"It's just sickening," says a disheartened Dennis Harwood, president of North Bay Rorab Shrine Club as he describes to BayToday the theft of two small motorcycles used by the club to entertain in local parades.
"Anybody that can break into a trailer with the back of it showing a Shriner carrying a crippled child and a sign that says 'Help Support Shriners Support Children's Hospital' and they pick the two locks and steal two bikes. How low can you stoop?"
It's not the first time thieves have hit the club. About seven years ago someone stole four of the clown carts from trailers stored at the club. That time, four days went by and the club got a call saying it could find them parked on the side of the road.
"We went and retrieved them and one of them was wrecked up pretty badly," lamented Harwood.
So Stockfish Ford offered the club storage space in a fenced-in compound at Commerce Court.
June 10 was their most recent parade and riders had brought the bikes back, put them in the trailers and locked them.
"Last night (Wednesday) we were having a practice because we have three parades this weekend. We go there and the locks are unlocked and the doors were closed. We thought, 'That's weird' and we open up the trailer and two bikes are gone."
Harwood is appealing for the quick return of the bikes as the club is performing in three Canada Day parades Saturday...Callander at 11, South River at 1 and Sundridge at 4 o'clock.
"We have our routines all set up and instead of eight bikes, we'll only have six, so two guys won't be riding. We promised these parades we'd be there so we're going to fulfill our commitment.
"Stealing these bikes, I'm just sickened by that. The whole group last year went to the Montreal Shriners Hospital for Children and had a tour. You should see what they do for kids. The young lad that did our tour was 18 years old. At two years old they told him he would never walk but he went to the Shriners Hospital, had eight operations, plays high school basketball and he's a wonderful young lad. At the end of the tour he told us his history and there wasn't a guy there that had a dry eye. So when you do all this and raise money for the Shrine Hospitals and then you get some punk who comes along and steals, it just breaks your heart, it really does. I just can't believe it."
Harwood is asking the story get shared in the hope that someone might know something and get the bikes returned.
"Hopefully it hits their conscience and they do the decent thing and call us and say 'They're parked on the side of the road somewhere' and we can get them. That's what we're hoping."
The Honda Ruckus bikes are distinctive. One is white, one black and have North Bay Rorab Shrine Club logos on both sides of the gas tank with a Shrine Club licence plate on the back.
Harwood is offering a "no questions asked" solution.
"Put them in a mall parking lot, give us a call and we'll go and get them."
The bikes are valued at $3,300 each,