Abstract
In 1987, the Department of ,Public Works and Government Services Canada recognized the need to carry out conservation on the bronze statues in the vicinity of the Parliament Buildings in Ottawa. The purpose of this work was to enhance their appearance and to retard their deterioration. The oldest bronze sculpture on Parliament Hill was unveiled in 1885 and the most recent in 1992. In this work, the authors present preliminary results from the analysis of corrosion products from 15 groups of statues, discuss their conservation treatment and outline the long-term maintenance programme that has been established for them. A five-year study currently under way to monitor any colour changes on the treated bronzes is also described. Before conservation treatment, the overall impression of colour on many of the sculptures was green-black. Many statues were disfigured by bird droppings, dirt and grime. Samples of the corrosion products were collected and analyzed at the Canadian Conservation Institute using the following techniques: powder X-ray diffraction (XRD), X-ray energy spectrometry (XES) coupled with scanning electron microscopy (SEM), Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FfIR), and gas chromatography (GC). Under the microscope, each corrosion sample was divided by colour into separate components for analysis. In a total of 172 corrosion samples, 97 minerals were identified. The most common minerals are listed below, together with the percentage (%) of corrosion samples in which each mineral was found:
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