Nothing says “I love you” like a pair of poisonous arrows straight to the heart, metaphorically speaking.
That’s the gift a North Vancouver man received from his late father: a pair of poisonous arrows from the Maasai tribe in Kenya.
The senior’s father brought them back from Africa in the late 1940’s and gifted them to his son, who has now handed them over to North Vancouver RCMP.
He considered them to be a weapon and did not want the 70-cm-long arrows to be in his possession any longer.
But the RCMP believed there might be some cultural significance to the heirlooms and suggested the Museum of Anthropology at UBC take them into their archives.
“I’m sure there is an intriguing story behind these two arrows,” said Cpl. Richard De Jong of the North Vancouver RCMP. “It’s encouraging to see the owner doing the right thing, by turning them over to the police and to see the arrows end up on display in a museum.”
A spokesperson for the university says a curator at the museum has agreed to look at the arrow, but it has not yet been determined if they will one day be on display to the public.