Bus Bench Ads Targets of Vandals

No Racial overtones - just plain vandalism

The recent rash of vandalizing Chinese real estate agent bus bench ads is most distasteful to Nanaimo citizens, but are we possibly giving this Loonie Tune more ink than they deserve?? Is there any reason to think this is not just the efforts of some malcontent with nothing better to do after too much alcohol or drugs?

Grabbing CBC news stories saying our Mayor wants to tackle racism 'plaguing' our city with an almost crisis-mode task force seems a little over the top in my lowly opinion and does little to elevate our reputation.

It seems like only yesterday we caught the national spotlight for the Leadercast debacle and now we have the CBC picking up a story where our Mayor says that racism is plaguing our city. Really? Plaguing our city because some Loon with a spray bomb does something which is not supported by our community at all. I repeat, this is very likely one lone Loon with way too much time on their hands and perhaps is operating under the influence.

The above three pictures are different bus bench ads in the Uplands Hammond Bay Rd. area which have been vandalized (no racial overtones) which incidentally have not been cleaned up by the company which owns the benches. This just points to the fact that some in our community really seem to have no trouble defacing other people's property.

During the recent civic election, in which I ran there was one corner on Uplands Dr. where every candidates signs were not just vandalized they were completely trashed. Some in the area were also emblazoned with the dreaded swastika and one of Councillor Bestwicks signs had stakes stuck through the sign right where his eyeballs were. Point being, there are just some weirdo's on the loose who hardly should be elevated to the level of being able to plague our community.

I wonder what might have happened if this sickie's signs had just been quietly cleaned up without garnering any headlines. I believe the advice given when trying to combat grafitti is to paint it over or simply remove it quickly and don't draw attention to it, as that is what the perp is looking for.

By giving this individual so much ink are we really creating unnecessary angst amongst our Asian citizens who are truly as welcome here as anyone else.