Red heart sculpture in Uptown Waterloo vandalized with black spray paint

The large red heart sculpture in Uptown Waterloo — known as the Heart of Uptown — has been vandalized, half-covered in a messy coating of black spray paint.

An Instagram post from the Uptown Waterloo Business Improvement Area’s (BIA) official account on Thursday says the vandalism occurred sometime Wednesday night.

Comments to that post include a couple from the design company that put up the sculpture, boko.ca.

“Well that’s just sad, isn’t it. You know it kind of reflects how heavy my heart feels knowing that someone was hurting enough to do it,” boko.ca writes. “Further to this I think we need to focus on the deeper issues we face in our community and world community. This is something to care about and understand.”

The BIA said, “This project has been an enormous labour of love for many. It’s been heartwarming (sorry for the pun) to hear how much people love this installation and appreciate the communal space that’s been created there AND are as disappointed as we are that this happened.”

The BIA said in response to questions in the comments to its post that it was spray paint, not marker, put all across the bottom half of one side of the heart. The organization is reviewing security camera footage to help identify who committed the vandalism.

The BIA adds the sculpture involved no tax dollars.

It said there’s going to be a community clean up of the heart on Saturday at noon, and Uptown Waterloo will bring all the supplies and offer free hot beverages to any and all volunteers.

Anyone wanting to help with that can email uptownwaterloobia@waterloo.ca, or just show up.

Waterloo Regional Police tell 570 NewsRadio they have not received a report of the vandalism at this time.