With Christmas trees and records
It arrived in Boston in November — a 53-foot white spruce given to the city by the Campbell family of Cape Breton Island.
Lit up on Boston Common last week, it was a gift to the people of the City of Boston from the people of another city — the City of Halifax, Nova Scotia.
A “thank you” gift because of something that happened 100 years ago yesterday — and because of the response of the people of Boston and Massachusetts.
One hundred years ago yesterday, a disaster occurred in Halifax. It was the worst man-made explosion ever until the Atomic Bomb was dropped. In the blink of an eye, some 1,500 people died. Hundreds more perished afterwards, of injuries or trapped in the flames that spread. Some 9,000 were injured. And essentially nothing — not a live person, not a building, nothing — remained within a two-square-kilometer radius.1
That horrendous explosion in the harbor of Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, on 6 December 1917, resulted from the collision of two ships. One, the Imo, was an empty relief ship. The other — the Mont-Blanc — was a French munitions ship loaded with nearly 3,000 tons of explosives destined for the war in Europe.2
It wasn’t the initial impact, at 8:45 a.m., that caused the explosion. It was the fire that broke out on the Mont-Blanc.3
The aftermath was horrific:
The explosion sent a white cloud billowing 20,000 feet above the city.
For almost two square kilometers around Pier 6, nothing was left standing. The blast obliterated most of Richmond: homes, apartments and business, even the towering sugar refinery.
On the Dartmouth side, Tuft’s Cove took the brunt of the blast. The small Mi’kmaq settlement of Turtle Grove was obliterated.
More than 1500 people were killed outright; hundreds more would die in the hours and days to come. Nine thousand people, many of whom might have been safe if they hadn’t come to watch the fire, were injured by the blast, falling buildings and flying shards of glass.
And it wasn’t over yet.
Within minutes the dazed survivors were awash in water. The blast provoked a tsunami that washed up as high as 18 meters above the harbour’s high-water mark on the Halifax side.4
And if that wasn’t bad enough, even Mother Nature turned her back on Halifax: a blizzard blew in immediately afterwards, hampering the relief efforts and causing more suffering.
But the people of Boston didn’t turn their backs on Halifax: “Almost immediately after the explosion, Massachusetts Governor Samuel McCall sent a group of doctors, nurses, aid workers, and medical supplies from Boston to Halifax. The group traveled 700 miles by train and was delayed by a severe blizzard. As Halifax struggled to recover, Bostonians continued to send groups of aid workers, supplies, and funds.”5
At both ends of the aid train of 1917, there are records of the Halifax disaster. In Nova Scotia, the Archives has published digital collections of documents, photographs and personal remembrances, and a definitive list of the 1,946 people who died as a result of the disaster 100 years ago yesterday called the Halifax Explosion Remembrance Book.6
That list will break your heart, as you see the Andrews family of 61 Duffus Street… father, mother and three children, gone. Catherine Anna Arnold of 56 Veith Street and her seven-, five- and two-year-old children. John and Kathleen Carson of 1410 Barrington Street, and their children, aged six, four, and 11 months. Catherine Cash of 33 Veith Street, and five children aged two to 15. People in the Old Age Home. Children in the orphanages.
At the other end, the records of the Massachusetts-Halifax Relief Committee from the Massachusetts State Library, in Manuscript Collection 90, located in the State Library’s Special Collections, including reports prepared by the Massachusetts-Halifax Relief Committee and other officials, meeting minutes, records of aid distribution, letters, and photographs that document the damage in Halifax and efforts to rebuild.7
Some 80 of the photographs have been digitized and can be reviewed on the State Library’s Flickr site. The one you see here used to be a residential street. Where the Carson family lived, to be precise.
Money, supplies, and aid workers continued to stream in from Boston in the days and weeks after the Halifax disaster. The Bostonians who were there in the stricken city for that Christmas of 1917 put up Christmas trees and decorations in the hospitals where they were working.
