Vernon museum tagged with graffiti

The Greater Vernon Museum and Archives building was tagged with graffiti this week but its executive director is just grateful the tags didn’t have offensive slogans.

The words “survival,” “sheesh,” and “head on straight, mask on crooked,” can be seen on the roof of the building, painted sometime overnight from Sunday, June 6, to Monday, June 7.

The building is owned by the City of Vernon, but the Regional District of the North Okanagan leases the space from the City and has an operating agreement. Regional district and city crews will be on site this morning to clean it up, said Steve Fleck, executive director of the museum.

“Thankfully it was all put on the tin sheeting… and it was on all sides, and it was definitely done by people on our roof,” he said. “I’m really thankful that it was kind of (benign) graffiti.”

There are cameras on site but they didn’t catch images of the perpetrators, he said.

“I was a school principal for almost 25 years, so I’ve seen a lot of graffiti, and things like (this) drawn by children and youth on walls, so for me, maybe it wasn’t as offensive as it would be for some people. I just see it as more of a nuisance and I was really thankful it wasn’t something gross or offensive to people that we didn’t want to be associated with,” Fleck said.

Sometimes, taggers want the attention, so he tries it best to not give that angry reaction they might be looking for, he said.

The RCMP has been contacted but did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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