Heather Wright/The Independent

“It’s straight up, purposeful, disgusting vandalism. It’s disgusting. It’s disgusting and it’s heartbreaking,” said Richard Poore, the treasurer of the Petrolia Discovery Foundation after counting 96 broken panes of glass in virtually every building at the historic site.

This attack at the hands of unknown vandals sometime in the night of March 25 or early morning of March 26 is the third major act of vandalism at the site in the last 20 months. And it is the most damaging. Poore estimates will take countless volunteer hours and likely $20,000 to repair what has been destroyed.

Every building at the site, which tells the story of the rise of the commercial oil industry, has at least one window broken. Many have multiple windows with gaping, jagged holes.

It appears vandals picked up whatever they could find to damage the windows, including paving stones from a garden and large rocks found around the site.

At the Blacksmith Shop, the wood on two windows boarded up after the last incident of vandalism in November was torn off so the vandals could break whatever panes of glass remained.

At the Toll House, more boards were removed from windows broken in November. Inside glass covered the floor of the sitting rooms and a bedroom. Four paving stones were found on the floor next to the four shattered panes of glass.

Poore is frustrated about the latest act of vandalism at a time when Petrolia Discovery is getting ready to welcome summer visitors.

“I feel heartbroken,” he says. “I walked through here on day one, I was in tears, so senseless, so frustrating.

“We’re really trying to get the site back up and restored to the best possible and this is a big, big setback.”

Friday, a team of four volunteers – Les Whiting, Luc Tetreault, Dan Love and Poore – were covering the broken windows with plastic. “We’ve got another team coming in tomorrow to clean up inside the buildings, because they’re full of broken glass.”

Poore says it will take countless hours of volunteer labour to repair the damage. “We’ll do as much as we can as volunteers, but at some point it’s gonna be like beyond what volunteers can do.” The foundation does have insurance on the site, but it is not clear what will be covered.

Members of the foundation don’t know who is responsible for this latest act of vandalism. Lambton OPP is investigating. While police investigate, the foundation tries to figure out how to deter vandals. Poore admits it is difficult to fully secure the sprawling site surrounded by trees and linked the municipal trail system.

“We’ll be discussing security measures. What do we do? What can we do? There’s somebody on the site every day. It’s monitored almost from dawn till dusk.”

The foundation will be looking for used glass from old storm windows and craftsmen who might be able to help with repairs. And, Poore says, the foundation has discussed using plexi glass to reduce the possibility of damage, but that would go against the authenticity of the site which is visited by people from around the world to see how oil was first made.

Poore says that might not help anyway. “I think if people want to destroy something, and they’re that heartless and that disrespectful, they’re going to find a way to destroy it, no matter what it’s made out of. This has just created an unnecessary and a dangerous situation.”