Vendors robbed at weekend event
Peter Chiykowski was crushed.
He was one of the vendors at the 10th edition of the Montreal Comiccon from Friday to Sunday last weekend. The comic artist was also one of the six vendors who reported having been robbed throughout the weekend.
Chiykowski, who creates the Rock, Paper, Cynic web comic, said that around 5:30 p.m. on Saturday, he and his booth mates noticed a box had been moved underneath their table and that their money bag — with more than $1,000 inside — was missing. After a frantic search, they realized it had been stolen.
He said staff showed immediate concern, and volunteers were told to be on the lookout.
A day later, Chiykowski posted what happened on Facebook. He said he immediately began receiving support from the fans of his comic, and quickly raised more money than he had originally lost. At the same time, he began learning of other accounts of robberies that took place at the convention. By his calculations, the victims collectively lost approximately $10,000 worth of goods or cash.
Included are the artists behind Rawry & Pohly, who lost $2,700.
“It happened in seconds,” said Kevin Chow, one of Rawry & Pohly’s co-founders. Chow explained that after answering a question about their work, he turned to see their cash box was gone. The person who had been speaking to him matches the description given by Chiykowski and other vendors who were targeted, Chow said.
Chow and Jamie Mason, his wife and co-founder, have been attending the Montreal Comiccon for three years, and in that time he said they have never heard of anything like this happening. “I’ve never heard anything on the scale of what we’re talking about,” said Chiykowski, who has been attending the convention since 2010. He said the victims are independent artists who are not used to dealing with loss prevention, do not have the means to deal with the aftermath and often do not have insurance. Since the weekend, Chiykowski has put his efforts into fundraising to repay the other vendors by selling “Fight Evil With Cookies” Tshirts, inspired by the friend who gave him a cookie after hearing about the missing money. “This is how you help someone: You give them a cookie, you give them a hug and you tell them it’s going to be all right,” he said. Montreal Comiccon organizers said six vendors have already approached them regarding thefts, and they are collecting information from witnesses. A spokesperson for the event, Leeja Murphy, said the thieves appear to have been a group of two to three people, as Chiykowski and Chow also described. The two vendors allege that a similar event took place at the Niagara Falls Comic Con in June. Illustrator Eddie Lam said he had a few thousand dollars stolen by someone whose description is similar to that of the person spotted by both Chiykowski and Chow. Murphy invited anyone who has information about what happened to communicate with the organizers (info@montrealcomiccon.com). She also said that in the convention’s 10 years this is the first time anything of this nature has happened.