Thieves keep stealing signs for Beer Street, High Street: ‘A cat and mouse game’

CHARLOTTETOWN — It’s a decades-long game of cat and mouse: Thieves have been stealing the signs for Beer Street and High Street in Charlottetown almost as quickly as city crews replace them.

Charlottetown public works manager Paul Johnston said people have been stealing the street signs — each located blocks from the University of Prince Edward Island — for at least 20 years.

“We should have a lottery for how long it will last,” said Johnston on Wednesday.

“It’s been a long-term situation. Sometimes they stay there for a very short period. Sometimes it’s a couple of months.”

Johnston said steps have been taken over the years to prevent the inevitable, including welding them to the posts, but the signs for Beer and High streets always disappear.

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He even once suggested that staff bang up the signs with a hammer before erecting them to make them look less desirable.

“We’ve tried various things but really haven’t been successful. The frequency may vary over time, but they still seem to go missing,” he said, adding the thefts usually occur in the wee hours and no one, to his knowledge, has ever been caught.

Johnson said because of the phenomenon, the city only replaces the signs about once a year.

“It’s a little bit of a cat and mouse game,” he said with a laugh.

“We know what’s going on … It’s Beer Street and High Street, not Main Street or Second Street. So we don’t necessarily replace them as soon as we notice that they’re missing.”

He said the city occasionally receives complaints, but residents of the two streets are largely accustomed to the chronic kleptomaniacs.

Changing the names of the streets has come up before, but there’s never been a “big push” for that, said Johnson.

Johnson said he believes Beer Street is one of several roads in the area named after prominent Islanders, and that may be adding to reluctance to change the name.

One possible inspiration was Henry Beer, Charlottetown’s ninth mayor, who held the post from 1885 until his death one year later.

He was also a merchant and a politician in the Island’s legislature, opposing the construction of the railway and Confederation. Beer resigned his provincial seat in 1872 when a delegation left for Ottawa to negotiate terms of union.

— By Aly Thomson in Halifax

The Canadian Press