Another instance of a car targeted with vandalism because of Alberta plates.
Janelle Syring, a health care worker, returned to her car after a ride on the North Star Rails To Trails on Sunday to find “Gome Home” scrawled across the door with permanent marker. The car was in the parking lot near Wildstone Golf Course, Syring said. The act of vandalism was not witnessed.
Syring is a University of British Columbia family medicine resident based out of Vancouver and is in the Kootenays for a few months, for training at the East Kootenay Regional Hospital. She has been dividing her time between Vancouver and Calgary, as her husband is a paediatric surgeon at the Alberta Children’s Hospital in Calgary, where they have a home.
There have been quite a few instances of cars being subjected to vandalism in this way.
“The person made a lot of assumptions when they committed this act,” Syring said. “I could be in Cranbrook because I have a family member that is ill and is in the hospital [for example].
“I am an essential health care worker, based out of BC/UBC. And to top this off, I am an Indigenous health care worker.”
There is a certain irony with this latter point, at being told to “go home,” Syring said.
George and Rachel Freitag, at Elizabeth Lake Lodge, where Syring was staying, were able to remove the permanent marker from Syring’s car — “a multi-step process,” Syring said, using Goo Gone autmotive spray get to take off the top layer, then an application of Carnauba car wax to finish the job.
Syring said her staff doctor at the EKRH was appalled at the news of the vandalism, and called up Mayor Lee Pratt to let him know.
