An unfortunate incident happened over the weekend of Jan. 6-7 when portable toilets at the Warner Road access point to Lake Winnipeg were vandalized. These amenities were used by anglers in the area. Luckily the Manitoba Wildlife Federation seeing the benefit that these toilets bring to the community as well as the lake, is fundraising to replace the damaged facilities and add preventative measures to keep this resource available.
Allstar Toilet Rentals is the local business from Petersfield that rents the three portable toilet units to the RM of St. Andrews. They’ve been available for residents to use for the past five or six winters.
“We normally put them out around December 15 and keep them up until ice break up around about the end of March,” said Allstar Toilet Rentals owner Cory Douglas.
Douglas says that vandalism and tip-overs are part of the business when it comes to toilet rentals and is something that they deal with on a normal basis but vandalism in this location has been a bit more than he would normally expect.
“This has been twice this year. [The first incident took place] on Christmas day, my wife and I got a Facebook message that the toilets had been pushed into the ditch up there, which is abnormal,” said Douglas.
After having his parent look after the kids, he and his wife, Kelley Douglas, got to Warner Road and saw that all three portable toilets had been pulled into the ditch.
“These were actually pushed quite far into the marsh by, I would assume an ATV or a truck or a side-by-side. We went up there and cleaned them up that time, there wasn’t a lot of damage,” said Douglas.
Unfortunately, that wasn’t the story last week when he received a call from the RM letting him know that some concerned residents let them know the toilets had been destroyed.
“It looked like a vehicle had completely run through them. They were literally in shambles and pieces. All three toilets were not salvageable,” explained Douglas.
As a business owner as well as a family who take their children fishing and use that location as a launch point to the lake, Douglas said he was disappointed.
He wasn’t the only one. The Manitoba Wildlife Federation also felt that having these portable toilets in this location was an important resource for our community.
“Our organization, the Manitoba Wildlife Federation, understands that this is a popular access point for many anglers that visit Lake Winnipeg. Having those outhouses there also helps keep the lake clean, because now people are not having to do their business out on the ice. They can come back and use the facilities. We’re initially just looking at getting those outhouses reinstalled, as well as building some sort of barricades so that people can’t come by and destroy them again. [This is] to show support to our angling community, because it is a huge, massive industry in the province here and a really good opportunity for families and friends and such to go out and enjoy a day of fishing,” said Chris Benson, program and events coordinator for the Manitoba Wildlife Federation.
Benson explained that getting the portable toilets back in place was a no-brainer as the location is an incredibly popular access point. Over the course of three days during the winter of 2020, MWF ran traffic counters at this location and counted 2364 vehicles. These vehicles had an average of three people per vehicle for a total of 7092 people.
“When we heard about this vandalism, it’s something that right away, we thought, ‘Well, let’s do something about it. Let’s be proactive and get those back up there.’ And, also, what are the ways that we can prevent this from happening again,” he said.
The fundraising campaign for the upgraded barriers and toilets is being collected by the MWF. They will not be keeping any of the funds but just be a collection point to facilitate the donation.
Upon hearing that there were people who were willing to help out by fundraising to prevent this sort of damage from happening again, Douglas was “beyond surprised”.
“We’ve had vandalism over the years and smaller cases, nothing like this, but nobody’s ever reached out and offered to donate. Just the fact that somebody cares about a small business and keeping the area clean was mind-boggling to me. We do have insurance and it does cover a portion of the toilets. I’d be willing to put those toilets up there within an hour if somebody said they’d be safe. If we can get some barriers put up just to keep them safe [that would be great] I mean dealing with vandalism is part of my job, but I can’t deal with another total loss of three units. It’s amazing, I couldn’t believe we got so many calls. I’d be super happy to see if between the RM and the Manitoba Wild Federation, if they could put up some barriers and create a safe area for me to work and a clean and safe area for the amenities,” said Douglas.
He thanks the community for their support and all of the positivity and messages that he’s received.
The local RCMP encourages any and all vandalism in our community to be reported to them and asks that people do their part as the eyes and ears in their communities.
“We all have a job to do when it comes to fighting crime in our communities. If something looks odd or strange, report it. If you notice people are not home and there is suspicious activity call it in. If your neighbour’s house was on fire, would you call 911? Of course, you would.
“Even if it appears after the fact that something has happened to a building or property, call it in. What you see and report helps us track the person’s responsible,” said local RCMP Community Policing Officer, Paul Human.
Donations can be made by calling MWF at 204-633-5967 or by visiting https://mwf.mb.ca/the-mwf/donate. Please add in the comments that your donation is for the Warner Road Access fundraising campaign.
