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'What the hell am I going to do now?' – Camp Cloud evictees face uncertain future

The NOW spoke to some of the evictees who are now homeless
cloud head van
One of the women arrested of Camp Cloud rests her head on a police van that contains her friend.

The woman wouldn’t let go.

She refused to take her hand away from the side of the windowless police van that held her friend.

She stood there for about 30 minutes in the parking lot at Squint Lake Park in north Burnaby with her hand pressed to the cold metal. Her hand never moved, although she was clearly exhausted after being rousted from her sleep early Thursday morning by police - to be arrested along with the other residents of Camp Cloud.

At one point, she rested her head against the back of her hand and started speaking to her friend on the other side.

“I need you to remember why we did all this,” she said, her voice breaking.

An RCMP officer stood about 20-feet away, keeping watch to make sure the woman didn’t do anything else to the police vehicle.

The woman then looked over at three of her friends who had just been processed by police at the Squint Lake staging area that included a fire truck and a long line of City of Burnaby vehicles.

One of the woman’s friends motioned to her that they were going over to a grassy area and that perhaps it was time she came with them.

She looked back at them, put her head down again and whispered something through the van door. She started walking, slowly, sliding her fingers along the entire side of the van before finally, reluctantly, pulling them away.

The four gathered in the grassy area and discussed what they would do next. They allowed the NOW to stand with them, but only one would give a name – Zack.

“What the hell am I going to do now,” Zack asked, to no one in particular. “How am I going to get all my stuff back? Where am I supposed to go? This place was my life and now I don’t know what to do.”

zack
A man who identified himself as Zack is processed by RCMP Thursday morning at Squint Lake Park. - Chris Campbell

The group discussed their options, which included wandering back up near the remnants of Camp Cloud to see what was going on. For months, people outside of the camp have been calling them “professional protesters” but if they are, whoever was paying them was not coming by to pick them up.

They were all on their own.

When asked how they felt they were treated by the RCMP, one of the women said the bigger issue was why so many resources were expended to evict “peaceful people trying to protect our water.”

“Look at all the money they spent on getting rid of us,” she said. “Was it really worth it?”

An Indigenous man, who was given back his carved-wood walking stick by police, spoke to a friend on a cell phone and said he was told there might be some “locals” around the corner from the staging area who were ready to “give us trouble.”

“We better stick together,” he said.

And with that, the four walked off into the morning haze – to where, they weren’t sure.