A ribbon cutting was held in Port Elgin this morning for the rainbow crosswalk outside Saugeen District Senior School.
Saugeen Shores Mayor Luke Charbonneau, Deputy Mayor Don Matheson represented the Town, while Saugeen Shores police also attended along with Bruce Power Director of Corporate Communications John Peevers and other members of the community.
Charbonneau says. “It’s important, I think now, maybe more than ever to have symbols of hope and optimism and symbols to support our LGBTQ2+ community. I think it’s a really bright and bold statement of the community’s inclusiveness and diversity and the fact that we really embrace our LGBTQ2+ citizens.”
Kincardine Pride President Fort Papalia says,”The statistics and facts show that LGBTQ youth are the most vulnerable for mental health, isolation..especially in a rural community and students from rural settings, they’re already isolated, in many ways marginalized and this is here as Mayor Charbonneau said as a symbol of hope especially for youth.”
Saugeen Shores Deputy Mayor Don Matheson made the initial push to get the project started, “There wasn’t anything in Bruce or Huron County like that, so I brought it to the school and I talked to the kids. Our kids and our school were all for it. They supported it,” says Matheson noting the community had a plan to raise some money for it but COVID-19 changed that plan. Matheson says Bruce Power stepped in to help, donating $1,000 to the project, and the Town covered $4,000.
Bruce Power’s John Peevers says, “It’s a great symbol, to kids and people of all ages that we are an inclusive, welcoming community.”
Just days after the crosswalk was painted, Saugeen Shores police released a statement saying they received a report of vandalism to the crosswalk saying, last Saturday, (August 29th) vehicles made several passes though it spinning their tires and defacing the surface. Police said Sunday (Aug 30) the investigation was being treated as a hate motivated crime.
Acting Police Chief Kevin Zettel says the matter is now in the hands of their Criminal Investigations Unit.
Zettel says there’s a difference between Saturday’s tracks and the few that have appeared on the crosswalk since, “I would say it’s the intent. When we saw the others ones from earlier (Saturday) they started prior to and continued all the way through. If somebody is turning a corner on a slippery road and their tires inadvertently slip, that would be driver error. It’s the intent that we look at when it comes to whether there was intention to cause damage or to move the tires that way.”
He adds, “We’re monitoring it and we’re working with the community and hopefully the intention was not to be a hate or bias motivated crime. Hopefully it was just poor decisions and we can move forward and hopefully with the social media and media putting it out, people learn form their mistakes and we won’t see any more of it.”
As for those lighter tracks that have shown up since, Zettel notes, “The new paint is slippery compared to the roads, “You can see that it’s not continuing onto the pavement, it’s just a bit on there. What those ones were are undetermined right now, I wouldn’t want to classify that as hate bias motivated crime.”
