A 101-year-old message has been discovered by workers removing the base of a former statue in front of the Manitoba legislature.
Workers have been removing, piece by piece, the large base that held a statue of Queen Victoria. The statue was toppled last year by protesters. Its head was removed and thrown in the nearby Assiniboine River.
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Queen Victoria statue at Manitoba Legislative Building torn down
The base is being removed to make way for a replacement.
When crews recently removed one section of the base, they found a broken bottle and a note that had been placed inside. The note was an apology of sorts, dated July 30, 1921, — an era when alcohol was outlawed.
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“It says, on account of the Prohibition, we are unable to adhere to the custom of depositing a bottle of brandy under the stone, for which we are extremely sorry, I believe is what it says,” Reg Helwer, minister responsible for government services, said Wednesday as he tried to make out the wording on the worn note.
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The paper was signed by a stonecutter, other workers and a bureaucrat — the province’s deputy minister of public works at the time.
The government is now working out how to best preserve the document and what to do with it.
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Helwer said it’s not the first time an item from Manitoba’s early days as a province has been discovered unexpectedly.
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“Apparently there are things of that nature around the legislature. As we move stones, we do discover things like this,” he said.
“To me, it’s a very neat story, especially with the age of the building, just recently celebrating a hundred years not long ago.”
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