‘This is really what the community is like’: Anonymous donor replaces missing memorial plaque [Video]

A missing plaque honouring a Waterloo Regional Police officer and Cambridge boy who drowned in 1998 has been replaced, but no one knows where the new one came from.

On Aug. 12, 1998, const. Dave Nicholson was one of the first responders who were called to the Parkhill Dam after Mark Gage, 12, disappeared in the Grand River while swimming with friends.

Nicholson was part of the police’s underwater search team.

The rescue, however, went tragically wrong.

Police believe Nicholson found Gage but was then sucked into a sluiceway and became trapped.

More than 50 first responders and bystanders tried to pull him to safety, but his lifeline snapped.

Both Nicholson and Gage drowned.

In 1999, a memorial was placed near the Parkhill Dam to remember Nicholson and Gage.

The plaque disappeared last month.

Missing plaque at the memorial for Const. Dave Nicholson and Mark Gage at the Parkhill Dam in Cambridge on June 20, 2024. (Krista Simpson/CTV News)

“Are you kidding me?” Nicholson’s brother Bruce told CTV News. “Why …