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This paper takes as a case study the disappearance of maritime heritage. Specifically, it focuses on the schooners that dominated river trade along the estuary of the Saint Lawrence River (Quebec) until the 1970s, when they were literally abandoned on the banks. Up until then, the schooners had formed part of the familiar landscape of the river, which was the main transport route in the country, and had been considered the real national fleet of the French Canadians. However, testimonies describe the river trade on schooners as a hard, badly paid, risky job. With the development of land transport, coinciding with the Quiet Revolution, schooners were abruptly abandoned. The enormous wooden ships resting on the bank became part of the landscape of forgetting in one of the leading countries in museology and heritage. As context for the study, the paper examines the concept of maritime heritage and its situation in Quebec. We try to explain the disappearance of this heritage, using as a framework of reference the anthropology of time and an idea explored by several authors in which loss can be considered a factor that gives value to heritage. Starting from the burning in February 2015 of a schooner that was in its time considered a masterpiece of small-scale shipbuilding, this paper reflects on the conservation and destruction of heritage as a way to give existence to time or, according to Castoriadis, to socially establish time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]