Would you want to live in Halifax in 1917, if you could? You would have probably enjoyed it. It had dance halls and ice skating on the ponds, a nearly endless supply of soldiers passing through and pouring money into local businesses, a movie theatre showing first-run films, and a Chinese restaurant on Barrington Street. But you may have regretted it, because on December sixth of that year, it became the site of the largest man-made explosion the world had ever seen.
On a Tuesday morning, everyone was going about their going-to-work routine when it seemed like the world exploded. Nearly half the city was flattened in a single enormous blast that dwarfed anything humans would create until Hiroshima in 1945. It was just as shocking as it would be to you if your windows were blown in while you were brushing your teeth. Two thousand people were killed, but unless you are Canadian, it’s unlikely you’ve ever heard of it.
How could this happen? Unusual for an event that injured more 9,000 people, it was neither an act of war nor epidemic nor natural disaster, but a totally unexpected, unintended, unforeseeable shipping accident. Even today, to visit Halifax is to admire its extensive harbour, but it is impossible to miss that it is very much a working port with incredible traffic. In 1917, it was exponentially busier, with a nearly nonstop flow of warships and supply ships passing through daily. Halifax Harbour has two parts, the small outer harbour, and the enormous inner Bedford Basin, which are connected by a thin strip of water called—appropriately—the Narrows. It is only wide enough for a single ship to pass through at once.
The morning of the sixth was not particularly unusual, except for the two ships which seemed to be creeping perilously close to one another in the Narrows. Office workers with a view crowded around their windows to see the spectacle (and, one would presume, to avoid work in a time-honoured tradition). Children—in another time-honoured tradition of avoiding schoolwork—lingered on the streets to stare as an empty Belgian relief ship, the Imo, approached the Mont Blanc, a French ship heavily laden with explosive munitions headed for the Western Front. Both ships blew whistles and made valiant efforts to change directions, but at 8:45 they collided with a painful screech of metal-on- metal. Still there was no immediate excitement, rather than the dockworkers shouting and enjoying the spectacle.
Smoke billowed from the accident, as sparks had flown in every direction, and the shouting on board became more urgent as the sailors realized what was happening. The captain of the Mont Blanc gave the order to abandon ship and his sailors fled for the lifeboats—rowing, literally, for their lives. The captain of the Imo tried frantically to reverse the engines, but it was too late, and his crew mutinied under him. Some sailors fled below decks to face the last moments of their lives in prayer. Some leapt over the rails into the frigid December ocean.
At 9:06, the Mont Blanc exploded. Every last ounce of the high-powered explosives destined for the Western Front blew at once. It was beyond imagination, unreal in its magnitude, nearly unfathomable. Fifteen hundred people were killed instantly in the blast. Hundreds more would die in the immediate aftermath. Nine thousand people were injured at once.
The blast was so great it blew the water from the harbour, and moments later an immense tidal wave sixty feet tall came roaring back in, washing away people and buildings alike. Every window for ten miles around was shattered. A cloud of smoke rose twenty thousand feet in the air and was visible far out to sea. The Mont Blanc was blown to pieces, and shards of white-hot iron fell like rain throughout the city.
Hundreds of thousands of fires broke out immediately, the result of tipped stoves, downed power lines, and open flames sent flying. A thick, choking, oily black smoke descended on the city and wouldn`t lift for days, coating everyone and everything with thick, nearly ineradicable dirt. Houses collapsed onto their terrified inhabitants, trapping people into smoky, burning disaster zones. In one home, a 23- month-old girl was flung underneath a lit stove while her mother and brother were killed instantly.
Some were blinded permanently from flying glass, the result of standing in front of plate-glass windows. Thousands were deafened or left with some degree of hearing damage. Open wounds were smeared with the oily black soot, leaving bluish-black tattoos on thousands of Haligonians that would never fade with time.
Surviving police and firemen tried their best to direct efforts, but the damage was so immense, they had no idea what to do. With their own buildings had been demolished, and their own vehicles unable to traverse the streets thanks to downed power lines and smoking rubble, they sent frightened citizens to nearby hospitals for lack of better options—but the hospitals were overwhelmed within minutes. Soldiers recovering from war injuries were turned out of their beds to make way for the wounded, and many began to help with the triage. Medical supplies were drained nearly immediately with the influx of wounded, and in some cases doctors were forced to do rapid limb amputations or eye removals while the patients were still unconscious.
