BACK in 1994, after Halifax lawyer and future Liberal senator Wilfred Moore was named by Liberal premier John Savage to head Bluenose II Preservation Trust, Mr. Moore said the new non-profit would ensure the famed ship’s replica sailed her last days in dignity.

Dignity, however, would surely be the last word applicable to the tortured history of some of the trust’s — and Senator Moore’s (he was appointed to the Upper Chamber by Liberal prime minister Jean Chretien in 1996) — inexplicable actions over the last 18 years.

In 1996, just two years after launching, the trust made waves by going after royalties from everyone who was making products bearing the vessel’s image. At the time, Mr. Moore was quoted as saying the trust had no intention of suing anyone over infringement of its recently acquired copyright of original Bluenose plans.

In 2003, however, the trust filed a lawsuit against a Waverley company, claiming infringement of trademarked images of the Bluenose and Bluenose II — trademarks the provincial government had apparently been unaware had been obtained. The province actually intervened in that case to oppose the trust’s actions.

In 2005, those acrimonious relations clearly played a role in the decision of the Tory provincial government under premier John Hamm to end the trust’s formal responsibility for running Bluenose II. Within months, however, new tensions arose. The trust indicated it planned to continue raising public funds for the vessel, and negotiations stalled over transferring the trust’s assets to the schooner’s new operator, the Lunenburg Marine Museum Society.

A year later, Senator Moore announced he was shutting down the trust and transferring its assets, estimated at up to $1 million, to its successor. That didn’t happen. In 2010, another new deal was announced, this time to transfer the trust’s assets to the new Schooner Bluenose Foundation. A year later, the battle over the trust’s assets was still in limbo.

Earlier this month, seven years after losing its contract to operate Bluenose II, the trust finally transferred about $1.2 million in assets to the province but refused, to the end, to open its books. So the NDP government conceded it has no way of knowing if all money intended for the Bluenose II was recouped.

So much for dignity.

(edits@herald.ca)