Edmonton police are investigating the theft of seven memorial plaques honouring veterans from a north Edmonton cemetery last week.
The bronze plauqes were stolen from the Military Memorial section of the Northern Lights Cemetery between July 3 and July 6, police said. Many of them date back to the 1980s.
“It is very disheartening that someone would go to the effort of removing these plaques, which are obviously of great sentimental value to the families who had them installed in the cemetery,” Const. Conrad Whetstone told CTV Edmonton.
Troy Deatrich, who served in the Canadian Forces for more than two decades, said that news of the theft nearly brought him to tears.
“It’s not right. My heart is racing. My blood is boiling. I just want to cry,” Deatrich, said. “How could you desecrate and ruin somebody’s memory like that?”
“Do the right thing. If you have them and they’re not damaged, return them.”
The bronze plaques are worth an estimated $6,000, according to the police.
“There’s a tremendous amount of work that goes into a bronze marker in terms of the material and the casting and doing all the work,” said Garry Kokolski, the owner of Edmonton Granite Memorials, a business that specializes in creating memorial markers.
Police are working with the cemetery to identify which families have been affected by the theft, but families that were spared say the news has shaken them, too.
Laurie Butler, whose father, a veteran, is buried at the cemetery, said that while she was “grateful” to find that his plaque was not stolen, everyone’s been “damaged and insulted by what’s happened.”
With a report from CTV Edmonton’s Angela Jung