Soldiers from the barracks were mobilized to help with the rescue efforts, and officers threw open the doors of the military hospital and buildings to provide shelter. Frantic calls for help were sent over the few remaining telegraph lines, via military radio, and even via semaphore flag in an effort to reach anyone who could help. British cruisers and American Coast Guard ships in port, after securing their own damages, began mounting rescue efforts and converting to hospital ships. In a world where the forms of instant communication were either severely damaged (the telegraph) or only available in limited forms (the radio), it would be easy to assume that news traveled slowly.
Not so, thanks in large part to probably the most famous Explosion victim. Vince Coleman, who was immortalized in a Heritage Minute and thus familiar to all Canadians of a certain age, was a railway telegraph operator who had been warned of the fire by fleeing naval officers. He began to run for his life, but remembered a passenger train was due in minutes and returned to his post to send the urgent message “Stop trains. Munitions ship on fire. Approaching Pier 6. Goodbye.” They were his final words. He died instantly in the blast, but saved hundreds of passengers, and more importantly, notified the railway of the impending disaster.
Fifty minutes after the explosion, a train left Truro, sixty miles north, at full speed and laden with medical supplies and every doctor or nurse within reach. By one that afternoon the train was dispatched back to Truro, loaded with injured victims. By the evening, a dozen relief trains had already arrived in Halifax from throughout the Maritimes as communities sent doctors, nurses, medical supplies, and warm clothing—for a terrible snowstorm had just begun to blanket Halifax in snow.
Massive snowdrifts covered the collapsed houses and obstructed the streets. The military’s search-and-rescue efforts were forced to fight their way through the snow before locating injured civilians. Telegraph lines that had been repaired hours before were knocked down again, severely hampering communications once more. Thousands and thousands of displaced residents shivered in makeshift shelters, unaware if their loved ones were alive, dead, missing, injured, or freezing somewhere in the city.
We will never know the exact number who died as the result of the Explosion, whether in the immediate blast or the terrible devastation that resulted. We will never know how many were injured and left with permanent damage. Thousands were forced to identify loved ones based on the most insubstantial remains—a piece of jewelry, a scrap of clothing, a damaged shoe—and most certainly, some of the identifications were wrong. More than twenty-five thousand people were left with damaged or inadequate housing in the face of a harsh Maritime winter.
Canadians banded together to send aid to their injured neighbours, and cities sent money, clothing, and Christmas presents to help in the relief. The city of Boston was particularly vital, sending up several trains of workers and supplies to wounded Halifax. In gratitude, Halifax sent an enormous Christmas tree to the city of Boston, where it was placed in Boston Commons. They sent another in memoriam in 1971, and since then, Halifax has sent a tree every year.
Today, Halifax is a beautiful, modern city with a thriving bar scene, excellent restaurants, several colleges and universities, and a gorgeous harbourfront. But the city still bears physical scars from the Explosion—many buildings still hold fragments of iron or scorch marks in the brick. The anchor of the Mont Blanc was mounted on a cairn in a city park near where it landed—nearly two full miles from the Narrows. St. Paul’s Church in the downtown core features an “explosion window,” where it is said an outline of broken glass resembles the silhouette of a priest blown through the window.
Two streets in Halifax are named after Vince Coleman, who was hailed as a lifesaving hero.
“Ashpan Annie,” the toddler blown under the kitchen stove, was rescued after twenty-six hours trapped under the stove, and lived to be ninety-six years old. She lived her entire life in Halifax and had several songs written about her.
Surprisingly, most of the crew of the Imo survived the blast, and the ship washed up on shore following the massive tidal wave. The ship was repaired and sailed until it ran aground in the Falklands in 1921 and was abandoned.
The clock on the Halifax Town Hall was stopped at the moment of the blast and has read 9:05 ever since.
The last known survivor of the Explosion died this July at the age of ninety-eight. It has now passed out of living memory.
Images courtesy of Collections Canada.
Tags: canada, halifax explosion, heritage minutes, history, lindsey palka, something something canada
Very fascinating. Thank you for writing more about this, as I just learned about it when preparing to go to the tree lighting on the Boston Common. I’m glad I know, now, what the city endured.
This is incredible. I can’t believe that I had never even heard of this before.
Holy FUCK. (also: as a non-Canadian, I very much look forward to telling LOTS and LOTS of people about this)
Wow, that was incredibly intense. Now I want to visit Halifax (is that morbid?), which I previously associated with Picnicface and specifically this video they made “about” the town.
No, it’s not morbid. Halifax is a great and beautiful city, and the memorials to the explosion there are very moving.
It is so far away from me! I just google mapped it, just to see if it could be a possible road trip. 16.5 HOURS.
Also, after looking at Google Map, I am starting to wonder why and how Maine is not part of Canada.
…that’s a seriously valid question.
