Thunder Bay Ontario - A woman who's worked for years to promote and preserve Thunder Bay's grain elevator heritage is disappointed with the graffiti that was recently painted on the former Manitoba Pool 2.
 
Sometime around the Victoria Day weekend, people climbed to the top of the obsolete elevator, just north of Marina Park, and painted "ZONEKPACES WAS E" in large letters above the grain bins.
 
They apparently intended to add "HERE" but a misstep saw them start the word with the wrong letter, so they quit before they finished.
 
Nancy Perozzo of the local group Friends of Grain Elevators said, "I didn't like to see it, it's not an attractive or an intriguing addition."
 
Perozzo noted that that climbing an abandoned elevator is a very dangerous thing for anyone to do.
 
Pool 2, however, also has particular historical value.
 
According to Perozzo, it was designated a provincial historic site because it's on the location of the Lakehead's earliest grain terminal.
 
It was built by the Canadian Pacific Railway (CP) before the railway got into a dispute with Port Arthur and took its business to Fort William, she said.
 
"It also has historic bins. If you take a close look at the silos, the first three are a different colour. They were the first successfully-built slip-form concrete silos, I believe, in the world," Perozzo said.
 
The construction method allowed for a continuous structure with no joints or seams.
 
Perozzo said the elevator is unique "as a structural remnant for history, and of course it's special because it's in such a prominent location."
 
Photographer Nancy Reilly of Bullheaded Studios, who has taken pictures of various abandoned waterfront sites including Pool 2, believes whoever painted the graffiti was trying to emulate Zonek and Paces artwork.
 
"They're famous. Their graffiti goes through town on the CN trains all the time. They have graffiti throughout Canada and elsewhere. Whenever they tag anything, it's either just their names, or they have a very specific message. They wouldn't just tag something that makes no sense. Whoever did it, copied their style. It's an easy letter to copy," Reilly said.
 
The now-defunct Thunder Bay Waterfront Development Committee set its sights on Pool 2 as a potential tourist attraction in 2012.
 
It discussed approaching the property owner, the Buchanan Group, about painting or lighting up the elevator.
 
Councillor Mark Bentz, who served on the committee at the time, told Thunder Bay News Watch he recalls that ideas included recreating a display of the Northern Lights on the silo walls.
 
However, Bentz said he's unsure whether any discussions with Buchanan actually took place.
 
Gary Rinne.