THE CORD
News
URBAN EXPLORING
Arts & Culture
uWaterloo exports poker stars
GoGo mart serves up greens
Hip-hop takes centre stage
Page 5
Page 7
Page 9
COMMUNITY Waterloo Region’s independent monthly • Vol 2 Issue 4 • January 8, 2014 • community.thecord.ca
in 1916 a bust of kaiser Wilhelm I Disappeared from Kitchener. Almost 100 years later, we’re still asking ourselves:
• GRaPhIC BY STeVeN STINSON CCE CONTRIBUTOR
WHERE did the bust go? HG WatsOn
edITOR-IN-ChIef
O
n Feb. 15, 1916 a mob comprised of local soldiers and citizens broke into the then downtown location of the Concordia Singing Club and carried off a bust of Kaiser Wilhelm I. They paraded it through downtown Kitchener, and the bust disappeared shortly after being locked in the prison of the local regiment building. Some say it was melted down and turned
into napkin rings. Others think the bust is still hidden somewhere here in Waterloo Region, squirreled away by well-meaning citizens who might have had some love for the German motherland. Another theory is that its hiding spot has been purposefully hidden, and that one day a well-meaning gardener will hit the bronze bust while digging out a new spot for flowers. The only thing that is certain about the bust of Kaiser Wilhelm I is that it has become the stuff of K-W legend. “There seems to be a bit of fascination that bubbles up every once and awhile about what has happened to the bust,” laughed Karen
Ball-Pyatt, a librarian who runs the Grace Schmidt room at the Kitchener Public Library. When the interest in Kaiser Wilhelm does rise, she’s often the person who gets the call for assistance. But for all the rumours, no definite answer has ever been proven. “Nothing has ever really come about it,” said BallPyatt. ”Except for the photograph.” The photograph in question comes from two years before the bust of Kaiser Wilhelm I was stolen from the Concordia Club and it is where the legend begins. Three teenage boys — Otto Knechtel and Clayton and Gordon Maier — along with park boat keeper R.E. Bush pose proudly beside the statue that they
have just retrieved from the bottom of the lake in Victoria Park. The night previous, on Aug. 22, 1914, three members of the local militia — Fred Bolton, Alan Smith and John Ferguson — had pried the bust away from its concrete monument beside the lake and chucked it in the water. Popular opinion would find that the bust’s descent to the bottom of the lake was motivated by nationalism, both English and German. Canada had declared war on Germany just days earlier, and in the then primarily German-settled Berlin — as it was called Continued on page 6 >>