A Courtenay, B.C. woman who is disabled is speaking out about a vicious note she received calling her “simple minded” and “egotistical” for taking up two parking spaces with her wheelchair-accessible van.

Tammy Garrett said she had been parked at the Courtenay Airpark Thursday morning to join her mother for exercise.

When she returned to her van, Garrett, who has been in a wheelchair after an ongoing battle with cancer over the last decade, found a nastily worded note tucked under her windshield wiper.

She removed it when she got home and said the note appeared to be written like a parking ticket.

“This is not a ticket, but if it were within my power, you would receive two. Because of your bull-headed, inconsiderate feeble attempt at parking, you have taken enough room for a 20 mule team, 2 elephants, and a safari of pygmies from the African Interior,” the anonymous note read. “The reason for giving you this, is so that in the future you may think of someone else, other than yourself. Besides that, I don’t like domineering, egotistical or simple minded drivers and you probably fit into one or more of these. I sign off wishing you an early transmission failure on the express way. Also may the fleas of a thousand camels infest in your armpits.”

“It’s ridiculous,” Garrett said, chuckling. “I can laugh about it now, but it was upsetting when I first got it.”

She defended her parking job, saying that there weren’t any disabled parking stalls available and because of the way her specialized van is set up, she can’t retrieve her wheelchair using just one space. Garrett added the van was displaying her disability parking placard.

“The reason I’m taking two [spaces] is not because I’m being a jerk, it’s because I have no choice,” she said. “A lot of time there’s not that many handicapped stalls, so I can’t even take one anyway. And I’ll take the furthest two that I can find, so I never take one right up front. I take them further back, but for some reason that really irritates people.”

She said it’s not the first time someone has taken it upon themselves to point out her parking job.

“I’ve had mothers with children pointing out my parking job while I’m rolling up to the van, telling me how terrible I am,” she said. “I had a guy accost me at Walmart at my car, banging on the window wondering why I’m taking so long to get in the car and how dare I take two spaces. And I’m just flabbergasted as to why this is such a big deal for people.”

Jane Dyson, executive director of Disability Alliance BC, said she believes social media websites that publicly shame drivers could be inspiring the nasty note writers.

“It’s very unfortunate that somebody was so unpleasant and didn’t take the time to look at this person’s disability parking placard because if they had done, it might make them think maybe there’s a reason that this person is parked like this,” she said. “I think these public shaming sites are something people need to be very careful about.”

Dyson said that sometimes, parking spaces aren’t large enough for disabled people with side-loading wheelchair-accessible vans, and double parking is inevitable.

With files from CTV Vancouver Island’s Gord Kurbis and Coralie McLean