Violation and betrayal are being felt by the Cape George community after their church bell was found smashed into pieces.
Community member Kate MacEachern made it her mission to find St. David’s United Church’s bell after retrieving Holy Rosary Church’s bell that was taken from Ballantyne’s Cove a year ago.
She shares with our newsroom both bells were stolen by the same thieves from the churches that are 1.7 km away from each other.
“It’s one thing to be so morally bankrupt to rob a church, a churchyard, sacred ground. But it’s something entirely different to take that [bell] into a barn with witnesses and smash it to smithereens,” she expressed.
“I have no idea how low a person can possibly ever be in their life to think that that is acceptable or funny or that they’re ever going to get away with it.”
MacEachern says she heard it was purposely broken down very fast to try to ensure that it was never recovered after her pursuit the other bell last year.
According to her, the thieves made a very good attempt to scrap it in different loads, but she had already contacted all the scrapyards in the area and received a big load of pieces from one metal scrapper, while some other pieces were handed to her directly.
She says it was awful to see the historical bell that was a gift to the church from St. Ninian’s School smashed into so many pieces.
“We did recover about 95% of it. We’ve started reconstruction basically just to see how much is actually still missing and presumably will probably never be seen again,” shared MacEachern.
She says the bell gave a sense of community and safety which is everything the area residents stand for.
The man who managed to fix the bell from Holy Rosary Church is doing some research to figure out the best plan moving forward and the trustees for St. David’s United Church are having a meeting this week to discuss which option or direction they’re going to go in, stated MacEachern.
She says a few people did get paid for sharing information, but the actual reward she posted was not given out.
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