After son’s death in Peru, British Columbia father hopes no parent faces his ordeal

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There is no manual to follow, nothing to prepare you for the loss of your child.

For a year, Vince Verlaan has been struggling, sometimes running on adrenaline alone, trying to make sense of the randomness that struck his 20-year-old son Camden a year ago.

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The young man, from Roberts Creek on the Sunshine Coast, had just graduated from high school and had begun a trip to Peru to surf, learn Spanish and salsa dance, and help rescue dogs and build shelters for them.

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On March 8, 2023, he and some friends were returning from the beach in Huanchacoa Peruvian surf town, when Camden, in the lead, stepped onto a boardwalk under construction.

An electrical current within the still wet concrete electrocuted him.

There were no signs to warn pedestrians, nothing to indicate danger, Camden’s friends told Verlaan.

The culprits “made every mistake possible, the negligence is very clear,” he said as he sat at his dining room table in North Vancouver, with photographs of Camden spread out before him, along with his son’s diary in which the entries They end with ‘IN LUV. WITH LIFE.’

“It is outrageous that such a brilliant and wonderful human being can be taken for nothing, for absolutely nothing.”

He has hired a lawyer in Peru who is negotiating with a prosecutor about how to proceed with criminal charges, a requirement there before a civil lawsuit can be filed. There are three legal stages to go through, she said, and the first stage is complete.

He wants those responsible to be held accountable, he doesn’t want any other parents to go through what he is going through.

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For a year, she has not been able to speak publicly about her son’s death. She has done it now to keep the memory of her son alive, to tell the story of Camden.

They told him there were all kinds of people that day. Camden was with four or five other surfers returning to his lodge. He turned out to be the first of the group to step onto the boardwalk.

“It was something random, wasteful, careless, lazy and stupid that killed him, that extinguished this great human being and all his potential.”

Verlaan was in Tunisia with his wife, Sondes, and two stepchildren when his daughter, Camden’s older sister by four years, phoned to tell him the news. She and her brother planned to travel to Tunisia in two months to visit him.

It took Verlaan three days to get from Tunisia to Paris, to Lima and then to the city of Trujillo, near Huanchaco. When he arrived, he noticed that the same company was building a similar boardwalk nearby, but with orange cones, warning signs and flags in place.

He identified Camden’s body at the morgue. She had to sign documents related to her son’s death more than a dozen times. She visited the dog shelter, where Dude and Layla, two mixed-breed dogs Camden loved and planned to bring back to the Sunshine Coast, where she had lived with his mother, were being cared for.

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I could not sleep. She had to force herself to eat. Public policy consultant, he was without work for six months. He has spent tens of thousands of dollars seeking justice and bringing his son’s body home.

Camden’s struggle with celiac disease kept him virtually housebound in grades 8 through 12, his father said, and he earned his high school diploma online at 20, around the same time he had come to accept that Celiac disease is permanent, it would not go away.

“He was an incredibly smart person,” said Tom Harder, a Roberts Creek teacher who helped Camden with his self-paced school work.

“The way he smiled made you feel happy to meet this kid.”

Camden had worked odd jobs in shops and cafes to raise money for his travels, and Harder often bumped into him while he was working.

“He would ask questions about you, he was polite and generous, very kind to the people around him, just passionate about what he was doing.

“Imagine what Camden could have done to make things better for others, and now all is lost. He brought a lot of positivity to people’s lives. It’s tragic, it’s sad, sad, sad.”

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Harder’s comments echo those bound in a book filled with photographs and testimonies from a dozen friends Camden made in Huanchaco.

“Cam was the kind of person who changed everyone’s lives for the better, he brought so many smiles and so much kindness,” wrote a friend named Mari.

Among the photographs on the dining room table was a note from family friends, written before Camden left for Peru. The other family has an autistic boy who hated his first name and had made up a name for himself.

During a visit from Vince and his son, Camden took the young man aside and told him that his given name was beautiful. The boy entered the room and announced to his parents that they would no longer call him by his made-up name, but by his first name from now on.

“Camden was the only person who got him to use his name and be proud of it,” the note says. “Camden did it in a beautiful and gentle way.

“We’re very grateful for that, that Camden offered that gift to our son.”

Vince plans to adopt Dude and Layla and bring them back to BC to fulfill Camden’s wishes.

“Oh, I miss him so much,” she said.

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“There’s nothing you can do (about the pain), you just have to absorb it. You wear it, it doesn’t shrink, you grow around it.

“I’m trying to find a way to commemorate Camden, I take it very seriously, it’s a way to continue being a father to him, do things in his name and keep his memory alive.”

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