HALIFAX – A reminder of an important moment in Halifax history is now gone.
Some residents in the city’s North End say they are sad to see a mural depicting the Halifax explosion destroyed.
The mural was on the wall of a building at the corner of Novalea and Duffus. It was painted five years ago, commissioned by the former tenants of the store.
The NSLC recently tore the mural down as construction ramps up on a new liquor store in the Novalea Centre strip mall.
“It’s beautiful. It’s really beautiful,” said area resident Marge Sullivan, who used to pass the mural every day on her daily stroll through the neighbourhood.
“It was a nice landmark. It was nice. It really added a lot to that building,” the senior said.
Neighbourhood residents say the mural was a landmark in the area and a constant reminder of the date and time an explosion shook the city to its core.
“I love it. It’s a great reminder of what we have all lost here in this city,” said Janice Michie, a tenant in the Novalea Centre strip mall. “It’s history. It’s something we never should ever forget.”
“It’s a lot of history in there,” said resident Eric Beattie. “It explains a lot of why Halifax is the why it is.”
Gerry Lunn, curator of exhibitions at the Maritime Museum, says the Halifax explosion killed about 2,000 people and injured up to 9,000 people.
“Even though it was just a moment in time, it became entrenched in the collective memory of the community,” Lunn said.
Residents say more should have been done to keep the artwork intact.
“It should have been taken and put somewhere else. There must be some other location it could have been put up,” Sullivan said.
The NSLC says it did not have a choice but to tear the artwork down during construction.
“The walls were in bad shape,” said Mike Maloney, an external communications representative for NSLC.
“The only thing we could keep was the structure, the metal structure. We knew probably from an early-on process that it was going to be tough to keep that.”
When asked whether the mural could have been relocated, Maloney says issues with the unit’s structural integrity, including the foundation and plumbing, seemed to hinder a feasible way to relocate the artwork.
However, he says the liquor corporation plans to pay tribute to it somehow.
“I think we are still going to work with the community and work with our designers to come up with something that does reflect that community,” he said. “We don’t know exactly what that will be yet.”
The landlord says the liquor corporation, which is renting the unit, is allowed to do whatever it wishes with the space.
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