After decades of rumours around what could be buried under the the PNE grounds, the truth is finally surfacing 鈥� literally.

In late March, during construction of the new Freedom Mobile Arch amphitheatre at Hastings Park at the Pacific National Exhibition grounds in Vancouver, crews found a captured German gun from the First World War. A few weeks later, during sewer installation, a number of other military artifacts were found, including two cannons from the 1870s.

Seaforth Highlanders of Canada Museum curator James Calhoun said there have been rumours for years that there were German guns buried at the PNE grounds, and the March 27 find substantiated that.

"This subsequent find just shows that there was more stuff stored at the park and we鈥檙e likely to find it," Calhoun said Friday (May 2) from the Seaforth Armoury in Vancouver, where the historic artillery and military artifacts have been moved. 

So far, crews have found a captured German howitzer from the First World War, four captured German machine guns from the First World War, two British/Canadian nine-pounder cannons from the 1870s and the "trail" of the howitzer.

Calhoun explained the captured guns were brought back to Canada as "trophies" and scattered throughout the country. The Vancouver Exhibition Association, a precursor to the PNE, was one of the first organizations to ask for more trophies. 

He said there were plans for a permanent exhibit, but it never quite happened as the Depression happened. Fifteen or 16 artillery pieces were stored at Hastings Park in 1933/34 and another five were cut up for scraps. 

"Our attitudes changed throughout the late 鈥�20s and 鈥�30s and we got rid of stuff."

Calhoun added a newspaper article in the 1940s said the remaining pieces were discarded in an "out of the way corner" in Hastings Park. That area used to have a ravine that was eventually filled in when the military took over the park in 1942.

"We think that they pushed them all into a ravine and just buried them.鈥�

But now, more than 80 years later, Calhoun said it's an incredibly exciting find. He said an officer was "gobsmacked" that construction could unearth these items buried in metres of dirt, while also wondering why the items weren't taken to the Seaforth Armoury building, which opened in 1936.

"I said, yeah, but think about this. Put yourself in the position of somebody in World War Two. This stuff is 20 to 50 years old. It's just junk. Now we're at the point that it's magical."

Calhoun said there could be as many as nine more artillery pieces buried and at least 10 machine guns, but the piece he's hoping for is a 210-millimetre Morser that used to sit at the entrance of Stanley Park, where it was the most-photographed captured gun in Vancouver. 

鈥淲e think that might be buried in the ravine at the PNE, so we鈥檙e very excited about going in to look for it.鈥�

Geordie Howe is an archeologist with the Vancouver Park Board. In his close to 50 years as an archeologist, he said getting the phone call about this was not one of his normal days. 

"I was born and raised in Vancouver, played at the PNE for all the years I鈥檝e been around here as a young boy, (but) never knew the history of that.鈥