Volunteer finds practice bomb at beach community rummage sale

An unusual donation to the Victoria Beach annual rummage sale sparked an evacuation and a call to the bomb unit. Daniel Halmarson reports.

An unusual donation to a Manitoba beach community’s rummage sale sparked an evacuation and an investigation by a military bomb squad.

Elaine Fletcher was helping set up the rummage sale and flea market Tuesday at the community centre in Victoria Beach, Man.

Fletcher is a 20-year volunteer with the Merry Makers, the organization that runs the event as a fundraiser for the club. Each year, she sets up a table affectionately dubbed the Fabulous Table—the place for collectables and precious finds that come with a slightly higher price tag than the other knickknacks that go for a quarter.

Another volunteer told her he had added a new addition to the Fabulous Table that he wanted her to see.

“I went over to the table, and I thought, ‘Holy smokes. That looks like a bomb,’” she told CTV News in a phone interview.

She picked it up, noticing how heavy it was and began to get nervous.

“I thought, ‘I don’t feel comfortable having this at my table.’”

She set it down outside and called police.

Item to be dealt with in ‘safe manner’: 17 Wing

Victoria Beach Police Chief Mike MacKinnon said police took extreme caution responding to the bomb scare, evacuating the area and calling in the Canadian Military Explosive Disposal Unit (EDU).

An alert was sent out, warning residents of what appeared to be a Second World War-era bomb at the centre.

MacKinnon said the EDU used X-rays to examine the item and determined it was a “modular practice bomb” that produces white smoke when it hits the ground.

“They would drop these bombs in training exercises, and the white smoke would indicate where they’re at so they could go back and pick them up and reuse them,” he said.

Once the EDU finished examining the item, it was safely removed from the area, MacKinnon said.

A spokesperson for 17 Wing confirmed the object was taken to St. Charles Range “where it will be dealt with in a safe manner.”

MacKinnon said they do not know how the bomb ended up at the rummage sale.

“There’s a lot of history out in Victoria Beach, lots of old cottages and things like that,” he said. “I’m sure the person who dropped it off—perhaps it was in a box packed in the corner—didn’t even really realize it, and here we are.”

Fletcher also has a theory.

“There used to be a military base in Victoria Beach during the war. It was down where the soccer field is in the restricted area.”

Still, the bomb scare did not diffuse volunteers’ efforts to fundraise for their club. The rummage sale is set to return this weekend, MacKinnon said.

- With files from CTV’s Daniel Halmarson