The Great Halifax Explosion

by John U. Bacon

  Six days after the explosion, Deputy Mayor Henry Colwell issued a proclamation warning that profiteering would be rigorously punished. People were encouraged to report transgressors, but the only reported conviction was a soldier accused of selling relief supplies.

  If gouging was distasteful, looting was criminal—though amazingly rare. Newspapers warned that soldiers had been instructed to shoot anyone attempting to steal from unattended houses, shops, or corpses. While some looting had been reported in the morgue, with visitors and even volunteers said to have pocketed rings and watches from the dead, most stories of looting boiled down to false rumors, including a tale about a looter being hanged from a lamppost, and another about one being shot. In fact, the shooting story started with a joke from Colonel Ralph Simmonds, who was pleased to see it circulate as fact; it “Kept people away like the plague.” Chief of Police Frank Hanrahan said he’d heard of only one case of a possible attempted burglary. Potential looters might have been dissuaded by the mounted, armed guards around the Devastated Area or the threats of shooting or hanging, but historically those threats have not stopped others after disasters. Looting was virtually non-existent in Halifax.

  The calamity and chaos presented a once-in-a-lifetime chance for another class of people burdened with legal troubles, crushing debt, dysfunctional families, or unhappy marriages. If they wanted to make their current selves vanish and resurface far away as people new to the world, this was their moment. While we know the inmates at Rockhead Prison escaped after the explosion, it seems possible that a few dozen folks with other problems realized that this was their chance to start a new life.

  In the days before computers, moving south to Boston or west to Calgary with a completely new identity was almost as simple as getting on the next train out of town. By its very nature, it would be difficult to prove anyone actually did this—unless they were caught or confessed—but that fact only confirms to the believers that the escapees pulled it off.

  Oftentimes children who had suffered only minor injuries went to live temporarily with other families because their parents had been seriously injured. “There were good people who came around just till we got organized better,” recalled Helena Duggan. She was eleven when she moved in with a kind woman named Mrs. Eaton, who hosted Helena “for quite a time. She was lovely.”

  Some families had to be more resourceful. Jean Hunter was a ten-year-old student at Richmond School when the blast ruined her home. So Jean and her remaining family, consisting of her grandmother, aunt, cousin, mother, and brother, moved into a boxcar at Willow Park railway terminal and lived there for twelve days. They managed to outfit their new metal home with beds, a stove, and chipped dishes, and dedicated one corner of the car for a bathroom consisting of a bucket and a curtain. They visited St. Mary’s Hall to pick up some clothes, including a “lovely, warm coat,” for Jean’s aunt, and a “pretty corduroy-velvet” one for Jean—plus much-appreciated baths for the entire family.

  Because the boxcar was too high off the ground to get into or out of very easily, the resourceful family spent almost all their time in the boxcar, in relative comfort. It was not the kind of arrangement a family of six would seek out under normal circumstances, but given the situation, perhaps it’s not surprising that Jean Hunter looked back on those twelve days with a certain fondness, and pride in their perseverance.

  The severe weather hindered the work of the Emergency Shelter Committee, but more than forty cities offered to take in homeless Haligonians. Montreal volunteered three five-room flats, rent-free until May, but that paled in comparison to the offers of Berwick, in Nova Scotia’s Annapolis Valley, to take thirty orphans, and Lunenberg, on Nova Scotia’s south shore, which pledged food and shelter for 500.

  Most of those who found themselves suddenly homeless preferred to remain in or near Halifax, with 800 people staying in shelters hastily fitted with sanitation and cooking capabilities, while 8,000 remained in damaged homes or moved in with neighbors. For this reason, the city leaders decided that the need to fix existing homes should take priority over building new ones. But home repair wasn’t easy that December, since workers had to contend with frozen mortar, high winds, snowdrifts, and sudden thaws, not to mention a scarcity of almost every item needed.

