It is an ongoing problem across Canada, and indeed in many countries.
Thieves are targetting memorials for the metal. Many of the thefts involve plaques on cenotaphs and other memorials to veterans. These are often made of bronze or brass, which are expensive metals.
The latest incident involved a heavy bronze memorial in Calgary, Alberta in the Veteran Honour Garden.
Police suspect that due to the weight of the memorial, several people and a vehicle are likely to have been involved.
In May of this year, thieves stole 29 bronze plaques from a cemetery in Granby Quebec. While in Winnipeg Manitoba in 2012, thieves pried off several cast iron plaques around a tribute to Scottish immigrants who settled in western Canada.
Several commemorative plaques were stolen from memorials across New Brunswick in 2011. In Moncton, Dan Hicks — the supervisor of Parks and Grounds, Recreation, Parks, Tourism and Culture, said the thieves didn’t even wait for nightfall to steal a plaque next to the big steam locomotive in Centennial Park. “They actually pulled a car over on the side of the road and got out and absconded the plaque right in broad daylight.”
Last year, in the small town of Dunnotar Manitoba, thieves targetted bronze plaques honouring fallen war veterans on a cenotaph and another to an Olympic athlete.
In 2013 Saint-Eustache Quebec, a life-sized bronze statue of Paul Sauvé, a former Premier of the province. The statue weighed 181 kilograms and was taken from a park that bears his name. It was the seconde time the statue was stolen. The first time was in 2008, and a few weeks later police found pieces of it in a scrap yard in Laval about 20 kilometres away. The town had spent $30,000 for the now also stolen second statue.
There have been literally hundreds of bronze and brass plaques and other objects taken from commemorative cenotaphs, sites, and cemeteries all across Canada. These are almost always sold to unscrupulous scrap metal dealers. The thieves get a pittance of the replacement cost which is often so high that in many cases, the objects are not replaced.
Not just Canada
The same problem happens in many other countries, For example, in just one of hundreds of similar cases, in January of this year a bronze plaque on the memorial to American writer and humourist Mark Twain was stolen from his gravesite in Elmira, New York.
In a rare case of successful investigation and prosecution a scrap metal dealer in England was sentenced to jail after police found several hundred chopped up memorial plaques in his possession which had been stolen from locations around England
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