Last month, the rewarded Taber 77 rewarded reservoir museum hired a new manager, Taia Debona. She was immediately able to work on old boxes in the archives – an intimidating task for such a small organization.
“We have a lot of collections and because I’m new, I’m not really familiar with everything we have and try to reorganize everything,” said Debona.
About a month after being hired, his first real test arrived. She made her first group visit to the Southern Alberta Museum.
“I was a little nervous because it was a bunch of adolescents and I said to myself, how will I occupy a bunch of adolescents?”
However, the group came from a single demographic group – air cadets. It gave him an idea to make the visit more interesting.
“I thought, well, I should have all our war things because I thought they might be interested in it,” said Debona.
It was at this stage, a week ago, when things became interesting at the museum. Buried in a plastic box was an object of baseball size.
“There, sitting in one of the boxes was pomegranate. At the time, I was just thinking, oh it’s just an accessory because in the same box, there were tons of accessories and toys for children.”
Without really paying too much attention, Debona closed the box and put it back on the shelf. She organized the tour and everything continued as usual for seven days.
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But then, Thursday, she and her partner died again all the boxes when they opened the same as before.
“We opened the box and have somehow had a better glance and we went, it’s metal – it’s not plastic. Then I picked it up and you hear the kind of rattle and it’s heavy in your hand. I look at it and I go, it looks really real,” said Debona.
His partner, having learned of the appearance of various weapons of the Second World War from video games, thought that it looked like an MK. 2 pomegranate, also called pineapple pomegranate.
“So, that’s when we start to panic. Our brains did not work and it’s funny because there was, like an hour when we just placed it on the ground.”
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Debona says he said to another colleague who was surprised not to have already called the police.
“The first thing, she was like,” call the police, of course! ” But for any reason, I didn’t want them to show up and (it turns out to be false). “”
When they contacted the taber police, she says the police took it seriously and evacuated the area.
On the Facebook page of the Taber Police Service, they ordered the public to stay away.
“In an abundance of prudence, the museum and the center of Aquafun have been closed. Taber police will stay on the scene until the bombs were eliminated by grenade. ”
It was enough for “the Taber Peter Parker” to go to the site.
“I saw that the police had published an article on their Facebook page saying that there is an intact grenade found at Taber Museum, so I rushed here on my bike,” said Jordan White, the creator and publisher of the Fire_man_2017 popular media account.
White listens regularly to a scanner for the activities of the region’s fire services and it says that it is important to hold those of its informed community whenever something happens.
“I have an amateur interest in the fire service. So, I will go around with my portable scanner, which I bought for more than $ 1,000 and I will film and take photos of the fire service and publish everything that is happening on the scanner.
He was on the scene for a few hours while the police closed the region and the soldiers arrived from Suffield to recover the aircraft.
“It’s great to know that people in this community support and appreciate my page because few small cities, or even cities, get this type of support or recognition of things that happen in certain areas of the city,” said White.
The whole test was rather surreal for Debona.
“No one is going to work and thinks:” I’m going to find a real grenade today! ” »»
She says that the Tank 77 museum may simply have to devote a space to display this story, preferably with a real grenade of accessories included.
“Each day is a surprise, the things I find or the things that people bring. So it’s really cool because every day is different, it doesn’t stagnate. I just hope that I will be a big surprise than a grenade.”
She also thanked the taber police service for her professionalism and her conduct to ensure everyone’s safety during what could have been a much more explosive situation.
Friday, the museum was open.
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