CHARLOTTETOWN — A Buddhist-affiliated restaurant in Prince Edward Island has been vandalized, hours after a group of local monks liberated 600 pounds of live lobsters.
Charlottetown police responded to a complaint of property damage including a damaged railing, uprooted flowers and a smashed railing in front of the Splendid Essence restaurant early Sunday.
On Saturday, monks from the Great Enlightenment Buddhist Institute Society in Little Sands had invited a CBC News crew to join them on a fishing boat as they released lobsters purchased on the island into the ocean off Wood Islands.
Geoffrey Yang, a spokesperson for the institute who also had helped the owner establish the vegetarian restaurant, did not want to speculate about whether the property damage was connected to the lobster release.
The vandalized building is also headquarters of the Moonlight Foundation, a non-profit organization that has previously collaborated with the monastery and follows the same spiritual leader.
The Great Enlightenment Buddhist Institute set up shop in an old lobster shanty in Montague in 2008 before relocating to a sprawling compound in Little Sands in 2013.
Hundreds of monks and thousands of lay practitioners from around the world have attended Buddhist education programs at the institute.
