Wave of vandalism hits Strathmore

Strathmore has been hit with a wave of vandalism over the weekend with Hope Community Covenant Church and the Tom Sadler Bridge sign being the latest targets.

Office manager and bookkeeper for the church Brandi Bobee said they saw the vandalism on the side of the church this weekend.

"I was just really disappointed that somebody thought that it was okay to put really vulgar, awful words on our wall."  

Brandi also explained that local residents came out and helped clean up the church out of the goodness of their hearts.

"It's just amazing that these people just walked up to our door and said, hey, because our caretaker was out scrubbing when they showed up and they were like, hey, can we help you get this off the wall and they sort of took over and did their very best to get the graffiti off the wall."

The staff at Hope Community Covenant Church hasn't had a chance to be all together yet to discuss if they are going to the RCMP as of yet.

Local photographer Sean McCormick was out for a walk around lunchtime today and walked across the Tom Sadler bridge to discover that there was vandalism on the sign which bothered him quite a lot.

"I don't know Tom Sadler personally, but I know who he is, and I know what he's done for the town, and I really didn't like seeing the disrespect for his monument, that bothered me."

McCormick feels vandalism like this is a waste of people's time and resources, McCormick wanted to clean the sign himself but didn't want to damage the sign further.

"If there's something straightforward like somebody tossed garbage around, I could just pick it up but in this case, I looked it up and to remove spray paint you need to use a lacquer thinner, and I don't know what that would do to the underlying substrate of the sign. So, I decided I would leave it alone and report it to the town."

McCormick said that he didn't want to make it worse because it would probably be far cheaper to pay someone to clean it up than get a new sign. 

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