Kingston’s Royal Canadian Legion Limestone City Branch 560 on Montreal Street continues to be the target of vandals.
The latest incident happened earlier in the week. Allan Jones is the president of the branch. He says they’d like to fly their flags but they can’t because most of the flag poles have been compromised.
“They’re taking the ropes, which is very, very frustrating. It’s the third time, you see behind me the flag poles the two at the front. They took the ropes last week, we believe Wednesday night, overnight they took the ropes,” he said.
Ropes and clasps have also gone missing from all four of the flag poles behind the building. All told, six of the Legion’s eight flag poles need fixing. And while some may think it’s as easy as getting new rope and fixing it yourself, Jones says it’s not that simple.
“It is a big deal because to replace these ropes we have to get a boom truck. And the rope is expensive, we don’t use cheap rope. The clasps — stainless steel clasps, they’re all gone and they just keep coming and cutting them out. Now our flags mean a lot to us. We fly our flags whenever we lose a member, we fly our flags at half staff if some dignitary dies — we fly them at half staff. We’re proud of our flag — they’re there out of respect, they’re there to show our love of our country, respect for our veterans, respect for our fallen comrades — we can’t fly our flags right now because the ropes are gone,” Jones said.