“I think, if luck were real,” David Arthur Johnston says, “that I’m one of the luckiest people on the planet. To have a grand scope in my head, that’s weird, but makes me feel like a superhero most of the time.

“A lot of people love me, though most of them think I’m strange.”

He’s right. Johnston is nearly as well-known to the citizens of Victoria, BC as Batman is to Gothamites. If they haven’t encountered him personally, they’ve read about him in the newspaper or seen him on the news. And many do consider him decidedly strange — for his decision to leave his job as a baker and live without income, for his campaign to earn the homeless “The Right to Sleep,” adequately sheltered, on public property. He’s been described both as a man on a mission and a public nuisance.

“It’s ostracizing somewhat,” he says of his crusade and the high profile that has come with it, “just because every conversation leads back to the same thing.”

Lately those conversations have been about Johnston’s astonishing pair of legal victories. Late last year, after several years in and out of court, jail, and the media, he scored an upset win when BC Supreme Court Judge Madam Justice Carol Ross overturned Victoria’s anti-camping bylaw on the grounds that it prevented homeless people, forced to sleep outdoors due to a shortage of beds in shelters, from protecting themselves from the elements. Inadequate protection, Ross stated, can lead to fatal health conditions.

The City immediately reshaped its enforcement policy to allow camping on public property only between the hours of 9 p.m. to 7 a.m. (later revised to 7 p.m. to 7 a.m.). Johnston and some others promptly broke the new ban and were arrested. But on January 28, 2009, Judge Brian McKenzie found them not guilty, ruling that the City was enforcing a bylaw that, because of the earlier decision, effectively no longer existed. “I would like if the city sat down with a map,” Johnston wrote later the same day in his online journal. “I would like a well advertised public forum to discuss where to go from here and the feasibility of areas where enjoying the liberty of survival can be legal.”

In other words, sections of cities set aside for tents. The alternative, he says, will eventually be internment camps for the poor.

January 20, 2004: From David Arthur Johnston’s Journal of the Occupation of St. Ann’s Academy

It was a good night— got some sleep that I had been needing— there wasn’t a lot in the dumpster (few apples, some mustard, tomato basil dip, some bread, case of diet 7-up(yik))…

cool thing- take a larger can (one up from a regular ‘Campbell’s soup can’, pineapple or chick peas size)- keep the lid- poke three small holes on the side near the bottom- poke three small holes on the side near the top- poke a few tiny holes in the end- place a candle inside- have the flame supported about halfway up the can- you can put the lid on top if you could fry- or you can use a smaller can with water/liquid to boil— just a candle- it’s so cool

I first met David on a crisp autumn day in October, 2007. He had arranged the use of a small seminar room at the Victoria Public Library, where we spent over an hour discussing his life, philosophies, and court cases. David sports a long, curly brown beard that covers most of his face and neck. His long, straight hair is tied in a ponytail at the base of his neck. That day, he wore a pair of patched, brown pants, rolled up mid-calf, and a brownish yellow V-neck sweater with a collared shirt beneath it. Had I not already read about him, I might have assumed him to be a hippie, or perhaps a musician or artist.

He had been living off the economic grid for 10 years. “I knew contentment was impossible with the nine-to-five and knew that I needed to really think about that, so I gave everything away and put myself into a position where I could think without distraction,” he told me. So in the summer of 1997, he quit his job and moved out of his Victoria apartment. He hasn’t chased a paycheck or paid rent since.

David ended up back in Alberta, where he grew up and where the majority of his family still resides. He bounced around the province from 1997 to 2000, when he returned to Victoria because “it was a place I knew and an international high traffic spot.”

He lived outdoors and, in 2003, ended his relationship with money. “I was probably getting by on $1000 a year. So my progression into not using money anymore was gradual. And then come the time that I did it, the only thing I was spending money on was cigarettes, marijuana, beer, and coffee.”

Most people panic when money is tight, worried about car payments and phone bills and groceries, but for David, letting go of money meant finding freedom. He says he now lives “moment by moment. I’d rather be dead than use money.”

Next page: “He’s not afraid to die for the truth, and that’s a rare quality these days.”

January 24, 2004: From David Arthur Johnston’s Journal of the Occupation of St. Ann’s Academy

Last night I had gone to bed early (around 8PM). Around 9PM a security guard came up and fervently asked me to leave.

