The Bell Island Museum has been given the green light to reopen to the public, but without the WWII shells that once sat in their display case.
The mortar rounds, which museum staff assumed were duds, led to questions about their status after a live shell was pulled from shallow water near the beach earlier this month by a lobster fisherman.
Teresita McCarthy contacted the RCMP who contacted the RNC’s Explosives Disposal Unit, and the museum was closed for a few days as a precaution.
McCarthy says they were able to keep two empty shell casings, but the other shells were removed “never to be seen again in our exhibit space on Bell Island.”
Over the years a number of similar unwelcome discoveries have been made in local community museums, and even at The Rooms.
