'POT-, BOOZE-SELLER' FIGHTS TO STAY PUT

What They Are Doing To Me Is Wrong, Says 15-Year Inhabitant

Wreck Beach denizen Anthony Wayne, 60, knows that, to many, he is not
a sympathetic figure.

"I'm a dropout, I'm on social assistance and I'm an admitted
[marijuana] smoker," he said. "I know I don't have much credence."

But what the Greater Vancouver Regional District is doing to him, he
said, is wrong.

A petition filed by the GVRD in B.C. Supreme Court seeks several
orders against Wayne, and includes claims that he sells pot and booze
to beach-goers and harms the environment.

Wayne denied the claims. He said the GVRD -- commonly known as Metro
Vancouver -- is trying to make an example of him.

"We figure that they are going to start with me and . . . get what
they perceive as the riffraff off the beach."

Wreck Beach regulars said he is an asset, not a burden, to the
beach.

"He knows everything there is to know about the environment here,"
said Shelley Reid, who has frequented the famed nude beach near the
University of B.C. campus for more than 20 years.

Wayne is the only person the GVRD hassles regularly, she
said.

Wayne has spent at least part of every day of the last 15 years at the
beach.

He spends most of that time in his "condo" -- a tongue-in-cheek jab at
development of the Pacific Spirit Regional Park area. The "condo" is a
small clearing on the hillside, notable only because sunflowers grow
in a nearby patch of wild grass.

Wayne's ties to the beach date back to the 1970s. He lived at the
beach for six months after suffering a nervous breakdown.

He then spent nearly a decade behind bars for robbing three banks in
three months.

During the 1990s, Wayne, crippled by depression, lived in the Downtown
Eastside's Cobalt Hotel.

Sick and tired of being sick and tired, he decided to leave the city
and head back to the beach.

He bought a camping stove and brought his groceries down to the beach.
There, he prepared his meals and slowly got his life on track.

"It's taken me a long time," he said. "Life just keeps moving along,
and you get left behind."

He now works for a catering company and has a residence away from the
beach, though he still considers his little niche in the hillside his
true home.

He said he has not consulted a lawyer about the petition and does not
know what to expect next.

"I'm prepared for the worst. I'm prepared to lose."