An URGENT Plea to Oceanside (Parksville/QB) Mayors and Councils

Dear Mayors and Councils of Parksville and Qualicum Beach,

Last week in Qualicum Beach, as documented with the gas station at the top of the hill and with the RCMP, we at Manna Homeless Society encountered a senior citizen stripped of hope and clothes, disrobing in the intersection as despair overtook him. He’d heard of a shelter in Qualicum but found none. And although the gas station called the police, it was we at Manna who talked him down, offered love, clothed him, fed him, and gave him money for transport to a shelter in Nanaimo. We also gave him a tent, sleeping bag, and tarp as a backup and continued to show him the love and respect that society is denying him as we escorted him onto a bus bound for another city that would take responsibility to care for him while his own town does nothing.

Before he left, he told us Manna volunteers that he had given up. With nowhere to go and nothing left to do, he lost his senses and began weeping. Thanks to our care, he was able to come around.

This is one story among dozens: a mother shielding her child from pouring rain, an elder collapsing in wind-swept fields, and lives fraying, while cities hide behind “thresholds.” We’ve already lost lives this year—souls extinguished not by arctic freezes, but by the wet misery that government officials ignore.

I write to you with a heart heavy with grief and outrage, exposing the cruel farce of British Columbia’s extreme weather shelter 'rules'—a system that pretends to protect the homeless while condemning them to suffer and die in silence. According to provincial guidelines from the BC HEAT Committee and BC Housing, extreme weather alerts trigger when forecast low temperatures drop to 0°C or below, or slightly higher with wet, windy, or snowy conditions. But on Vancouver Island, where winters hover around average lows of 2-3°C, this threshold is a scam, rarely met despite the bone-chilling reality of relentless rain, howling winds, and damp cold that seeps into every fibre, turning exposure into a slow, agonizing killer.

In Parksville, as there are no shelters because “rules must be followed,” homeless people huddle in doorways, their thin blankets soaked through, bodies shivering uncontrollably as hypothermia claims them. Manna Homeless Society meets them on the streets daily, seeing no 'survival equipment,' as some infer, but instead, ragged clothes and desperate eyes. When a local official tells of personal patrols finding people “well prepared,” might they be referring to the tarps, tents and clothing that Manna has provided as a temporary stopgap in order to survive Oceanside's cold wet winter weather? We see the truth, one person at a time: vulnerability, not resilience.

What have we become? A society that lets rules eclipse humanity? These aren’t outsiders; they’re our neighbours who are struggling, forced to sleep outdoors during winter. An all-weather shelter is an easy, humane fix—Why force suffering? How many more deaths before you act? Parksville, Qualicum Beach—your inaction torments the whole community, burdening charities like Manna to address what you do not. We implore you to open all-weather shelters now or bear the consequences. Lives depend on it.

With extreme urgency,

Robin Campbell

Manna Homeless Society Volunteer

Monetary donations can be made by e-transfer to:

MannaParksville@gmail.com

Or cheques can be sent to:

Manna Homeless Society

PO Box 389

Errington BC VOR 1VO