work with him to do it.
I can assert that, because the same scenario happened on a smaller scale when our son was ten. He swiped valve caps from neighbours\’ cars parked along the street. The two of us went door to door, together, apologizing and replacing valve caps.
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As I write this, the police apparently have no leads on the Easter Seal vandals. Local residents speculate that they were young people – “wasting an evening,” suggested Peter Loewen.
If so, I would hope their parents too would refuse to let them hide; would bring them forward; would then work with them to make amends.
Not by cleaning up Camp Winfield. That\’s already done. The Lions Society recruited former staff and volunteers, and hired high school students.
The dining room and kitchen are now spotless. Cash donations are coming in to restore food supplies.
And within a week, disgusted citizens had offered six pianos and organs to replace the ruined one!
It\’s not a physical cleanup that needs doing, but an emotional one. When vandals pick on a facility like this one, dedicated to serving people with disabilities, it must feel to them like someone kicking the crutches out from under them, or squirting acid in the face of a burn victim.
Perhaps the perpetrators need to work with some of these children, one on one, to discover the person hidden behind the disability.
Acts of mindless vandalism make one wonder, in fact, who really has the disability.
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Copyright © 2008 by Jim Taylor. Non-profit use in congregations and study groups permitted; all other rights reserved.
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