Gay Vancouver man says he will file a human rights complaint over Penticton campground treatment

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PENTICTON (NEWS 1130) – A gay Vancouver man who claims he was told to leave a campground on the basis of his group’s sexual orientation says he’s now looking at filing a human rights complaint against South Beach Gardens R.V. Park in Penticton.

Paul Wood immediately started to trend earlier this week over a post that detailed his experience at the campground.

In it, he says his friends Justin and Jordan were holding hands as they walked along the beach.

They were later asked to leave because it was a “family oriented campground.” He then provides their phone number and encourages people to call them and let them know what they think,

As of tonight at 8pm, it’s been shared roughly 623 times.

“I’m a little bit surprised but I’m glad our stories getting out there,” he later said in an interview.

Wood says bad reviews are nothing new to the campground and referenced a family’s post who claims they were asked to leave on the base of their race.

According to the Vancouver man, they booked the site based on a friend’s previous visit and recommendation.

He says they informed the owner of what they would be setting up and how many people would be staying.

“Soon after a family from Alberta came and set up two tents on their site and then another group across the road set up three tents, by and large each site had at least two tents and that seemed to be the standard configuration.”

They left the area and went to dinner. They later returned to the beach and two of his friends starting holding hands.

Wood says they were getting lot of stares and glances, people watching their every move.

“Within a few moments of arriving back at our camp site, the staff member and another employee were at our site almost immediately and said they had been trying to reach us all day long and that we were camping illegally, we had too many tents on the site.”

He says they were given two options either get another site or leave the property all together.

“We were very confused, up until this point everything had been fine, we thought everything was great. She said no we had camped illegally and were were only allowed one tent per site.”

“We tried then negotiating with her because were still very confused and asked if we could at least rent the site but move the tent tomorrow when it’s daylight, she said absolutely not it had to be done right away even while disturbing our fellow numbers.”

Wood says he was then told they would be informed in the morning as to whether they could stay the full weekend.

“Someone saw us walking hand in hand, whoever complained, I dunno. Jordan and our other camping companion began moving the tent while Justin and I went to get a refund from the office.”

“I asked her as a gay man, I’m not sure if I can give you a satisfactory review of the campground and she proceeded to literally laugh in our faces and her response was that was fine with them because we are a family oriented campground.”

“We were stunned, we walked out of the office in silence, once outside we thought wow did she really say that? I think we’re being bullied out of here because we’re gay.”

He felt compelled to go public with his post and take a stand.

“I’m glad she gave me the permission to do it.”

“We’ve had a tremendous outpouring of support from LGBTQ organizations and human rights advocates across Canada, we’ve had politicians in both Penticton and Vancouver reach out to us and we will be proceeding with an application to the Human Rights Tribunal for discrimination on two separate accounts.”

“All four of us were just so shocked, we’re big campers and we go out through the season and we have never experienced anything like this before.”

“We did go across the street to Wright’s Beach Campground, they had identical rules, we showed up and they gave us a beautiful site by the beach and spent a hassle free weekend.”

South Beach Gardens R.V. Park has issued a statement across their Facebook page, in it they write:

“In light of recent events we would like to take this time to address the situation as to where 4 men were allegedly evicted for being same sex couples.

Our campsites are designed to accommodate one sleeping unit. The customers were told if they had more than one tent they would have to take two sites. The customer assured us they only had one tent so therefore only needed one campsite.

A short time later it was discovered that in fact two tents had been set up on the customers site. When approached about the rule infraction the customer agreed to purchase a second site.

In the meantime the customer asked for a refund for the second night therefore deciding ON THEIR OWN not to stay.

We find it unfortunate that the situation has been taken out of context and the customer appears to be using their personal lifestyle preferences as a result of not wanting to accept our policies.

No further statements will be made regarding this matter.”

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