globeandmail.com – by Jana G. Pruden – It took a few days to even notice Harry was missing.
The polar bear was so big and so striking – 10 or 12 feet tall, mouth stretched into a roar or a yawn, fur yellowed white like spring snow on the prairies – and he stood high on a platform on the second floor of the old resort property north of Edmonton, so you had to look up to see him.
He’d been there so long, it felt like he would always be there. Until, one day, he wasn’t.
“I actually didn’t realize quite how big of a deal this is, because it’s just so bizarre right?” said Wanda Rowe, executive director of Lionsheart Wholeness Centre. She was filling out an unusual police report about the theft of the taxidermy polar bear at the time. “It is a big deal, actually.”
It is a big deal, literally, too. Harry the polar bear weighs 500 pounds and was well-secured inside the building, which has security 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Unlike when two taxidermy raccoons disappeared from the property last summer, there was no sneaking out a side door with Harry.
“It had to be planned,” Ms. Rowe says. “It 100 per cent had to be planned.”