Focus on this artwork and discuss the Removal and destruction.
Over 40 years the sculpture suffered some damage from exposure to weather. Damaged and detached parts were removed and stored at the library. In 2004 the sculpture was dismantled during library renovations which included reconstruction of the library courtyard. The sculpture was replaced by a new work North is Freedom by Doug Bamford and Stephen Brathwaite. According to the Halifax Regional Municipality, the sculpture could not be repaired and posed a safety risk and had to be stored while its fate was decided.The sculpture was broken into pieces which were left unmarked and stored at various warehouses and city works yards across the city. A 2006 report by a consultant urged the city to identify the parts and bring them together. However this did not happen and several parts have disappeared including the  key component known as "the doll", the bronze casting representing the children of the explosion. The fragment from Mont-Blanc which was included in the sculpture has been preserved at the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic.
In 2010 a committee of artists and citizens was formed to urge the Halifax Regional Municipality to secure the surviving pieces and conduct an inventory to determine whether the sculpture can be restored and reintroduced into the public realm. By the summer of 2011, the sculpture fragments had been brought together in a secure city storage location and the committee widened their search for the missing bronze "doll" from the sculpture. The city auditor, Larry Munroe, investigated the fate of the sculpture which he valued at $90,000-100,000. Munroe said that all portions had been together until 2008 when they were dispersed and many were lost including the bronze doll which disappeared from city storage, "There has been quite a search but the missing piece has never been found. There is no hope it will be found." The auditor made six recommendations to prevent further loss to the city's art collection including a comprehensive inventory and a deaccessing procedures.The citizen's committee that had requested the preservation of sculpture hoped that the fragments would be stabilized and returned to display in the North End of Halifax as a continuing memorial to the Halifax Explosion. However in 2015, the city secretly shipped the remnants of the sculpture to the family of the artist in Montreal. The final fate of the sculpture only emerged in 2018 when questions were asked about the security of the city's art storage in the wake of the removal of the controversial Statue of Edward Cornwallis.
Statue of Edward Cornwallis North End of Halifax bronze Maritime Museum of the Atlantic Halifax left Halifax Explosion