  To keep people warm in the meantime, the chairman reported that the committee had distributed 16,700 blankets and 1,800 quilts in the first two weeks alone. With a little help from their friends, the Haligonians toughed it out.

  The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA) found shelter for countless dogs, cats, horses, cows, pigs, and hens, and even repaired a few barns. But it didn’t take long before the SPCA accommodations were overflowing, so they asked local citizens to take in animals, and many did. That still left so many animals that had been injured beyond help or that were simply homeless that the SPCA had to work overtime destroying them. Boston helped the SPCA, too, with its own SPCA chapter sending two inspectors and $1,000.

  Cliff Driscoll found the family cow in the care of the SPCA, but when he claimed her, they asked him to pay for her board and lodging during their absence. Cliff countered by asking what they did with the cow’s milk, which was enough for the SPCA to release the Driscoll family cow without further questions.

  Rank, station, prestige—the explosion erased all those lines for a time, too. After the calamity ended so many lives and forever altered others, standing on ceremony was no longer a popular position. When the veneer of class was peeled back, it revealed a basic human decency. And this, not the rules of etiquette, is what drove the vast majority of Haligonians to make great sacrifices for their fellow man.

  Women from South Halifax and Richmond who had always relied on maids rolled up their sleeves to start doing the work themselves, often for people they’d never met. They canceled their dinner and bridge parties that month and scotched their Christmas social plans in favor of long hours helping in homes and hospitals, doing clerical work for relief committees, setting up canteens for volunteers, and taking in victims and relief workers.

  “The leaders of society took charge but it was only successful because everyone pulled together,” Blair Beed wrote. “Businessmen took up shovels to look for their workers’ families. The poor made sacrifices to assist those who had been well-to-do. Society women stood shoulder to shoulder with their ladies’ maids cleaning the wounded and caring for the orphaned. After years of sending loved ones away to war, the war had come home to their doorsteps and the people of Halifax and Dartmouth were ready to respond.”

  The city’s theaters closed out of respect, while local restaurants made free meals for many of the 25,000 homeless.

  “December 6 was a day of unspeakable human agony,” Dalhousie professor Archibald MacMechan wrote in January 1918. “Men and women saw their own burned to death and were unable to help them. But it was a day of heroism, of golden deeds. As a matter of course, men, women and children risked their lives for the sake of others. The spirit of helpfulness was everywhere, in all ranks and classes. There was no sacrifice which the more fortunate would not make for the homeless and the injured.”

  MacMechan was right, but it’s worth remembering that these acts weren’t performed by superheroes but by ordinary men, women, and children who met extraordinary circumstances with basic goodness. During these trying days, that was heroic enough.

  It didn’t get the attention the other committees received, but the Clothing Committee had to be among the most appreciated, especially in a town where half the residents had lost their entire wardrobes. The Committee set up five centers in Halifax and Dartmouth, with the Green Lantern restaurant serving as their headquarters. Every day trains and ships pulled into Halifax with so much donated clothing and footwear that the committee opened a special department at the Royal Mail Steamship Company to display and distribute it all.

  Immediately after the explosion, the Clothing Committee, like the others, enforced few rules and kept no records of what they had gi
ven to whom. With people in dire need, the goal was speed. When they discovered some people who had not been victims were making off with new coats and clothes, they started keeping better records, but that in turn prevented them from helping the truly needy as fast as they could.

  They ultimately decided to err on the side of speed and generosity. It was better to give a new coat to someone who didn’t need one than to make someone who’d lost everything wait two days for their request to be processed.

  One survivor recalled getting a new overcoat at a Dartmouth school. “Boy, did I look sharp! It was grey herringbone tweed, a lot better than the new one I had lost. There was one mass of clothing in the room, and all volunteer help, of course. I just took one look at that coat, and that was that.”

  Helena Duggan went to the Green Lantern to get a stocking hat and a black imitation sealskin coat. “I was so happy with it.”

  Amid all the losses, a new coat, freely given, would always be treasured.

