Slemon Park Parents unhappy with graffiti

Parents Jessica Hogan-Gauthier and Elizabeth Desroches stand inside the bus shelter in Slemon Park with the offensive drawings and slogans all around them. S. RYAN QUIGLEY / JOURNAL PIONEER

Parents upset with offensive graffiti

S. RYAN QUIGLEY
JOURNAL PIONEER

Jessica Hogan-Gauthier was walking her kids, ages five and 10, to the Slemon Park bus shelter on Thursday morning when she noticed silver markings on the grey walls of the shelter. As she got closer she began to recognize some of the words and drawings on the walls to be particularly sexual and vulgar in content. She was shocked.
This has been going on for six years and Gauthier and other parents around Slemon Park are not happy with it, including 3 times in the last year alone.
The graffiti tends to be either racial or sexual and with kids who are just beginning to learn to read it’s a problem, said Gauthier.
“(We) have five year olds, they’re just learning how to read, so they’re just starting to sound things out and they’re sounding out words like that and it’s just really upsetting.”
Slemon Park officials have dealt with the graffiti by repainting or scraping it off in the past but it’s getting hard on the parents, said Gauthier.
“I do hate to say tear it down really because it is the only shelter and in the middle of winter it’s awful to stand out there, with the wind blowing, and the buses come kind of at their own schedule, if they had some sort of security, some way of keeping an eye on it, it’s obviously a trouble area.”
Elizabeth Desroches, another concerned parent in the area and mother of a five-year-old, said she called the Slemon Park office back in December because of racial words on the shelter.
“I phoned Paul Matheson and I told him I am sick and tired of this, it’s really disturbing for the kids to go up there and read this,” she said.
Matheson, property manager for Slemon Park said they plan on working with Summerside Police Department and plan repairing the site.
“It’s pretty disheartening that people choose to deface private property.”
Police Sgt. Barry Arsenault said that those who witness such vandalism should quickly take down the best description of the person and phone the police.
“If they can call as soon as possible with the best description then hopefully we can get there and catch him in the act or catch them walking away with paint in their hands.”
If the graffiti was art she wouldn’t have so much of a problem with it, said Gauthier.
“It’s just the blatant disregard for everybody else, it’s disregard for the neighbours, disregard for the rest of the community and the kids that have to see that. That’s the problem.”