Chilliwack school trustee candidate’s sign vandalized

A sign belonging to a Chilliwack school trustee candidate has been vandalized.

The campaign sign for Teri Westerby, a transgender man and president of the Chilliwack Pride Society, was seen covered in graffiti showing an image of male genitalia this week.

“If it is targeted at all, which it does seem to be, based on the evidence, it is targeted towards the women candidates and myself. So really it’s just speculation but given the evidence, it’s hard not to think that it’s targeted,” he told CityNews Tuesday.

It’s unclear who is responsible for defacing the sign just off of Annis Road. Westerby says he was first alerted to the damage by messages to his social media account.

“I asked my parents, who live really close by there, if they wouldn’t mind just swinging by and grabbing it for me,” he explained.

“They took a photo and sent it over. My face was sprayed out, blacked out, and there was a tag on it,” Westerby added, noting this has happened a fair bit to other candidates as well.

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The ordeal left him disappointed, he recalls, adding while signs may not be for everyone, it’s a part of the political process during elections.

“I wish people would just understand that and give us the month of time when we have the signs up and allow it to happen and just have some respect,” Westerby pleaded, saying this kind of behaviour affects more than just him.

“I want to say, it just rolls off my back because it’s something that I am used to and have prepared myself to deal with. But when I think about it on a larger scale of how it affects my community, how it affects my supporters, especially the women candidates — because they’re just getting relentless attacks — that’s where it really starts to hit me.”

Beyond the concern about the possible targeting of diverse candidates, Westerby is upset that his donors’ money has been essentially wasted through the defacement of his sign.

He says he didn’t find it worth replacing the sign, with just days to go before votes are counted.

“I didn’t find that it was really worth buying another sign and spending that extra money for the last five days of the election. So there’s a detriment to my own campaign as well. Also, my parents had to go and pick it up so they had to then see my face with that on it and so many things that are hard to process. It’s painful and I just wish it didn’t have to be that way,” Westerby admitted.

Instances of vandalism of campaign signs are not new in B.C. Many candidates have seen graffiti drawn on their signs, of which many have also been smashed or knocked down throughout the years.

In Chilliwack, city council candidate Amber Price’s signs were also recently defaced.

“This is the most recent of several incidents of vandalism perpetrated against my signs during this campaign,” she wrote in a Facebook post over the weekend.

Amid ongoing controversies in Chilliwack, Westerby believes there’s a growing need to address intolerance displayed through such acts of vandalism.

“Just the fact that we have three women running for council and that’s not even a 50/50 representation of half of the people who live here in Chilliwack, that’s something we should be talking about. We don’t have diverse representation and pretty much everybody who’s running identifies as a white person. So there’s so much here about diversity and representation that we could be talking about and how who’s in charge does not reflect the diverse people in Chilliwack,” he said.

The municipal election is set for Saturday, Oct. 15.