Construction Uncovers Machine Guns, Artillery At Canadian Park

If you dug a hole at your local park, what would you expect to find (besides unwanted, but well-deserved attention from your local police)? In the case of workers at Hastings Park in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, they found something a lot more exciting than a long-lost toy or even a time capsule. They hit a mother lode of vintage firepower.

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Unearthed weapons

The firepower in question is a German howitzer and machine guns from World War 1, as well as even older British nine-pounder cannons that date to the 1870s. The first weapons discovered were found by work crews prepping a site for a new amphitheatre in Hastings Park; since then, further digging revealed more vintage militaria, resulting in a fascinating haul that leaves many questioning how the stuff got into the park in the first place.

According to a CBC report, local military historians speculate the old British cannons came from the Esquimalt naval base, when the British government turned it over to the newly-founded Canadian navy around 1910; it had been controlled by the British navy since 1842.

As for the World War I materiel, records indicate the guns were brought back as war trophies by locally-recruited military units, say historians. These would have been officially-sanctioned prizes intended to commemorate the country’s participation in the war. For some reason that’s now lost to time, they ended up unwanted and unused, eventually disappearing into the ground at the park. Now, historians want to clean them up and send them to Canadian military museums, although CBC’s video below shows they’re in quite rough shape: