The heart’s back in the Love Barrie landmark sign.
It was reinstalled mid-day Friday in Heritage Park after being damaged last month.
“We had a sign that just couldn’t handle the amount of people coming down and taking pictures, falling in love with the sign and obviously we’ve had some misguided individuals that are vandalizing the sign,” said former Barrie councillor Mike McCann, who served from 2014-22 and who raised the $200,000 needed to design and construct the waterfront sign.
“So now we’re going to have better policing, we’re going to have better monitoring, better management and we’re going to have a better sign,” he added.
City staff said the base of the heart portion of the sign was cracked, its face broken in multiple places and the framing holding it in place was also damaged. It was removed and its manufacturer repaired the sign.
“You can’t control chaos, you can’t control misguided people and if it happens again I just hope that the sign is built tough enough that it won’t be as damaging as last time,” said McCann, a former two-term Ward 10 councillor who ran for Barrie mayor and finished fourth in the Oct. 24 city election.
McCann has said the sign is intended to unite Barrie — to help businesses by driving residents and visitors to the downtown and have them celebrate the city by being photographed with the landmark sign.
“This project has come a long way and it’s had a lot of trials and tribulations,” he said. “A lot of people’s opinions were very positive and there’s a few that were negative, and it warms my heart that a lot of people who were negative in the beginning, because they didn’t really see my vision … are now embracing the sign.”
As for the damage, elements of the sign deemed deficiencies were to be covered by the manufacturer, but those deemed a result of vandalism were paid for by the city, from the maintenance budget for the sign.
City council added $15,000 to the city’s operations department budget, beginning this year, to cover costs of potential graffiti removal and winter maintenance on and around the sign.
This was the second time the sign has been damaged since it went up July 1.
Overnight Sept. 18-19, the sign was defaced with the words and symbols “Dirty $” and “CLEAN HANDS”, with a circled X and the words “BUT LIES” on the nearby concrete pavement. The graffiti was quickly removed by city staff.
The sign is located in Heritage Park, directly on the entry axis to the downtown waterfront park, as pedestrians cross Simcoe Street from Meridian Place.
McCann said an appreciation event for the sign’s sponsors has been scheduled for Dec. 8, and then he will release the project’s financials to Craig Millar, Barrie’s chief financial officer.
“I’m going to ask my accountant if they’ll stamp it, just to give it extra insurance,” McCann said. “A lot of people came together to make this happen.
“There has been some toxicity from some people, once again misguided, and some people just like to look at the negative in every situation,” he said. “I can tell you once again there is no funny business going on. The process is squeaky clean.”
McCann said he has one more harmonized sales tax (HST) payment to make on the project and a third-party accounting firm has made sure all the money is accounted for.
A May 30, 2022 memo to Barrie councillors lists 12 $20,000 sponsors, 11 $10,000 sponsors and five $5,000 sponsors. That totals $375,000 for the fundraising campaign, although the memo doesn’t add up the contributions. McCann has said previously the total raised was closer to $300,000.
On June 28, 2021, city council passed a motion that any funds raised on top of the $200,000 for the Heart (Love) Barrie sign, where no donation receipts have been issued, be donated to 'save the beavers' and 'save the turtles' programs in the city.
Also in June, McCann said he collected HST from the fundraising dollars and sent it to the federal government. He said he hired a professional accounting firm to prepare a spread sheet of money in and money out, which he would be sharing with the city’s finance department once all the money is collected.
