News that a white pony with a pink mane was roaming around Île Sainte-Hélène, just off the island of Montreal, turns out to have been a hoax launched by a program produced by the TVA network.
“We’re just pretty happy that there isn’t an animal on the territory and there’s no such thing as an animal being in a stressful position,” said Gabrielle Meloche, a spokesperson for the Park Jean-Drapeau Society (SPJD).
“But when there is a missing person or missing animal, we’re not taking any risks.”
Rumours started after alleged pictures of the animal surfaced on the internet. Serge Sasseville, Senior VP, Corporate and Institutional Affairs and TVA tweeted a press release late this afternoon stating that the publication of the photo was a social media experiment by one of their programs, a show built around the internet called Vlog.
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Park Jean-Drapeau Society (SPJD) told Global News it has received various calls and messages starting Monday from people concerned about the pony’s safety.
After the “initial sighting” on Monday, the SPJD deployed extra efforts, including asking its 24-hour security personnel to be on the lookout, to locate the roaming animal.
“I’m pretty happy that this is over because we couldn’t find the horse, so I was afraid that something might have happened to the animal,” Meloche told Global News.
“We already have a lot of teams that work on the field, so we just added the task for them to look out. They changed where they were going. So, it didn’t end up being a waste of money for us, maybe a little waste of time.”
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It also checked with its partners, including La Ronde and the Montreal Casino, to make sure the pony did not escaped from one of their Easter activities.
The Montreal SPCA said Wednesday it was looking into the incident. Both the Montreal and Longueuil police forces had stated they were aware of the situation.