One of the many things I love about Halifax is that it wears its history on its sleeve, as ’twere. You can’t help but notice it–the centre of downtown is a giant stone fort built into the hill the looks over the city. And that’s not even getting into the city’s long history of brewing (not to mention underground beer tunnels), etc. And that doesn’t go into the history of immigration, the contribution of the city (and more importantly the harbour) to both world wars, the original French settlements of Acadia, the “purging” French (one consequence of which, of course, was the movement of the Acadians to the American South, where they became “cajuns”), etc.
Perhaps the single most explosive moment of Halifax history, though, was in 1917: The largest man-made non-nuclear explosion in history and yet (outside of Canada) a largely unknown disaster. In a fit of unbridled creativity we usually refer to it as The Halifax Explosion.
The boom was big enough to ring church bells 60 miles away. (Ironically almost all of the crew of the exploding munitions ship survived, because they had enough sense to abandon ship well below the explosion. You would too if you knew you were carrying a massive load of explosives.
The explosion was a direct result of a ship-to-ship collision in the harbour. About 20 minutes later, at 9:05 came the explosion. It was enough time for spectators,
including many children, to run to the waterfront to watch the ship burning. (The CBC archives have an audio and video re-creation.)
You can also see historical photographs and other media, as well as additional related clips from the CBC archives.
Survivors share recollections of the day.
The reason almost every Canadian of my age knows this story, even the ones that live thousands of kms away, is the Heritage Minute about Vince Coleman, the telegraph operator who warned the trains bound for Halifax of the imminent explosion. That one actually moistens my eye every time, which doesn’t happen for the equally well-known “Dr. Penfield, I smell burnt toast” or “that’s why we changed the name of Pine Street to Valour Road” ones.
Of course, it pretty much goes without saying that it was a bad day to be in the same harbor.
Naturally an explosion of that size in water kicked up a tremendous wave, and the next morning, there was a blizzard, which didn’t help the recovery efforts or the newly homeless.
(One of the universe’s bitter jokes is that while the explosion more-or-less levelled the mostly poor North End of the city, Citadel Hill absorbed or deflected the blast, protecting the most upper class South End. In other words, the residential area that was destroyed has the highest population density, and the residents who could least afford to lose what little they had.)
Part of the story I didn’t know before I moved here was that in the immediate aftermath of the explosion there was a tremendous surge of support and relief from “the Boston states”. There had, of course, been a long history of trade and communication between Boston and Halifax, as the major ports, and they were allies in the war, but the money, supplies, and men, that Boston (and the rest of New England) sent probably saved an enormous number of lives.
I like to tell this story to people in the Boston office–they’ve never heard it before, even though every year, Nova Scotia sends the best Christmas tree in the province to Boston, where it adorns the Common.
There is, of course, a memorial: The Bell Tower. I suspect the vast majority of Halifax residents, much less tourists, never see this memorial–it’s not part of the normal tourist circuit.
I always like to include a link to the Wikipedia article>
From the history of science trivia file (via The Horton Papers):
When Robert Oppenheimer, head of the U.S Manhattan Project that created the atomic bomb, wanted to visualize what destructive powers would be unleashed by his monstrous new weapon, he studied the devastation of the Halifax explosion.
And that’s about enough explosion links for one day.
