Relief in the South end as encampment cleared

Cathy Dobson/The Independent

Neighbours of Sarnia’s Rainbow Park plan on reclaiming it for their families after authorities removed the last tent from the city’s largest homeless encampment Thursday.

“This comes as a huge relief,” said Breanna Bentley, a mother of three who lives around the corner from the park.

She was afraid to let her kids ages 2, 4, and 13 use the park for the past year.

“As more tents, more drugs and more crime happened, the older kids didn’t feel comfortable there anymore either,” said Bentley who organized a protest march to city hall last summer.

She also started a 650-member Facebook page so south end neighbours could support one another as problems from the encampment spilled into the neighbourhood.

She described disturbing incidents that her children witnessed including park inhabitants pulling down their pants and defecating in front of their house, a person running down their street with a machete and multiple drug deals.

“If it were just homelessness, that would be a different story,” Bentley said. “But it’s the drugs, the crime, the sex trafficking that made it unsafe.”

The encampment, which began developing one year ago, exceeded 50 tents last summer with an estimated 100 to 125 people living there. 

For months, the City of Sarnia refused to evict residents from the park despite repeated calls from the community.

City staff cited a related legal ruling in Kitchener-Waterloo that said park residents couldn’t be evicted without barrier-free shelter beds. While Lambton County social services opened an overflow shelter facility on Exmouth Street that has been well-used during this winter’s coldest temperatures, some homeless individuals refused to leave the park, saying they didn’t want to be separated from their partner, or owned a pet, or were afraid for their safety at the shelter.

It’s taken months but slowly, frigid temperatures appear to have driven most campers inside. And city council approved a protocol that once park residents left for 48 hours, authorities could remove tents and ban encampment residents from returning.

By early this week, only five tents remained in the seven-acre park at the corner of Johnston and Christina streets.

Thursday, Sarnia Police Services and city bylaw officials announced that they successfully relocated all remaining Rainbow Park residents.

“All occupants have been voluntarily connected with family members, obtained placement at shelters, and/or received important social service interventions,” said a police statement.

No arrests were necessary.

“I don’t want to say we are celebrating,” said Kim Gawdunyk, a father of two who appealed to city hall for help in 2024 when his neighbourhood became riddled with used needles, human waste and people screaming obscenities in front of his house.

“We are not celebrating over the misfortune of people down on their luck,” Gawdunyk said.  “I’m just glad the city has moved on the situation.”

He said his family is looking forward to using the park again this summer.

“But first there has to be remediation,” he said.  “The sand around the playground was used (as a washroom).”

Gawdunyk and his neighbours want the city to do a cleanup but they are also organizing a community-based park cleanup.

 “We love our house and we don’t plan to move,” said Gawdunyk. “Typically people in this neighbourhood have a lot of children. That’s why we really need this park again.”

“We want to remove the stain that the last year has left,” said Sharon Docherty who lives across the street from Rainbow Park.

She said she is happy to see the final tent come down after a year of chaos.

“There was a really ugly side to the encampment,” Docherty said. “It was horrible to see the level of drug use and sex trafficking.

She saw three people taken out in body bags, one just last month.

“It felt very unsafe.”

Friday she looked out her window and saw no tents for the first time in a year.

“I am not elated.  I don’t have a sense of ‘we won’,” Docherty said. “The right term would be relieved that now I don’t see drug dealers coming and going. I found that frightening.”

She, Gawdunyk and other neighbours plan on using a metal detector to search for needles and other drug paraphernalia once the snow is gone.

There was a period last summer when neighbours regularly dug up feces in the park, disinfected playground equipment and threw out needles.  One search with a metal detector uncovered 17 needles, Docherty said.

“Councillor Chrissy McRoberts helped out, too,  but we gave up in the fall.  It was a losing battle,” she said.

Bentley, Gawdunyk and Docherty said they hope the community can come together and plan some kind of family-friendly park re-opening, possibly a fair or a carnival.

“This whole ordeal has brought the south end together,” said Bentley.  She knows of about a dozen people who left the neighbourhood because of conditions created by the encampment. 

But most stayed.

“We want the park to have new picnic tables, new gardens, clean sand.  It’s a big park with a big open field and we want the city to put money into it to bring it back,” said Bentley.

Gawdunyk said he credits Sarnia Police Services who had a team in the park daily during the encampment.

“They have done an outstanding job, putting themselves in harm’s way with mentally unstable people who often carry weapons,” he said. 

But the neighbours are critical of Lambton County, which is responsible for dealing with homelessness, and city council for waiting so long to take action.

“City council made sure every other park in the city was protected and didn’t listen to the people near Rainbow Park,” said Gawdunyk.

“The homelessness in Rainbow Park became an addiction issue and that’s where we’ve got to find solutions,” he added.

“We need more treatment, more facilities because people get addictions, they lose their jobs and they lose their homes.

“We need to have compassion for them and learn from what happened in Rainbow Park.”