THUNDER BAY — A Thunder Bay man hopes city snowplow operators exercise greater caution when clearing Hill Street between Oliver Road and Queen Street.
Don Williams was upset Thursday when he discovered a snowplow had dislodged a number of large, flat stones lining the curb in his Hill Street South neighbourhood.
He said that, rather than concrete, the stones were laid down by the former City of Port Arthur a century or so ago as curbing.
Williams realized what had happened when he was shovelling his driveway.
"I was wondering in the first place, where was all this dirt coming from? Then I noticed a big boulder. I turned around and looked across the street and saw a bunch of other boulders," he said in an interview Friday.
Williams said it was then that he realized they were "the heritage stones from the curbs from a hundred years ago."
Concerned that a passing vehicle could be damaged by hitting the stones, he contacted the city roads department.
When a crew arrived in a truck, Williams said, they told him they would take the stones away, and weren't aware that they were heritage objects.
"It bothered me all night. I decided I gotta make some phone calls," he said.
On Friday, Williams contacted Councillor Rebecca Johnson who promised to take the matter up with the appropriate city departments.
He wants the stones stored over the winter, and reinstalled along the curb in the spring.
"It's a heritage thing. You can't just throw that out. It was in the paper a few years ago, but a lot of people don't seem to know about this," Williams said.
Johnson said she hopes the city roads and archives departments will deal with the matter appropriately.
