“They’re smart people to be able to do this, right? So how can we, how can we help them to maybe use some of those skills and abilities, to channel them in a more positive way, right?”
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Questions are flying about the audacity, rustic sophistication, and illegality of an encampment dismantled by the City of Edmonton and Edmonton Police Service in the last week.
The warren of rooms housed five men and a chop shop complete with a welding unit, with thousands of dollars of stolen items and 15 weapons, including three guns — all of it camouflaged and surrounded by a fence made of branches. Edmonton city police posted a video to social media Monday showing a walk-through of the camp.
Far from prying eyes in Edmonton’s city’s core, from soup kitchens and even grocery stores, hidden in thick woods in the city’s southern industrial reaches, somehow the multi-level shack built around tree trunks and graced with electricity from solar panels, four generators and running water pumped in from the hand-crafted dam on Fulton Creek evaded official notice for at least a year.
‘Under the radar’
Coun. Jo-Anne Wright of Ward Sspomitapi said she saw a bunch of trucks lined up against the woods in the area last week.
“I thought maybe there were some surveyors in there, maybe the land was being sold or something,” she said.
“I guess they were in there investigating it.”
No constituents had been pressing for answers about the site, she said.
“It was kind of there under the radar,” she said, noting the exodus some unhoused have made from the city centre.
“They’ve been around in the ravines … but with the encampment clearing that went on last winter, I think people have gravitated out to the suburbs even more.”
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Wealth of skills
Posters on social media have commented repeatedly on the wealth of skills required to make the place a liveable home — skills that could be used in employment: welding, stone construction, tile laying, and even survival skills.
Wright agreed.
“They’re smart people to be able to do this, right? So how can we e help them to maybe use some of those skills and abilities, to channel them in a more positive way, right?” she said Wednesday morning.
Not far from the woods near the corner of 34 Street and Roper Road, there’s an unhoused person who keeps returning after his encampment is cleared, Wright said.
“What I understand from the neighbours in the area, it’s actually because he has a family member that lives around there, and so he’s wanting to be close to the family,” she said.
Wright said that while the province is showing about 83 per cent usage of the city’s shelters at the moment, “they’re not necessarily appropriate shelters.
“A lot of people have said that their own safety is a concern in some of the shelters. I don’t think there are sufficient ones for youth, or the LGBTQ community, women, or couples, so even though there is shelter space available, it’s not necessarily the appropriate space,” she said.
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The city continues to discuss the matter with the provincial government, she said.
Elsewhere on Fulton Creek
The same questions dog residents further along Fulton Creek, where there’s an awareness of the creek’s relationship to the larger river valley.
Miles Berry is on the board of the Fulton Place Community League.
“Every year we do a river valley cleanup. It’s interesting to see what you pull out of the river valley. We’re quite protective of it,” Berry said.
“To hear about something so sophisticated, that not only includes hazards that could result in fires in the river valley, but weaponry and other things that they found there is very concerning.
“I think many of us are sympathetic to the overall socio-economic conditions that folks are living with. At the same time, this is obviously a choice. Somebody made a very, very determined, very thoughtful course of action, to be building something like this, not just one person, but five people, apparently.”
The distance from amenities seems to suggest the campers were seeking greater distance from the scrutiny of denser populated areas.
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Berry said they appeared to be trying to be independent from other kinds of support, he said.
“Every once in a while, we see evidence in the ravines and so forth of varying degrees of encampment, and some more sophisticated than others,” he said.
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