A recent act of vandalism in a Tecumseh park will cost the town up to $150,000 to fix and is forcing the postponement of a popular fishing derby.
The fire was over the last weekend in May.
Someone set fire to the wooden boardwalk in Lakewood Park North.
"The damage was fairly minimal," said Director of Community and Recreation Services Beth Gignac. "We got lucky. A resident in the adjacent retirement community saw the fire burning on the boardwalk in the middle of the night and called 911. Tecumseh Fire was able to respond quite quickly and put the fire out."
Town officials could have replaced it with another wooden boardwalk, but given a significant increase in vandalism decided to go with something that wouldn't burn. A concrete path will go in instead.
"We didn't think it was prudent to maintain a wooden boardwalk anymore," she said.
The work starts this week, but the fishing derby will wait.
"I expect this project to take about two weeks, and we've been talking with the Optimist Club to reschedule the fishing derby for two, two-and-a-half weeks from now," said Gignac.
Gignac said the town recently hired security guards to patrol public parks to discourage vandalism, which she says runs the gamut from smashing toilets in park washrooms to removing flowers from municipal gardens.
"We're really disappointed that some folks in our community continue to think that public amenities are open targets," she said. "This just costs money, money that many communities aren't planning on spending in these ways, and it really detracts from our work and our efforts in other areas."
Gignac said Tecumseh is not alone in noticing an increase in vandalism. She's heard from colleagues across Canada that it's increased "ridiculously" since the pandemic.
"We don't know why," she said. "There's some self-regulation that needs to happen with folks, and I think we, as a group of people who live in any community, need to say unequivocally, that this is not acceptable."
Gignac urges residents to report vandalism when they see it.
