‘Described as a cannon’: Crews dig up WWI artillery piece at PNE in B.C.

Crews excavating the site of a new amphitheatre at the PNE in Vancouver last Thursday have uncovered a piece of Canadian military history — what’s believed to be a captured German gun from the First World War.

“They picked it up, or were able to lift it with a crane, and discovered it was what was initially described as a cannon,” PNE spokesperson Laura Ballance said Tuesday.

“Certainly one of the questions that was asked very quickly … is it loaded?”

No, it wasn’t loaded. And no, it wasn’t actually a cannon either.

1:54 How a WWI artillery weapon ended up buried beneath Vancouver’s PNE

Archeologists and military historians have since determined what work crews located was a field artillery piece, likely more than a century old.

“Circa 1914, and at the time the Canadian military had a presence here, they had a building not far from here for many years where we believe it may have been stored at one point, and then for some reason, it ended up under the asphalt of what people across British Columbia know as the PNE amphitheatre, which will be the site of the new Freedom Mobile Arch next summer,” Ballance said.

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“I was told by the city archeologists that they’ve never found anything like this anywhere in the city. We certainly haven’t found anything like this,” Ballance said.

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Hastings Park and the current PNE site have a long history with the Canadian Forces, and the site was used by the military — primarily for training, parading and deploying troops — during the First World War, between 1914 and 1918.

James Calhoun, curator of Seaforth Highlanders of Canada Museum, said the recovered artillery piece is actually believed to be a German gun that was captured by Canadian troops in the First World War.

It, and many like it, were returned to Canada as trophies following the war, and were staged in city parks and civic buildings in cities across the country,” he explained.

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Calhoun said the guns began to rust and decay in the 1920s and 1930s, and were moved to Hastings Park to be destroyed or scrapped.

That plan was put on hold following a public outcry, but when the Second World War began, many of them were cut up and their metal used to create new weapons to fight the Axis powers.

“During the Second World War there were rumours that some of them were buried at the PNE, and it turns out this is one of the guns that was buried,” he said.

“We can only speculate as to why they were buried. It might be because they were heavy and too cumbersome to move, the gun today weighs probably a tonne and a half. It might just be because somebody wanted to keep them. So our hope is there’s more guns buried there.”

The PNE is currently working with City of Vancouver archeologists and archivists to determine the artifact’s history, along with the next steps to return it to the Canadian Forces as a museum piece.