'This isn't who we are': Rainbow crosswalk vandalized in Fort Langley, B.C.

A rainbow crosswalk in the community of Fort Langley, B.C. was vandalized on Friday night, and not for the first time.

Langley resident Brad Dirks was on a walking tour with his family in the area when the incident happened. The group was listening to the presenter at the historic graveyard just east of the crosswalk around 11 p.m.

“All of a sudden we all went silent because we heard tires screeching,” he recalled. “The people that I was with looked right at me immediately because they knew that I knew what it was.”

Dirks told CTV News he heard a driver burning rubber on the crosswalk for about 45 seconds. “It just kept going and going and going. It was unbelievable. We could see the smoke kind of rising above the building,” he said.

The driver then turned around and marked up the crosswalk a second time in the opposite direction. “We just stood there frozen, listening to this in shock,” Dirks remembered.

After vandalizing the crosswalk, the vehicle sped past the group. Dirks described it as a small to medium-sized white pickup truck.

He has filed a police report and given a description of the truck, and the culprit is likely to be identified because the incident was caught on camera.

Last month, the Township of Langley installed intersection video cameras at Glover Road and Mary Avenue after the crosswalk was vandalized and restored multiple times. In fact, the rainbow stripes were re-painted after they were defaced with tire marks in September—costing the Township $5,000--only for the crosswalk to be marked up in the same way a few days later.

Dirks lives near the crosswalk, and since it was installed in 2017, he said he’s seen it vandalized countless times. “It seems like every other day, there's a new skid mark,” he said. “There's always new, intentional marks on it that people do, and I see it all the time.”

He added that it’s clear when the marks are made on purpose, like on Friday.

“People who don't really care when this happens will always say, well, naturally tire tracks are going to be on a rainbow crosswalk because cars drive over it. Yeah, and that's true, but you can tell when a car stops and pulls their e-brake and basically does a burnout so much that there’s black tread marks in both directions,” he said.

“They knew exactly what they were doing and what message they were trying to send. There's no question about it.”

That message hits Dirks particularly hard, because his son is a member of the LGBTQ2S+ community. He said the group he was with noticed his body language change when they witnessed the act on Friday.

“Reading about it and seeing it on the news is bad enough. But when you actually hear it and witness it firsthand, it really sent a wave of shock and anxiety through me,” he recalled.

“In 2023, I don’t understand why this is still happening and why there’s not more acceptance,” Dirks continued. “I’ve lived here for 50 years and this isn’t who we are.”

A spokesperson for the Township of Langley told CTV News that staff is aware of the incident and that the crosswalk will be repaired quickly. “Work will be done with the RCMP to identify and hold accountable those responsible for this vandalism,” they wrote.

CTV News has reached out to the RCMP and will update this story if a response is received.

In the meantime, Dirks hopes the incident won’t be swept under the rug and that Mounties will find those responsible, but most of all that the culprits learn from their mistake and come out better for it.

He said he’d like to see the vandals given community service within the LGBTQ2S+ community instead of being thrown the book. “(It would) maybe open their minds and open their hearts a little bit and learn a bit and then maybe they would put their past behind them. And instead of having hate in their heart, maybe they would become allies,” Dirks said.

“I would really like this to be an opportunity for anybody who has hate and supports this kind of stuff to maybe take a step back. And statistically, everybody has somebody in (the LGBTQ2S+ community) in their circle of friends or their family,” he continued.

“I think if we all understood that maybe, you know, people would start to be less angry, be less hateful and that would be my hope.”