Chris Doucette
The Toronto Sun
Residents of a quiet Pickering community were shocked to find an elementary school in their neighbourhood was smeared with hateful graffiti over the Easter weekend.
The anti-Semitic spray-painted messages, which are now under investigation by Durham police, were discovered Sunday at the back of Highbush Public School on Strouds Lane — northwest of Whites Rd. and Sheppard Ave.
‘DISGUSTI NG’
“It’s disgusting,” Erick Mariani said yesterday after seeing the graffiti for the first time while walking his dog behind the school.
“It’s not right,” added Mariani, who lives nearby and works as a teacher at a different school.
Several of the school’s brick walls and parts of the playground were vandalized, but two walls in particular contained especially disturbing messages.
On those walls the vandals spray-painted “We hate Jews” and “I love Hitler” in bold, black lettering.
They also wrote, “Die Jews,” in red paint, next to a set of doors where children would normally enter the school had they not been off for the day.
Cuss words and male genitalia adorned yet another wall, while “3PG” and “BAB” were splashed around the other messages and on the concrete ground.
Kathleen McElhinney took her kids on their day off to play baseball in the field behind Highbush and found herself having to explain the hateful graffiti to the four boys, aged 7, 10, 12 and 14.
“It’s unfortunate,” she said, shaking her head. “It’s hard to believe anyone would do such a thing in this day and age.”
“Honestly, my initial reaction was that it made me sick,” said Samantha Warden, 16, who lives in the area and was out for a bike ride when she spotted the graffiti.
Tres Chevolleau, also 16, who was visiting from Toronto, agreed with his friend Warden.
“The people who did this may have thought it was funny, but it’s not funny … and it’s not okay,” he said.
Many in the neighbourhood suspect local teenagers are behind the nasty graffiti. And they doubt either the Jewish Passover or the Christian Easter holiday had anything to do with the incident.
Len Rudner, of the Canadian Jewish Congress, said the incident highlights the fact that more education is needed even though it’s been more than 60 years since the Holocaust.
“If there are individuals … who are motivated to put messages of hatred up on a public school, then I think that is an obvious concern for the entire community, in Pickering and elsewhere,” he said.
It’s unclear exactly when the school was vandalized, but police said the vandalism was reported to them Sunday around 9:45 p.m.
Anyone with information about the vandalism is urged to call police at 905-579-1520, or Durham Crime Stoppers at 1-800-222-TIPS.