  If Halifax being turned upside down tempted a few to take advantage of the opportunity, far more frequently it inspired those with better intentions to perform selfless acts that were remembered by their recipients for the rest of their lives.

  Al and Noble Driscoll had woken up their first morning in Truro with black oil from their hair and faces on their pillowcases, so they scrubbed every day to try to get the grime off. They still hadn’t gotten all of it out when their mother gave them a dollar to go into Truro for a haircut.

  When the barber started working on Noble’s hair, the young boy winced, prompting the barber to look more closely at Noble’s scalp. “Ah, you must be from Halifax,” he said quietly. He spoke briefly to the other barber, who was about to start cutting Al’s hair. They decided to give the boys a comprehensive treatment: one deep-cleansing shampoo, followed by another, both done with great care, with occasional pauses to remove small splinters of glass and wood before returning to the first task, cutting their hair. They took their time, telling other customers they’d have to wait or come back later.

  It felt wonderful for Noble and Al to have their scalps so thoroughly cleaned, and it was a relief to have the painful fragments removed. But as the barbers were finishing up, both boys grew anxious. Their mother had given them a dollar for two haircuts, which didn’t seem nearly enough for the special treatment they’d just received.

  When the barbers were done, the boys stepped down from the chairs looking sharp, clean, and healthy, but feeling guilty. Al sheepishly held out the single dollar he had for both of them. The barber chuckled and shook his head.

  “You come with me,” he said, and led them across the street to a clothing store, where he bought both of them complete new outfits. When the boys tried to thank him, he just smiled, patted their shoulders, and waved them on their way.

  The horrors the survivors endured surely dwarfed whatever small kindnesses they received afterward. But years later, they seemed to remember those tender mercies as clearly as the horrific scenes they had survived, as if they were somehow imbued with equal power.

  After such traumatic suffering, it was striking just how far a little generosity and goodwill could go, perhaps because they provided tangible proof that human kindness had not been erased, even by the greatest man-made explosion the world had ever seen.

  Under the most trying circumstances, the local papers kept putting out daily editions that provided the crucial service of getting the word out about the help being offered by the various committees, information about survivors in other towns, and the lists of the missing and dead. The journalists from Boston, particularly the Associated Press reporters, dispatched accurate reports of the disaster, including its unimaginable scale, to the rest of the world, which attracted millions of dollars in gifts for Halifax from governments, companies, and individuals. It came in big checks and small gestures, and, just as important, it came in quickly, when Halifax needed it most.

  The Canadians came through, of course. The Province of Ontario sent $100,000, while Canada’s own Dominion government, led by Prime Minister Sir Robert Borden, initially gave about $6 million, and would ultimately provide $18 million. The Strand Theater in Truro, where hundreds of survivors were staying with local families, donated a day’s ticket sales. The Ford Motor Company of Canada donated three touring cars—but that actually represented a mere drop in the bucket for the Transportation Committee, which, at its height, received 3,000 calls a day for cars and 2,500 for teams of horses and trucks.

  When Sir John Eaton, president of the Eaton Co., one of Canada’s biggest department-store chains, heard about the disaster, he packed several train cars with food, experienced staffers, a medical unit, and enough goods to open a clothing and supply depot that carried building materials and other necessities, and headed for Halifax. If you had a requisition from your pastor or a committee chairman, anything you wanted was free. Although no one calculated just how much Eaton gave away, conservative estimates put the total in the six figures—millions today. He gave it all away on one condition: that there be no publicity.

  Every corner of the vast British Empire gave generously. Local newspapers reported financial gifts from Newfoundland—still a separate British colony—the West Indies, South America, China, and New Zealand, as well as other parts of North America and the U.K. The Australian government gave $250,000, and the British government voted to send £1 million, then worth $4,815,000, and now almost $100 million—confirmation of the close connection between the Crown and her most loyal Canadian city.

