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:
Historians expect to find even more in the park if they keep digging, based on previous documentation—at least a few more machine guns, if they can use ground-penetrating radar to search.
Professional hoser with fudd-ish leanings.
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Trudud still hasn’t come out his cry closet.
Why not? In the 1990s (I believe) a rare bulldozer-bladed Sherman tank was unearthed at a New York insane asylum and restored to a museum.
There are rumors that the aircraft disposal site at Kingman, Arizona decided it was easier to dig a giant grave and shove WWII surplus aircraft into it and in Burma, they found Spitfires buried in their shipping crates, eventually sold to museums and collectors.
With the advent of ground-penetrating radar, what ELSE will we find in our lifetime??