SG- “Please leave. I must ask you to leave. You cannot stay here. Please leave.”
me- “I cannot. I’ve nowhere else to go. I sleep in peace.”
SG- “Please! You cannot stay here. If you stay I will have to call the police.”
me- “I’ve nowhere else to go. Do what you must.”
SG- “Please! I am going to call the police.” (begins to leave)
me- “Do what you must.”

In late 2003, David was about to bed down for the night in Victoria’s Beacon Hill Park when he noticed an unusual smell. “I found the ground covered in fertilizer [ground up fish] and subsequently my blanket was filthy,” he later wrote in his journal. “It was obviously placed there on purpose and from then on the fertilizer came to be known as ‘bum-away.’ To hold those responsible accountable, the ‘right to sleep’ campaign began in earnest on January 16, 2004.”

David began spending his nights on the grounds of St. Ann’s Academy, a former convent now owned by the provincial government. He was eventually joined by others, who brought along tents. When St. Ann’s was granted an injunction forcing the inhabitants to move, the encampment relocated to Cridge Park, a small green space nearby. For two weeks, it boasted “35 tents at peak” and served as shelter for “about 70 or 80 people,” David says.

The City of Victoria and most of its citizens were not pleased with the tent-city, and it wasn’t long before police began enforcing the city’s anti-camping bylaw. With the help of two pro bono lawyers, Cathy Boies-Parker and Irene Faulkner, David and a handful of other defendants challenged the bylaw, asserting that it was unconstitutional and violated the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

His campaign continued to attract support. Kristen Woodruff, 29, identified with the “right to sleep” movement so much that she relocated to Victoria to join the campaign. “David’s journal account of his struggle for the right to sleep came into my hands in the winter of 2008,” she says. “I was inspired by his work, and interested by the similarities between his philosophy and mine. We became close friends shortly after this.”

Kristen has been without a home since June, 2008, around the same time she moved to Victoria. “I have lived simply for years, mostly on Salt Spring Island, in small cabins, often without electricity or indoor plumbing, in a van, or housesitting. I became more ‘officially’ homeless when I left Salt Spring Island to go live in Victoria, to lend support to David and the right to sleep campaign.”

Others remain unenthusiastic. Ask citizens, business owners, or officials in Victoria to comment on David and the Charter challenge and a certain chill sets in. One business owner writes in an e-mail: “I cannot be associated with David and his cause, even though I agree with much of it, because I own a business downtown. In the business community, supporting David could have a negative impact on my relationship with neighbouring businesses and even some of my clientele.” Another e-mail from a resident of Victoria simply reads: “He has no value to me.”

“David is profoundly threatening to the establishment,” says Kristen, “to a degree that can seem absurd, given his gentleness. But he’s not afraid to die for the truth, and that’s a rare quality these days. Loving him is a strange phenomenon, because I know that at any time he may well go to jail, and that he is absolutely committed to not eating in jail, and that if he gets sentenced to longer than 40 days or so, he may well die that way.”

For Johnston, the point is to refuse powerlessness, and to defend oneself and others as human beings. “You can allow yourself to be moved along,” he says, “to live the hell you’ve always tried to avoid by getting a job spending 50 hours a week so you can sleep. Or you sit down and you figure out exactly where your suffering is coming from and you find what to do about it.”

March 5, 2004: From David Arthur Johnston’s Journal of the Occupation of St. Ann’s Academy

This morning I went to court to confirm the trial which happens on March 25 at 10:00AM in courtroom 102. The ‘crown’ stayed the proceedings on the ‘Assault by Trespass’ charge and are going to press the ‘Obstruction of Justice’ charge.

So, essentially, everything is still the same. There will still have to be a ruling for me to be released. The ‘crown’ will recognize pride as a lie; will recognize the illegality of being discompassionate; will recognize that compassion does supersede ‘private property’ and in doing so will set high precedence — every municipality will endorse and establish tent cities within walking distance of their downtown cores; every municipality will recognize the emergent state that has been created because of a dependency on ignorance (the emergent state that will exist when money is no longer used)…… or the ‘crown’ will pretend great offence and put me in jail, where I will not eat and eventually die (even if I am to be strapped down with tubes in me).

On a normal day, David Johnston goes where his feet take him, conversing with friends and acquaintances, often settling at centres like Our Place in Victoria’s downtown, where the less fortunate congregate to drink coffee, and talk. He goes there for its atmosphere of community, of shared experience, struggle, frustration, and mutual respect.

