A demonstration using a Racoon skin at Mount Boucherie High School.

Image Credit: SUBMITTED/ Craig Arsenault

West Kelowna and the wider community have offered overwhelming support to Mount Boucherie Secondary School after nearly all of its hide-tanning equipment was stolen in the early hours of the morning on Dec. 14. 

Since September, teacher Craig Arsenault has been running a Science for Citizens class that offers students an alternative approach to traditional science. Rather than the usual equations and test tubes, Arsenault’s students work on tanning hides, preserving food and debunking conspiracy theories.

That was until nearly all of their equipment was stolen this week.

“It was everything we had,” Arsenault told iNFOnews.ca.

This theft could have impacted the course for the rest of the year and perhaps even longer, if it hadn’t been for the immediate outpouring of support and donations from the local community.

“There has been a wonderful community response,” Arsenault said. “One of the managers at Rona reached out and said they feel horribly about it and would love to replace all of our totes and potentially the heaters and our tools. A local taxidermist reached out and said they have chemicals for us. Somebody else reached out with a financial donation as well. It is amazing."

Arsenault’s course received a lot of positive feedback from students and teachers alike. He believes this is at least partially why the public has been so willing to help.

“I think they do support the course, absolutely. But I think more than that, they support students,” he said. “You hear about a school being robbed of its supplies and people don't like that. So, they rose up and the donations are coming in.”

Before the theft, the course had proven to be a success and students were excitedly coming to the end of their tanning projects.

“It's been going fantastically. We have three fully tanned and beautiful deer hides that the students were just wrapping up with this week,” he said. “We'll donate some… But as this is our first round of produced hides, it is the first year running the program, a lot of the students are very keen to keep their pieces. They're excited amongst the groups that worked on them (about) who gets to keep what.”

The community's willingness to donate and eagerness to help relocate the stolen items has been "a glimmer of light in the darkness," Arsenault said, and with time and money, the stolen items will be replaced and the course will continue to be able to run.

“We're going to make do,” Arsenault said. “We'll make it happen.”

The equipment was stored at the back of the school and secured with chain link fencing. During the night, thieves cut open the wire with bolt cutters and took the bins full of the school's equipment, including two brand new patio heaters Arsenault had just bought for the class. Fortunately, the student projects were stored in a different location. 

“They only got one hide, which was fortunate. The hides that we'd been working on were inside drying, that's the only reason they weren't in the bins. Otherwise, they would have had those as well," he said. "There was one hide that happened to be in one of the bins, so that disappeared as well. But the majority of what they worked on is still here.”

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