Staff at the Jasper Yellowhead Museum arrived to a shock on Sept. 1. Sometime throughout the night, someone used large rocks from the building’s gardens to smash the glass on the outside doors. 

“It’s pretty unusual for Jasper,” said Karen Byers, manager of the museum. 

Byers said the culprits had a small window of opportunity. The museum hosted a talk the night before, and Byers was in the building until about 9:45 p.m. Staff arrived in the morning at around 8 a.m. to find the doors destroyed, glass spread over the deck and two rocks that may have been used in the vandalism. Next to the door the remnants of a liquor bottle were also smashed on the deck. 

The destruction of the doors did not trigger the alarms, set on the inside set of doors that lead into the museum. Nothing was taken, and Byers believes whoever did it had to work at it for awhile. 

“It’s pretty good glass,” she said of the double-paned tempered glass that is now destroyed. She added that the frame of the door had just been completely re-finished and re-stained. 

Byers has been working at the museum for six years and said she can’t remember anything like this ever happening. 

“It’s a bit of a shock,” she said. 

The rocks used were pulled from the garden that lies at street level. Byers said the museum keeps several rocks on the deck and inside the set of doors to prop them open. They have worried about them being used for vandalism, but whoever broke the windows found their own. 

“They didn’t use ours,” Byers said.

A smaller rock laying on the deck may have been used initially, but a larger, more destructive rock was found inside the set of doors with a similar sized hole broken through the glass. 

“I guess the little one didn’t work, so we’ll give them points for perseverance,” Byers said. 

The Jasper RCMP investigated the damage at the museum later in the day, but were unable to release any information on the further investigation. Const. Erika Laird said there haven’t been any other reports of similar vandalism in the Jasper area recently. 

“It’s just your typical mischief file,” Laird said, adding that some reports of damage may not have come in yet.