Image: Submitted, used with permission / An abandoned homeless camp up just off Chilliwack Lake Road. Volunteers have taken time out of their own schedule this past week and cleaned most of the effects of this abandoned camp. A cleanup in the Chilliwack River Valley in late September resulted in the removal of a freezer full of rotting meat along the Chilliwack Lake Road corridor, as well as an abandoned boat on Bench Forest Service Road.

By Mike Vanden Bosch

Volunteer cleanup efforts

In absence of government action, volunteers step in to clean up backcountry messes in Chilliwack

Oct 2, 2024 | 10:50 AM

CHILLIWACK — A lack of provincial enforcement around homeless camps in the Chilliwack backcountry has resulted in yet another unsightly mess in the Chilliwack River Valley.

Chilliwack resident and cleanup volunteer Ross Aikenhead shared pictures with Fraser Valley Today over the weekend of an abandoned homeless camp whose personal effects steadily accumulated since it first began as an occupied homeless camp in April 2024. It sits right beside the Chilliwack River.

Image: Submitted, used with permission / Propane tanks and other items found at an abandoned homeless camp just off Chilliwack Lake Road.

While the mess isn’t atypical by Aikenhead’s standards, he says it reflects a lack of enforcement by the provincial government.

“It’s definitely government inactivity,” said Aikenhead, who carefully tracks the location and minute details of virtually every homeless encampment east of the Vedder Bridge in Chilliwack.

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In the case of this specific homeless camp, Post Creek residents Derrick Kramer and Brian Smith took time out of their schedule Tuesday (Oct. 1) to remove as much material as they could, minus the motorhome and metal.

Image: Derrick Kramer, used with permission / Post Creek residents Derrick Kramer and Brian Smith took time out of their schedule Tuesday (Oct. 1) to remove as much material as they could from this abandoned homeless camp. The picture shows a much cleaner area after their work.

The provincial government maintains a RAPP (Report All Poachers and Polluters) hotline at 1-877-952-RAPP, but Aikenhead suggests nothing gets accomplished by contacting government authorities about encampments.

“For seven years, I filed RAPP reports on everything,” he said. “Absolutely nothing was done about any of it.”

Aikenhead figures it’s political suicide to try to remediate homeless encampments.

“My opinion is, nobody wants to tackle the homeless situation,” Aikenhead said.

As evidence, there are multiple homeless camps along Silver Skagit Road south of Hope and in the Chilliwack River Valley. Authorities are aware of them, but seldom address occupied camps. Abandoned homeless camps tend to get cleaned up when volunteers mobilize teams.

During a weekend cleanup effort in late September, volunteers removed a freezer from the Chilliwack River Valley containing rotting meat that had developed an unbearable stench.

“Yes, it was pungent,” Aikenhead said. “It was about a kilometre east of Joshua House [on Chilliwack Lake Road].”

Aikenhead and Robert Prinse, a Lions Club volunteer, tag teamed to remove the freezer.

Image: Jenni Altenburg / Robert Prinse (left) and Ross Aikenhead teamed up to remove a freezer containing rotten meat. 

“He’s the one who helped with the freezer,” said Aikenhead, a longtime Chilliwack resident. “Without him, I couldn’t have done it. I went to school with him.”

On that same weekend in late September, a boat from Bench Forest Service Road in the Chilliwack River Valley was removed by volunteers in the Chilliwack Vedder River Cleanup Society cleanup event.

Image: Jenni Altenburg / Volunteers remove a boat from Bench Forest Service Road in Chilliwack during a weekend cleanup event.