I strongly recommend it! I love Halifax and think it’s an awesome town and really fun place, and during the summer driving through the Maritimes is outstandingly gorgeous.
For more about why Maine isn’t part of Canada, you can read about the Aroostook War (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aroostook_War) which touches on why there’s so many French speakers in Maine and why New Brunswick is so blended between Francos and Anglos. (It’s fun! One of the treaties covered is later described as “inexplicable!”)
Also there is a small area of New Brunswick known as the “Republic of Madawaska” which traces its roots to Canadian/American conflicts! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_of_Madawask…
It’s 10+ hours for me, and I live outside Boston. When we visited years ago, we took the overnight ferry to Yarmouth, which is fun.
I have been to Halifax on a fall cruise to New England and Canada and it was amazing. You can leave from Baltimore Harbor! (I am not stalking you I just have a different name from the hairpin and hairpin baltimore facebook group.) Cruises totally do not deserve the bad rap they get, and the NE/Canada one I went on was particularly placid and lovely. AND SO CHEAP. You can just sit on the dock and watch the coast go by. Also there’s, like, 30 foot clearance under the Bay Bridge which is fun to watch.
1. Seconding the HOLY FUCK. This is insane!
2. Re: “The captain of the Imo tried frantically to reverse the engines, but it was too late, and his crew mutinied under him.”
What did they want to do, STAY?
3. I am incredibly enamored of the entire concept of the Heritage Minute.
(4: This is fantastic, Lindsey! More little-known but insanely-important Canadian history, please!)
Thanks!
With regards to the Imo, I don’t think we’ll ever know exactly what happened on board! But my best guess is that the captain felt the best plan would be to reverse the engines and sail in the opposite direction as quickly as possible (well, obviously), but the crew saw the writing on the wall and bailed without paying a whole lot of attention to their captain. But given that most of them survived the blast….I think they had the right idea!
Fair enough! Good job, Imo crew.
Nova Scotia Archives @ns_archives has been “live tweeting” the explosion all day, if you are interested.
Thanks for writing about this. I’m always surprised when people say they don’t know about it.
I’d heard about this previously from a History Stuff podcast, but this added some new details and (obvs) pictures.
NGL, I teared up when I read about Vince Coleman. I don’t believe in an afterlife, but sometimes I wish I did. People like him should go to heaven.
Thanks, Vince!
Same!
Goose bumps all over. Incredible writing that left me feeling I was there.
ps: If anyone is not familiar with what Halifax Harbour is/looks like (like me!), here is a map I found showing the Narrows and the location of the explosion. No good:
Thanks for this EPW! Maps are the best, and this really does drive home how bad an explosion in the Narrows would be.
Maps always help me a lot, figured I might not be the only one. And yeah, wow. What a horrific place for an explosion.
For anyone visiting Halifax, check out the Hydrostone neighbourhood in the North End…one of the things that Boston sent was a “new” building material called hydrostone. It was used to build new houses in one of the areas essentially flattened by the blast. Many of those houses still exist and you get a real sense of it all by comparing the black and white images of the devastation and then walking those re-built residential streets. I grew up in Armdale (see map) in a early 20th century wooden house. We were always told that the cracks in the plaster were from the explosion, which took place soon after our house was built. One of the anchors landed not far from that house, but a VERY long way from the Narrows.
I know I’m being a pedant, but actually the “hydrostone” (concrete blocks) was manufactured across the harbour in Eastern Passage! I always liked that the construction materials came from close at hand, even if the main designers of the reconstruction were from Ottawa (England) and Montreal.
As a Canadian, I would just like to contribute two things:
a) Heritage minutes RULED and were also endlessly quotable. “I smell… burnt… toast.”
b) This explosion is part of family lore. Great-great uncle something-or-other was flung from his bed. Flung! And that’s the best of it.
One of my friends does Heritage Minutes in cross stitch. They are AMAZING.
DOES she want to sell them???? Email me if yes! —-> email via masthead
I read up on this every year when Nova Scotia sends Boston its Christmas tree as thanks for coming to their aid after the blast. This added to my knowledge a lot, thank you!
That is DELIGHTFUL.
Love this story. As a Canadian I always appreciate reading about our often untold history. As a life-long CBC watcher, it’s wonderful to supplement my memory of the Halifax explosion heritage moment with a thoughtfuly writen piece about the tragic event. Thank you!
Whoa, I’d heard of this but not in such chilling detail. Vince Coleman, wow. And can you imagine being one of those sailors in that 20 minutes between the crash and the explosion, realizing what’s going to happen? This is giving me serious contemplating-mortality feelings.
