Had a long overdue hangout Jan. 22 with one of the grand old men of homeless activism in Victoria, David Shebib. He first appeared in the local news in 1981 when he ran for mayor, listing his profession as Holy Man. (Two years later, he ran again and listed his profession as Human Being). In the 2014 election, he achieved the remarkable feat of getting on the mayoral ballot in all 13 of the region’s municipalities. Running for election gave him the chance to speak his truths at all-candidates forums – and he did, generally to the amusement of the media and the annoyance of his fellow candidates. Homeless himself as a younger man and even now, at 82, living in a tired rental scheduled for demolition, David remained a disrupter of mayoralty races, a philosopher king questioning everything about the way we live, and a champion of encampments for people living homeless for the next 40 years. Those VHS tapes in the photo below are just a partial record of hundreds of videos he made over the decades of his activism, alongside committed and quirky characters fighting back against the system. “We’ve got to go through some healing with where we’re at now,” says David. “What’s the right thing to do? We need to ask ourselves that, and then make a decision not to do the wrong thing. If you can’t do the right thing, at least don’t do the wrong thing.”