You wouldn’t expect thieves to steal your eagle. Or your food truck. Or your prosthetic arm.
Yet all of those things happened in Canada this year.
Theft itself isn’t uncommon. It’s reported to Canadian police agencies hundreds of thousands of times per year, including at a rate of more than one theft per minute in 2017.
But when a thief tries to move beyond the typical targets of vehicles and jewelry in favour of something a little more peculiar, it often receives a little more attention.
We’ve scoured our archives to find 14 of the most bizarre, eyebrow-raising thefts of the past 12 months. They’re all Canadian, and they’re all baffling.
Giuseppe the taxidermied duckling
Our tour begins in Saskatoon, where a duckling flew the coop in March.
It was clear from the outset that the animal had received human help – because the duckling in this question had been taxidermied.
Ryan Johnston had bought Giuseppe the duckling for $70 and placed him in a perch overlooking Leopold’s Tavern.
Giuseppe quickly started to attract thieves, although Johnston and the rest of the bar staff were able to foil the first few attempts.
That changed one Saturday night when Giuseppe disappeared without a trace.
Saskatoon’s social media scene immediately lit up with news about the missing mascot. The next morning, a woman waking up from a party she had hosted found Giuseppe in her apartment. She recognized the duckling from the online campaign and made arrangements to have him returned.
Johnston said he planned to superglue Giuseppe to the bar to ensure he couldn’t take off again. Police said no charges would be laid.
A monkey, a lemur and a tortoise
Three animals worth a combined $20,000 were stolen from a zoo in Elmvale, Ont., in late May.
Police said a baby Gibbon monkey named Agnes, a lemur named JC and a tortoise named Stanley were taken from the private zoo. The theft garnered a wide reaction, with the zoo putting up a $10,000 reward and Grade 1 students wrote letters pleading for the animals’ safe return.
A 21-year-old man was arrested on theft and break-and-enter charges a few days after the burglary, and a 20-year-old man was later charged with the same offences. Their cases remain before the courts.
JC turned up in Quebec in early June, with Agnes being found at a home in the same province in October. Stanley has not been located.
$155,000 worth of Coors Light
An unusual theft in January had police wanting to hear from “anyone who may be aware of some odd circumstances around the sale of beer.”
Police in Delta, B.C. reported that a trailer containing nearly 2,600 cases of Coors Light beer was stolen on Jan. 20.
The trailer was found the next day, but all of the beer was gone.
The beer had an estimated street value of $155,000.
If it was all stolen by one man who kept it for personal use and abided by Canada’s alcohol consumption health guidelines – which recommend a 15-drink-a-week maximum for men over the age of 24 – he would have had enough Coors Light to last them until at least 2097.
A food truck
A thief in Calgary may have been opportunistic, or possibly just hungry, when he set his sights on a unique vehicle in September.
The thief’s target was what may have been the city’s first food truck – the mobile trailer used by local restaurant Tom’s House of Pizza.
In addition to being emblazoned with the pizzeria’s distinctive logo, the trailer contains a working kitchen including ovens. John Windle says it was built in 1990, long before the food truck craze, and taken to charitable events around Calgary.
The trailer was found a few days later, 50 kilometres outside the city in Carstairs, Alta. The logo had been painted over and the kitchen had been heavily damaged in what Windle suspected was an attempt to remove the vehicle’s copper wiring.
A van with a corpse inside
A vehicle thief in Red Deer, Alta. got far more than they bargained for on the last day of July.
The thief knew they were taking a vehicle that had been parked outside a funeral home, but were likely unaware that a dead body was inside. According to the RCMP, the body was about to be taken to a medical examiner.
The van was found later in the day in a residential neighbourhood. The body was still inside.
Many musical instruments
No theft is welcome, of course, but some heists hit a particularly sour note.
There were the 30 ceremonial drums stolen from a van in Calgary in May, most of which were later found by a man working in his yard.
Not long after that, classically trained tuba player Trishual Sharma – who has performed with the Arkells – discovered that his tuba had been stolen from a parked van in a closed garage in Toronto.
More recently, a trailer holding $70,000 worth of instruments belonging to a Kitchener, Ont. marching band was reported stolen in October.
Of course, this roundup of pilfered instruments wouldn’t be complete without a mention of the seven guitars stolen from rock band 54-40, five of which later turned up.
Banksy’s ‘Trolley Hunters’
An unauthorized display of original pieces by famed street artist Banksy opening in Toronto was peculiar enough on its own – and then one of the works was stolen.
