South Fort George pepper box handgun stolen from Exploration Place

Exploration Place in Prince George was the target of a pair of recent break-ins.

“It’s shocking actually, it’s the first time in 30 years that anyone’s ever broken into the building and come in to steal something and now we’ve had it happen twice in two weeks,” said Tracy Calogheros, CEO of the Exploration Place.

“[Thursday] night, someone smashed in the main door of our Elements retail, but they knew where they were headed. They cased the joint. They went straight through the building to a case in our Ted Williams History Hall, which then they smashed open with an axe and stole a small Pepperbox Handgun.”

Calogheros noted the gun is inoperable, and there’s no monetary value to the gun.

“From the point of view of telling a community story, it’s from South Fort George, it was likely a saloon girl’s gun, it was dug up in someone’s yard in their garden several years ago,” she explained.

“It was really a centrepiece of the South Fort George/Hotel Northern story that we we’re telling, and that’s the worst part about all of this. The artifacts in the museum are community artifacts, these are objects that we all hold dear, and to have someone target the collection is just shocking.”

Calogheros noted the first break-in was a retail theft.

“They smashed the window out in Elements, they also had targeted the two most expensive items in the gift shop,” she said.

“One was a mineral sample they smashed and actually made worthless and the purpose of stealing was lost, and the other object they took was a large, hand-carved feasting bowl they also smashed and made unusable. In the end run all it does is cost the charity a whole bunch of money for lost products and smashed windows, and it really eats away at the public trust that the museum is supposed to represent where we hold our collective memories.”

Calogheros asks that people in the area of the museum be vigilant and report any unusual or suspicious activity.

“We’ve all got to come together to make sure that we’re still going to be able to bring objects into this community for everyone to enjoy and be able to keep them safe,”

“In the meantime, I will see what we can do at the museum to change security yet again, but we are heavily secured, this is alarming.”