  The Lord Mayor of London set up a fund for the public to contribute to, which the Canadians and Brits called a “subscription list,” with the Times of London printing the daily results. The fund eventually reached $600,000, or about $12 million today—remarkable during a war that was costing Britain billions. The British Red Cross donated £125,000, while King George V, the grandfather of Queen Elizabeth, recalled enjoying “so many happy times” in Halifax decades earlier when he was a prince that he felt compelled to send a telegram of sympathy and a personal check for £5,000, almost $100,000 in today’s dollars.

  Perhaps inspired by Boston’s example and the uncensored newspaper accounts they read, the city of Chicago, which had survived its famous fire forty-six years earlier, sent $250,000. Mayor Thomson said, “Halifax had been among the first to assist after the 1871 fire so Chicago should return her kindness.”

  On December 10, the New York pharmaceutical supplier McKesson & Robbins wired the mayor of Halifax:

  We offer five hundred dollars [about $10,000 today] in drugs and medicines, wire us your needs.

  McKesson & Robbins,

  Wholesale Druggists

  They received a reply from Lieutenant-Colonel McKelvey Bell, the chairman of the Medical Relief Commission, who did not need to ponder his answer. “Many thanks for kind offer. Please send ether, chloroform, tincture of iodine and antistreptococcic serum.”

  Sometimes the gifts were quite specific, and usually quite helpful, saving Halifax the need to procure vital materials itself. New York sent prefab homes for temporary winter quarters, while Portland, Maine, sent five carloads of telegraph material, groceries, and dry goods. The governor of Maine sent 2,000 blankets and 1,000 cots from the state military stores in Augusta, and 8,000 other blankets from Bangor, plus staff medical officers, crews of carpenters, and other volunteers. “All ready for any emergency,” he wrote. “Notify me of other needs.”

  Schenectady, New York, whose population shot up from 32,000 in 1900 to 73,000 in a decade, chipped in $4,000—or about $130,000 today. That might not sound like much, but in 1917, the average American worker made about $800 a year.

  Sometimes the kindness arrived in person. As soon as he heard about the catastrophe, Dr. C. C. Hubly, a native Haligonian who worked for the Battle Creek Sanatorium in Michigan, run by the same Kellogg brothers who invented cornflakes, boarded a train with his secretary, Mr. Smith. Three days later the two were making unsolicited house calls in the poorest
parts of the city, working every waking hour for a week.

  Once again, Boston led with gifts of all kinds—money, supplies, personnel, even a benefit concert and a memorial service. At a benefit luncheon, Harry Lauder, the Scottish singer and comedian, pledged $1,000 of his own money—about $25,000 today—which prompted others to donate an additional $1,203.

  A benefit concert was arranged at Boston’s Symphony Hall for Sunday, December 16, drawing some of the biggest names in entertainment, headlined by the world-famous Australian soprano Dame Nellie Melba, who inspired both “melba toast” and “peach melba.” She was accompanied by Austrian violinist and composer Fritz Kreisler, conductor Dr. Karl Muck, and the Boston Symphony Orchestra. More than a hundred musicians played for free.

  The broadside promised “A concert given for the Relief of Sufferers from the Recent Disaster in Halifax,” the Farm-Aid of its time, featuring the overture “In Memoriam” by Sir Arthur Sullivan.

  The sentiments, gestures, and money were accompanied by a seemingly endless stream of supplies and personnel. For more than a week, trains and ships left Boston almost daily, loaded with everything from doctors and nurses to X-ray machines and horse-drawn ambulances.

  The city’s generosity would not be forgotten.

  Chapter 33

  A Toast to Allies

  Wednesday, December 12

  The Calvin Austin left Boston late on Saturday, December 8, with $200,000 in medical personnel and supplies, engineers, glaziers, glass, and the society lady’s fur coat, amid ringing cheers. After three full days of rough seas, on Wednesday, December 12, she was cheered once more—this time by the people lining the harbor in Halifax—receiving the kind of reception usually reserved for combatants like the Highland regiment and the HMS Highflyer.