A year later, “in December of 1918, Nova Scotia sent a Christmas tree to Boston as a thank you for Boston’s help after the explosion.”8
In 1971 and every year thereafter Nova Scotia has remembered what Boston did for Halifax after that terrible day 100 years ago yesterday.
This year with a 53-foot white spruce from Cape Breton.
SOURCES
Image: “Halifax, N.S.: The wrecked buildings on Barrington Street, looking over the dry dock towards Tufts Cove, Dartmouth.” State Library of Massachusetts.
- “City of Ruins : The Explosion,” The Halifax Explosion, Canadian Broadcasting Company, via Internet Archive Wayback Machine (https://web.archive.org/web/20161016072211/http://www.cbc.ca/halifaxexplosion/index.html : accessed 6 Dec 2017). ↩
- See ibid., “City of Ruins : Countdown to Catastrophe.” ↩
- Ibid., “City of Ruins : Collision Course.” ↩
- Ibid., “City of Ruins : The Explosion.” ↩
- “Boston’s 2017 tree lighting marks 100 years of friendship with Nova Scotia,” City of Boston, Archives and Records Management (https://www.boston.gov/news/ : accessed 6 Dec 2017). ↩
- See “1917 Halifax Explosion,” Nova Scotia Archives (https://novascotia.ca/archives/ : accessed 6 Dec 2017). ↩
- See “Ms. Coll. 90 Massachusetts-Halifax Relief Committee Records, 1917-1919: Guide,” State Library of Massachusetts – Special Collections Department (http://archives.lib.state.ma.us/ : accessed 6 Dec 2017). ↩
- “Boston’s 2017 tree lighting marks 100 years of friendship with Nova Scotia.” ↩
Thank you, Judy. It might also be worth mentioning that the Halifax tragedy was very close to home for tens of thousands of Massachusetts residents. Nova Scotia and New England had been closely connected from the early 18th century onward, with a constant flow of people and commerce. New England was the origin of many Nova Scotian families both before and after the American Revolution and despite the emotions during that conflict and the 1812 debacle, families kept in touch. A glance at the census records of places like Arlington or Belmont shows whole neighborhoods of residents claiming Nova Scotia as their birthplace. The shoe industry around Lynn, just north of Boston, was a major employer of Nova Scotians. Domestic workers, farm laborers, and others emigrated to the US in droves, sometimes seasonally and sometimes permanently. They were, frankly, the “undocumented immigrants” of their day. The outpouring of aid from all of New England reflected those close familial ties and many, including myself, have family stories on both ends of the aid trains.
Thanks for adding that context, Wallace.
Thanks for mentioning those close family ties, Wally. I understand that the Mass Governor sent a telegram offering help to the Halifax Mayor at the time and when he didn’t receive a reply, he sent the train anyway. Thankfully. The plight of these poor people would have been far worse without the Massachusetts help. The anniversary was a sad occasion and a thousand or so people stood in the pouring rain for the ceremony. No complaints though as 100 years ago, many lost their lives and others were injured and buried in the rubble.
Thank you for this article. We were there many years ago and visited the museum and exhibition on this tragedy. It is not something I shall ever forget.
Thank you for sharing this. Many of the first-hand witness accounts are gut-wrenching and heart-breaking. In addition to the death and destruction, it was also the largest mass-blinding in Canadian history.
There is a “Heritage Minute” documenting the disaster (BTW, Heritage Minutes are as iconic in Canada as hockey, poutine, and the CN Tower): https://youtu.be/rw-FbwmzPKo
As well: http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/halifax-explosion/
My wife’s maternal side of the family are Haligonians and they have stories of their experiences from the time. When my wife was a child, her great grandmother even shared some of her personal experience from that time. Her husband, my wife’s great grandfather, ran a hotel at the time that he turned over to homeless survivors in the initial days after the disaster.
This article is a good reminder that I need to catch up on my record-keeping and get those stories into my database!
It’s a heart-wrenching story for sure, Sean, and yes… get those stories down in writing…
Thank you, Judy for retelling this story. I visited Halifax a few years ago and visited the museum where this story was told. I have many wonderful memories of the people met along our way.