Things have improved somewhat, in no way due to this obnoxious device, but because security guards have become more diligent in coaxing the non-residents to leave.
A commentary by a Victoria resident.
Re: “Noise-emitting devices again under investigation in Victoria after complaints,” June 15.
Regarding the “Mosquito” device that emits an ear-piercing high-frequency shriek, Barry Greening, the operations manager of Mayfair Shopping Centre that backs onto Redbrick Street, seems to think that the device is “reasonably effective” in deterring people. That’s odd, because those of us who are reduced to living at Muncey Place often see non-residents camped directly under the thing — evidently, years of loud “music” have impaired their hearing.
The device starts shrieking when anyone walks by on the legal public sidewalk. It starts shrieking when somebody drives along the perfectly legal public Redbrick Street.
I and many others have been complaining to the bylaw office for years, with absolutely no effect.
In fact, when I first rang the bylaw office, an attempt was made to fob me off by telling me that I was in Saanich, not Victoria proper.
I tried to visit the manager in person by going to his Dollar Store. My intention was to respectfully tell him that the population targeted by his device, mainly the residents at Muncey Place, were not the ones causing any problems in or at any of his stores. He wasn’t in, but my polite message to the staff had zero effect.
Any problems at the stores tend to be caused by the unhoused who at times frequent the area, most likely because the drug dealers also target this place. They come in their large, gleaming new pickup trucks at night and sit honking in the parking lot to announce their arrival.
That things have improved somewhat are in no way due to this obnoxious device but rather because, after spirited protests by many of the residents here, the security guards have become more diligent in coaxing the non-residents to leave.
Greening needs to know that we who live at Muncey Place are not criminals and thieves. Many of us have never abused drugs or alcohol; many of us have worked hard all our lives.
Many of us don’t need “supportive housing” and are here simply because we cannot afford to live anywhere else.
Many have lost their former housing due to catastrophic illness, accidents on the job or plain poverty because a lifetime of farming and feeding society does not earn one title to any land.
Many of us are senior citizens. Many of us have had door after door slammed in our faces through no fault of our own. Many of us are sober, ethical, intelligent and kind people who can and have worked very hard for decades, and are now in poor health as a result.
It is bad enough to lose most of one’s agency, one’s place in society, to have to endure constant traffic noise and breathe health-sapping cigarette smoke, to live in a sack of a room with no cross-draft and swelter all summer, and not to be able to cook for ourselves (I used to shoot my own dinner, out on the land) and to have to obey restrictive rules — I was not allowed to visit in “my” own room with a sister whom I hadn’t seen in seven years — and to be dictated to about how many books we are allowed to keep, to live far from the forest where real healing can happen.
We are even subject to physical attack; I have been assaulted three times since moving here, the last occasion of which necessitated a visit to the ER. (I won that encounter, though.)
Many of us have experienced grief and trauma that the more fortunate cannot even imagine. My own health is in steady decline due to the smoke and stress of living here.
On top of all of this, to have to endure the almost constant screech of the Mosquito device is a real slap in the face.
What really rots my socks is that this would never happen in, say, Oak Bay, because real people live there, and we can’t inflict a Mosquito device on them, can we?