As municipal election campaigning begins in earnest, one candidate feels targeted by a string of sign thefts.
Luke Robinson, who is running for council, has lost of 20 signs to nighttime thieves with unknown motives. "They've been disappearing slowly during the night," Robinson explained. "They're there the night before, and the next day they're gone."
The thefts have been occurring steadily since the campaign officially began, but a bit of a break in the case came Oct. 1, when 12 of his signs turned up at Riverside Elementary School.
The signs haven't been vandalized or destroyed, simply uprooted from their homes and taken away, but Robinson still feels that this is a political message targeted directly at him - especially because, according to assistant senior elections official Brian Taylor, no other candidates have reported anywhere near that number of signs missing.
"It's more than just a prank," said Robinson. "I had some screwed to people's fences, and they were literally ripped right off. It's one thing to pull a sign out of a lawn, it's another to rip it off a wall."
"At first I attributed it to maybe prankster children or youth who like to do that sometimes, but when I started noticing that they're all going missing, I changed my mind," continued Robinson. The signs on his own lawn, as well as that of his neighbour across the street, have gone missing three times.
While stolen signs are not a regular fixture in Thompson's political scene, it has happened before. In 1990, a pile of signs belonging to provincial Progressive Conservative candidate Loretta Clarke was dumped in front of the Thompson Citizen office overnight.
"I buy these signs, I pay for them with my own money," said Robinson. "It's not other people that pay for them. They're not free - an average sign is $15 or more."
"It's not going to deter me," he added. "I am still determined to run for city council. Whoever's doing this, if they're trying to discourage me, it just makes me more adamant."