Steve Lazarides, a former manager of Banksy who claimed not to have spoken to the artist in about a decade, opened the exhibition in June. He described it as the largest collection of Banksy’s art ever to be displayed in one place.
One of the pieces, a $45,000 work known as “Trolley Hunters,” was stolen within days of the exhibition’s opening.
Although the artwork has yet to turn up, one prankster found a way to have some Banksy-like fun with its disappearance.
Toronto-based artist Tharanga Ramanayake covertly hung a picture in the exhibition showing depictions of “Trolley Hunters” behind a barrier with a sign requesting $35 admission – the same entry price as was in place for the display itself.
Ramanayake told CTVNews.ca he pulled off the stunt to argue against attempts to profit off of street art. His piece was only displayed for a few minutes before it was noticed, taken down and returned to him by a security guard. The original “Trolley Hunters” print, meanwhile, has yet to turn up.
Riff-Raff the eagle
Stealing a cantankerous bird of prey worth an estimated $15,000? That’s ill-eagle.
Riff-Raff, a rare golden eagle housed at an aviary in Erin, Ont., was snatched out of her home in January.
Owner Janet Michaud described Riff-Raff as “very large” and “not very friendly,” saying she often acted aggressively toward strangers.
Michaud said the bird was often used in movie shoots, falconry demonstrations and school field trips. Her whereabouts remain unknown.
A cartful of butter
A mid-November theft in B.C. was so unusual that even the police couldn’t resist making jokes about it.
As Coquitlam RCMP described the situation, two men walked out of a supermarket in that community with a shopping cart full of butter – about $1,400 worth of it, in fact.
Cpl. Michael McLaughin said the two men had been charged with theft. One of them, he said, was a suspect in at least three other butter thefts in the Vancouver area.
“He was a bit slippery to catch but you know what they say; butter late than never,” McLaughlin said in a press release.
Hockey championship rings
From the Stanley Cup to the World Juniors, it was a banner year for people looking to steal rings signifying hockey greatness.
World Juniors and World Championship rings belonging to former NHL star Paul Kariya were stolen from the Hockey Hall of Fame in February.
In what Hall chairman Lanny McDonald said was the first theft in the museum’s 25-year history at its current location, a man found his way to displays of exhibits through a storage closet. Police said he grabbed the rings, walked out to a rented van and drove away.
A few months later and three provinces away, a Stanley Cup ring belonging to Normand Lacombe was stolen from the former NHLer’s vehicle. Lacombe was part of the Edmonton Oilers team that won the championship in 1988.
Lacombe was contacted a few days after the theft by people who claimed to be friends of the thief. The ring was returned during a meet-up at a Dairy Queen. No arrests were made.
A bathtub boat motor
Despite having more than a decade of experiencing in bathtub boat racing, Kurt Henderson dubbed this year’s season a write-off before it even began.
There was a simple reason for that: It’s hard to race a bathtub boat without a motor.
Somebody nicked the motor from the Nanaimo, B.C. man in May, weeks before the start of the season.
Without enough time to acquire a new motor and make all the required modifications to make it match his previous motor, Henderson said he would likely race in a lower division this year with whatever substitute motor he could cobble together.
A prosthetic arm
Twelve-year-old Callum Davie of Maple Ridge, B.C. had his bike stolen in October – as well as his prosthetic arm.
Davie was born without a left forearm. The prosthetic attached to the handlebars of his bike, allowing him to balance.
Although the bike was later tracked down and returned, the prosthetic was nowhere to be found.
Wigs for sick children
If a black market for human hair exists in Vancouver, then it got a big boost in September at the expense of young cancer patients.
At least 150 wigs were stolen during a break-in at a wig shop. The wigs, which each took up to 60 hours to make, were destined to be given to cancer patients at BC Children’s Hospital.
Police said the wigs were worth about $2,500 apiece, putting the total value of the haul somewhere around $375,000.
Sixty-six of the wigs later turned up in a bag left in the hallway of a Vancouver hotel.
Gold from the Mint
Officials at the Royal Canadian Mint reported in April that “a small amount” of gold had been stolen during the previous month.
That “small amount” turned out to be about two kilograms, worth an estimated $110,000.
An employee was fired as a result of the theft. The gold was not recovered.
Nothing was said publicly about how the two one-kilogram gold discs were removed from the premises. In a separate case, a man received a 30-month jail sentence in 2017 for smuggling $190,000 worth of gold out of the Mint in his rectum.
