Many Edmontonians were shocked when a community of tents popped up behind the downtown Bissell Centre last summer.

The settlement was filled with campers who had nowhere else to go.

“There was a lot of fear, because of fighting going on and people’s tents being ripped and knocked over,” says Dean Cardinal, one of its unelected mayors.

 “Slowly (security) weeded out the bad people, but the people who really wanted to stay there, stayed there without fearing for anything.”

The first inkling of a large-scale communal settlement of Edmonton’s homeless people popped up in Mary Burley Park behind the Edmonton Remand Centre in early 2007.

Sylvie Seguin, the manager of essential support services for the Bissell Centre, recorded a daily account of the events that transpired in the so-called “tent city.” Her report shows an unprepared government trying to deal with the social runoff of Alberta’s oil boom.

Police evicted the campers because park bylaws prohibit public use after 11:00 p.m. So the squatters gathered their belongings and moved on. Most of the campers headed into the river valley as a last resort. Valley life was bad.

Campers would leave the valley during the day to go to work, find food, panhandle, and socialize. While they were gone, park rangers would confiscate their belongings. The campers would return to find their meager possessions gone.

At the time, city council was debating Edmonton’s housing shortage and the issue of homelessness. It wanted a plan to address the problems. However, discussion of the issues quickly fell off the map, and a few months later 10 tents popped up on a plot of provincial land at 96th Street and 105th Avenue.

The campers there were either not allowed to use city shelter programs because they had been banned or because they simply hated the shelter environment.

“There’s four to a room — I can’t do it,” Claude Parissee, a tent city resident, told the Edmonton Journal. “I don’t want to live with people I don’t know.”

The residents stated that they gathered on the site because they felt safe around their friends and family.

Here is a short history of tent city.

June 21:

Within the next week, the number of tents doubled from the original 10 to 20. It had become apparent that tent city was going to keep expanding, so a meeting between campers and police was held. At the meeting, police outlined a rigid set of rules regarding the behaviour that was expected of the campers if they wanted to stay. Particular focus was aimed at ensuring that public urination and defecation would be eliminated. There was a problem with the availability of public restrooms after the Bissell Centre closed its doors at 4:30 p.m.

A meeting with the former Capital Health region was also held to discuss support requirements needed to maintain the site. Capital Health agreed to provide portable toilets and a water tank on the site.

June 22:

The Bissell Centre also hired a support worker to build rapport with the commune’s population and liaise with police on matters that might jeopardize the campers’ safety.

June 24:

Capital Health set up portable toilets for the 70 campers who were living in 37 tents. So far, the population managed to stay out of trouble and self-govern without problems.

June 27:

Then the gangs moved in. By the next morning, frightened campers worried that someone was going to be killed if the gangs were not controlled. Residents reported that during the night, thugs wandered up and down the rows of tents brandishing swords and knives, and that gunshots had been heard. The police said that there was nothing they could do unless someone was caught committing an offence, and encouraged residents to call if they saw trouble.

July 2:

The community included 55 tents and 80 campers during the day. At night the population would grow to 150 campers, as the homeless congregated to party and drink. It was a breaking point for the Bissell Centre and it was decided that it was no longer safe to have a support worker on site.

July 5:

A man set a tent on fire during a domestic dispute. Another person was stabbed in front of the Bissell Centre shortly after.

July 14 and 15:

Ove the weekend, the police raided a tent being used as a brothel and seized weapons, drugs, and cash, and a few days later a frenzy of violence forced the Bissell Centre to close at 11 a.m.

The circumstances brought many of the residents close together. There are few things more valuable in the street than having someone who has your back. Many of the campers formed “family” units for safety and support, Cardinal says.

As the violence escalated, media attention pressured the province and the city to step in.

July 20:

A security company was hired to control the violence. Then Capital Health provided ID cards for the residents, and a fence was erected around the site to mixed reactions.

But the rules were simple enough. If the campers stepped out of line, security would take their ID cards and ban them from the site. Visitors were allowed to come and go freely during the day, but after 9 p.m., only those with ID cards could stay the night.

Cardinal was relieved by the new changes.

Sept. 15:

Authorities decide to close the site for good. City trucks arrived first thing that morning to haul away the toilets and water tank. While city crews were removing the facilities, residents threw the possessions they could not carry into a giant green dumpster.

Despite the circumstances, the residents were cheerful and, on the surface anyway, devoid of resentment over the move. The nature of conversation among the homeless was nostalgic as they remembered the time they spent in the summer commune.

Several bottles of discount malt liquor were passed around the circles of tents as reporters swept through, snatching up interviews from anyone willing to talk.

By early afternoon, tent city was gone except for the chain-link fence. The fence that had been built to keep the campers safe was now locked and used to keep them in the street.

There is no way to tell how many of tent city’s residents found housing, or how many that were provided with housing have managed to remain at those addresses. The 2006 Edmonton homeless count, conducted by the Joint Planning Committee on Housing, recorded 2,618 homeless persons. The next count is scheduled for later this fall.

apaul@see.greatwest.ca