The restoration of the Grand Parade Cenotaph will be complete in time for Remembrance Day, city hall has announced.
The large-scale restoration started off as a small cleaning and masonry repointing exercise midway through the summer. However, workers discovered that water infiltration over the past 80 years had caused significant erosion of the monument’s foundation.
After consulting technical specialists, HRM staff decided to “dismantle the monument completely, restore the integrity of the foundation, install proper drainage to forestall future degradation and to rebuild the structure,” according to an HRM press release.
The goal was to have the work done before Nov. 11, when Atlantic Canada's largest Remembrance Day ceremony takes place at the square.
The Grand Parade Cenotaph was commissioned to commemorate the sacrifices of Nova Scotians during the First World War and later came to include references to lives lost in the Second World War and Korean War.