Yeah, I had heard about this (I’ve even been to the museum in Halifax!) but this is SO vivid and terrifying.
Heroes like Vince Coleman — regular people who knowingly sacrifice themselves to save others — are what really show you what kind of beauty humanity is capable of. Like the engineers on the Titanic. I’m not Canadian, but I had heard of this, though not nearly in this kind of depth. This was excellent writing, thank you for sharing.
(And ohh, that poor baby that was stuck under the stove, she must have been so terrified. I’m glad to hear that she lived a long life.)
I could never have imagined that one of those silly, hammy Heritage Minutes would actually make me cry buuuuut it just happened.
*whisper* I love your user name /*whisper*
Just two additional facts, I think it is important to remember that the last Mi’kmaq settlement on Halifax Harbour was lost in the blast (Turtle Grove, at Tuft’s Cove) as well.
Also, a critical aspect of the Boston relief effort was that SO MANY Maritimers had gone to Boston, specifically women to train as nurses. ONE THIRD of women in the nursing in Boston in the early 1900’s were from the Maritimes (including my great-grandmother), an incredible number when you consider the difference in population.
Finally, I think one of the most haunting things about the Halifax Explosion, for me, is hearing about the reaction of soldiers returning from France in 1918 and 1919, expecting to see their homes and families, and finding the same devastation they had just left behind.
great story lindsey didn’t know that you sure know your history
This was great. I had never heard of the Halifax explosion, but wow. Got chills reading this.
Great piece! There’s more about it for the curious in Rebecca Solnit’s book “A Paradise Built in Hell,” which looks at several disasters and the ways they bring people out of themselves and into community (until the police get involved and shoot everyone for helping too much).
Holy guacamole, LOS. Way to bat it out of the park.
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More please!
Thank you for writing this, Lindsey. I lived in Halifax for several years and it always amazes me how much we know about American and other international events, and how little is known about ours. Between the explosion and Polytéchnique, December 6 is quite a day. 🙁
(Like the commenter above, my Nova Scotian great-grandparents were also in Boston around this time. Multitudes!)
BTW, I heartily endorse the Motorleague’s take on Heritage Minutes:
http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL-dJyF5DZJL…
I DO remember that Heritage MInute, and I don’t know why, but it blows my mind that so many people here have never heard of it!
Also I believe it is the Halifax airport where you buy fresh lobster to take home with you, just sayin’.
I DO remember that Heritage MInute, and I don't know why, but it blows my mind that so many people here have never heard of it!
Also I believe it is the Halifax airport where you buy fresh lobster to take home with you, just sayin'.
It's 10+ hours for me, and I live outside Boston. When we visited years ago, we took the overnight ferry to Yarmouth, which is fun.
This was awesome. I had actually heard of this before with a very similar “if you aren’t Canadian you’ve probably never heard of this” intro, and now I desperately want to remember where that was… but I don’t remember Vince Coleman, who sounds incredible.
When I was in law school in Halifax, we appeared in family court, which is in the north end and was a school at the time of the explosion. The building itself survived the explosion, but many of the students were killed. The court staff told stories about a small girl who was often seen on the stairs by people working late, dressed in her school clothes from 1917.
Trivia: Vince Coleman is buried in the Mount Oilvet cemetery on Mumford Road in the west end of Halifax. (A number of Titanic victims are buried there too, including J. Dawson.) (I lived in the neighbourhood and it was my favourite place for quiet walks).
I really really love The Toast’s Canadian content, especially well-written pieces like this one. Of course, as a Canadian, this event is covered extensively in elementary school lessons: I made a diorama with rice and glue of the Halifax harbour which really captured the tragedy of the event.
Also, between the Parliament buildings burning down in 1916, and the Halifax Explosion in 1917, you can see why so many Canadians believed that the Germans really were attacking us.
I really really love The Toast's Canadian content, especially well-written pieces like this one. Of course, as a Canadian, this event is covered extensively in elementary school lessons: I made a diorama with rice and glue of the Halifax harbour which really captured the tragedy of the event.
Also, between the Parliament buildings burning down in 1916, and the Halifax Explosion in 1917, you can see why so many Canadians believed that the Germans really were attacking us.
You completely drew me into this intense part of North American history. I am absolutely stunned.
What a beautifully written, intense story! Thank you for drawing me completely into the history of a place I was completely unfamiliar with.
One piece of the day that isn’t mentioned here was the phenomenon of spontaneous labour in pregnant women brought about by the explosion. Many were pre-term and lost their babies because there wasn’t the medical services (doctors or midwives) in place to care for the moms or babes. This is the piece that always hits closest to home for me!