Historic 110-year-old bell damaged in the Sault

Staff at Sault Ste. Marie Museum arrived to work Friday morning to see an unfortunate surprise.

Overnight, someone had spray painted graffiti onto the 110-year-old tower bell, located next to the building's main entrance on Queen Street.

"It’s definitely disappointing." said William Hollingshead, the museum’s curator.

Over the pandemic, the bell – which once sat atop the museum – was moved between the museum and the public sidewalk.

"I think the intention of putting it out there was to make the artifact accessible to the community."

Ward 1 Councillor Sonny Spina told CTV News he was "saddened to hear that the historic bell was vandalized."

"Historic pieces like this one can not be replaced or easily repaired," he said.

After researching over the long weekend ways in which they could safely clean the brass bell Hollingshead said the museum staff were surprised again Wednesday morning.

"City staff, I believe from Public Works, were using a pressure washer to remove the spray paint," he said.

The curator said while the initiative to clean up the graffiti was appreciated, the format caused further damage to the history piece – adding it was also done without the museum's knowledge.

Following an act of vandalism last week the 110-year-old Sault Ste. Marie Museum bell was further damaged by efforts to remove graffiti on Wednesday. (Cory Nordstrom/CTV News Northern Ontario)Nicole Curry is the president of the city’s Municipal Heritage Committee, she said she sees this as a teaching moment when it comes to the cleaning of historic objects or properties.

"You can see some of the patina is sort of damaged,” said Curry.

“What we're going to have to do is see if we can even out that patina, and even put a coating to preserve it."

Both Hollingshead and Curry said that the building has been tagged before and it is unfortunately not uncommon in the area.

Hollingshead even suggested that this could be an opportunity to rethink what is and isn't appropriate for graffiti – suggesting a graffiti wall as a solution to mitigate the issue as a whole.

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The Sault Downtown Association’s executive director Nicholas Luck said graffiti and tagging are an issue that has never been this prevalent.

Following an act of vandalism last week the 110-year-old Sault Ste. Marie Museum bell was further damaged by efforts to remove graffiti on Wednesday. (Cory Nordstrom/CTV News Northern Ontario)"The example of the bell at the museum is really symbolic to an ongoing issue that's getting worse this year,” said Luck.

“We're seeing tags on buildings and structures we've never seen before."

This latest incident has united a number of organizations and officials that said they plan on meeting to further discuss action that can be taken against graffiti tagging.

A spokesperson for Sault police said the incident was not reported to police and notes that there has only been "about 5 reports this year for graffiti."

The museum does have cameras, but none pointed at the bell.

As for its restoration, museum officials are working together with the Municipal Heritage Committee to consult experts on the work.

Officials said they believe the restoration can be completed before the fall and the 810-pound bell likely does not need to be moved for the work to be done.