FOG BLOG SAINT JOHN LOG: HUNDREDS OF HISTORICAL ARTIFACTS PACKED AWAY AMIDST UNCERTAIN MUSEUM FUTURE

Hundreds of thousands of artifacts packed up as N.B. Museum faces uncertain future...........Douglas Avenue and Market Square locations moving into storage, museum in limbo for new home.......In life, Delilah roamed the cold, blue waters of the North Atlantic, queen of all she surveyed. In death, she has been no less majestic.

For 30 years, Delilah the right whale has held pride of place at the New Brunswick Museum's exhibit centre in Saint John, suspended above the heads of marvelling spectators in Market Square.

Today, the whale is reduced to a pile of earthbound bones, each vertebra and lengthy rib bubble-wrapped as carefully as fine china. Her strikingly hand-like flippers remain intact but still unpacked, as is her golf-cart-size skull.

More than 100 precious pieces of Delilah are resting on wooden pallets, each package marked with a series of numbers meant to make it easier when reassembling this star attraction of the New Brunswick Museum.

The whale is heading into storage and an uncertain future, along with the other members of the museum's marine mammal display.

Her bones are one small part of a collection of more than 400,000 artifacts held by Canada's oldest continuing museum, all ordered packed up and made ready for a move.