Excrement smeared on Edmonton statue of Oilers great Wayne Gretzky

David Boles · The Canadian Press

· Posted: Mar 21, 2025 7:11 PM EDT | Last Updated: 9 minutes ago

Lorne Thurston and Joseph McIntyre were readying to get an up-close look astatine the Wayne Gretzky statue successful downtown Edmonton connected Friday, erstwhile they realized it had been smeared with what appeared to beryllium — and powerfully smelled similar — feces.

Wearing a achromatic Oilers jersey, McIntyre was visiting from Nova Scotia and had hoped to get a photograph with the Great One's likeness.

"Disappointing," helium said. "It shouldn't person been done."

Thurston, who hails from B.C., besides said helium was disheartened by the desecration.

"I thought radical had much class."

The brace were portion of a radical of friends who stopped to ticker arsenic an worker walked retired of Rogers Place and wiped Gretzky's look with a towel doused successful cleaning product.

The statue, which stands extracurricular the existent location of the NHL team, was archetypal unveiled connected the grounds of Northlands Coliseum successful August 1989. It was relocated successful 2016 for the commencement of the Oilers' inaugural play astatine the caller arena.

Gretzky has precocious drawn the ire of galore successful Canada for his nationalist enactment of U.S. President Donald Trump, who has expressed his tendency for Canada to articulation the U.S and go its 51st state.

The Ontario-born Gretzky's ties to Edmonton are deep, arsenic helium led the Oilers to 4 Stanley Cup victories and acceptable aggregate scoring records that basal to this day. A commercialized successful August 1988 sent him to Los Angeles.

Off the ice, Gretzky and his wife, Janet, were joined astatine St. Joseph's Basilica successful Edmonton successful July 1988 successful a lavish work that garnered planetary attention.

His accomplishments, overmuch similar the statue honouring his likeness, inactive resonate with hockey fans, similar Juanita Taylor.

"Why would idiosyncratic privation to bash that?" said Taylor, lasting with the radical of friends astatine the statue.

"[The statue] might not mean overmuch to immoderate people, but it means thing to different people."

Oilers Entertainment Group did not respond to a petition for comment. A spokesperson for the Edmonton Police Service said it hadn't been made alert of immoderate vandalism.