On the street, you won’t find him panhandling, or asking for any kind of handout. Instead, he does his best to provide for himself. “[I eat] karmically. I check what I affectionately call the ‘trapline.’ The garbages — there’s enough food thrown out every day to feed an army.” He’s not alone in his scavenging; social stigma may still attach to a homeless, jobless man subsisting off food found in dumpsters, but a growing movement of freegans also limits food purchases, instead relying on the perfectly edible food discarded daily.

Back in the library in 2007, he told me a little bit about his family. “We’re very prosaic,” he said. “We will talk when there’s news to share; otherwise we just presume there’s love and affection.” His mother “really appreciates” what he’s doing and her support “helps as far as media stuff.” He laughed. “If you have a mother that loves you, you can’t be a terrorist.”

Later, as we exited the library, David told me we had to walk straight through the courtyard and onto the sidewalk without stopping — this the result of his earlier arrest for camping there to protest the “No Loitering” sign posted nearby. Looking over my shoulder, I saw, seated throughout the courtyard, a couple of people reading, a girl talking on a cellphone, an emo kid beside her rolling a skateboard back and forth with his foot, and a man in a shirt and tie eating a sandwich. There’s little
doubt that, if a police officer had strolled by at that moment, the “No Loitering” sign would not have been enforced. Had David or another homeless person been sitting there, though, things might have been very different.

For David, that’s the nub of the problem. In his worldview, all people should be treated with respect, dignity, and love. To be “moved along” or arrested for trying to sleep is offensive. “Loitering implies purposelessness,” he told me, as we safely reached the sidewalk. “And I don’t think any person is without purpose.”

Next page: “The anti-camping bylaw will be struck in this town and also the chattel bylaw, and then that would set precedent in every municipality in Canada.”

December 5, 2008: From David Arthur Johnston’s Journal of the Occupation of St. Ann’s Academy

The ‘order’ is something all parties involved in the Charter case must sign to finalize the case. The city says its going to ask the judge to amend the ruling to add the words ‘at night’. They are going to be told to shape up or face the consequences, I presume. Their continued adamance that they have the right to tell people they can’t sleep during the day will be dealt with by the same Supreme Court judge that gave the ruling. Of course, if the judge is compromised or the city finds new ways to delay I will still put them in a position that they must kill me or do the right thing.

The right thing in this case is to accept that the city must provide space for tenting if it wants to regulate it elsewhere. To create new zoning regulations that allow for people with means and opportunity to apply to have tents on their ‘properties’, or even make use out of motorhomes and trailers (and the such). The cities obligation (to not impede) can be quite lessoned with private participation… make no mistake, the city must fundamentally always present the option.

A year ago, I asked him for his prediction, should he win the Charter challenge. After a sigh, he said, “A lot of really beautiful stuff and a lot of huge stuff. Stuff like no Canadian has seen before. Essentially, the anti-camping bylaw will be struck in this town and also the chattel bylaw, and then that would set precedent in every municipality in Canada meaning that anyone who would want to assert themselves in any municipality would have that option — to do it without much obstruction. Essentially it would mean the police to some degree would have to learn some measure of innocence presumption. They would have to be able to determine if someone is actually being peaceful in their attempt to sleep under a tree and, if they are, then they have to leave them alone.”

With his second victory, that is at least temporarily true. As of this writing, Victoria’s police have acknowledged that anyone may sleep, sheltered, in any public space at any time. However, Victoria City Council has already passed an amended bylaw that, put through the appropriate legal hoops, Judge McKenzie has suggested will pass constitutional muster. Johnston is once again preparing to challenge it.

The stress sometimes appears to take its toll. “I’m being made crazy,” he writes in a recent post on his Journal of the Occupation of St. Ann’s Academy, which long ago became a chronicle of his entire five year struggle, “and the looming possibility of never seeing freedom, never seeing a just end to this sleeping court stuff, never seeing the city held accountable hurts real bad.”

He has help now, though, in the person of Kristen, and the momentum of two wins. And perhaps most of all, the talent he has cultivated since the night in Beacon Hill Park when he launched his Right to Sleep campaign. “Patience,” he told me in 2007, his blue eyes lighting. “It’s the key.” In fact, it may not even matter what the next court decision is. To the extent that he’s lived the last eight years precisely on his own terms, and put his belief in the dignity of every human being into convincing action, David Arthur Johnston has already secured a rare sort of victory.