‘It’s a piece of history’: Antique wagon stolen from Westbank Museum – Okanagan

The Westbank Museum is asking for public help to recover a stolen exhibit.

“As we were coming back out we noticed, ‘Wait a second, our wagon is gone,’” said Brenden Studer, Westbank Museum coordinator.

When staff walked into work Monday morning, they noticed their antique luggage cart had been allegedly stolen.

“We noticed that it’s gone missing and we’re not entirely sure when it left but we do believe it’s been rolled away,” said museum executive director, Jeremiah Ryder.

Ryder says the artifact was donated to the museum about 10 years ago and it occupied a space in front of the building since then.

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“You would commonly see something like this at a rail station but we never had railways here at Westbank so it more than likely came from the ferry docks from the water that used to be here,” said Ryder.

“It’s a piece of history and it’s something that we’re trying to preserve,” said Studer.

The theft comes at a time when the museum has been dealing with ongoing problems of people hanging around the building at night.

“We’ve had bylaw here twice this week to clean up some encampment. One person made a massive cardboard bed and left food waste all over the place and just this morning and yesterday they came to clean up some drug paraphernalia,” said Ryder.

The alleged theft has been reported to RCMP and according to Ryder it’s the third incident that warranted police involvement in the last 12 months.

“We did have a gentleman make violent threats to us last year and then we did have a window smashed in our cabin over the winter,” said Ryder.

The museum is now asking whoever took the antique to return it, no questions asked.

“If I come in one day and it’s just sitting out front and nobody wants to say anything, awesome,” said Ryder.

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