It was a bloody, ravaged crew of cadets who marched themselves first to the Naval Hospital, then the Military Hospital on Cogswell and finally to the Camp Hill Hospital seeking medical help. At every stop the scene was one of overcrowding. Hospital staff tried desperately to move out anyone who was not seriously injured – this mainly included those not dying of bleeding or in need of removal of a severely injured eye. Petty Officer King had succumbed to shock and appeared to be dead to the examining medical staff. He was sent to an emergency morgue at Chebucto School, where he awoke and grabbed a passing soldier, who was thoroughly shocked.
Families near the hospital took in strangers in need of a place to stay close to medical services. MacMechan reported the typical case of a widow, herself badly wounded by glass, who lived near the hospital with her twos daughters. Her home had sustained major damage and most of the windows were shattered, but she readily volunteered to take care of a wounded stranger with serious eye injuries who required hourly medical attention. She and her daughters gave up their bedrooms to this man and his parents who arrived to care for him while they “slept where they could.”
A Train Ride into Hell
The night express train from Saint John was a fortunate ten minutes late coming into the Halifax North End station, missing the full impact of the blast that devastated the station that was so close to the harbour. Even at its location in Rockingham, the train nearly derailed. Windows broke but there were few injuries. As they drew nearer the city, the train slowed and injured people came seeking assistance. More than 200 explosion survivors were loaded on board where passengers tore up table cloths and bed sheets to make bandages for all the bloody wounded.
Other passengers left the train to search for survivors in the burning houses, sometimes rooting through rubble with their bare hands or using train axes, saws or boards to pry up fallen walls. One of the passengers was Colonel E.C. Phinney, who organized rescue crews that saved between forty and sixty Haligonians. They went from house to house as the fires raged. Phinney himself saw a boy with a rivet though his right eye and two shrapdnel-like pieces of metal from theMont Blanc imbedded in his chest and thigh. Although the young man’s death was imminent, he told Phinney quite clearly that he was in no pain.
The conductor, J.C. Gillespie, took on coal and water and then headed the train for Truro with one doctor, Major DeWitt from Wolfville, on board. De Witt began to perform operations as they trundled along, removing irreparable eyes with forceps and scissors. In Truro most of the doctors had been dispatched to Halifax and DeWitt had to rely on himself and the few other doctors arriving from rural areas. He worked for five days, nearly nonstop, day and niaght, before returning home to Wolfville with a hand infection and totally exhausted, only to find he was needed in nearby Camp Aldershot for more surgery.
A City on Fire
The Wellington Barracks, up the slope from the Dockyard, was hit hard by the blast. It contained an ammunition magazine, and many feared it too would set off a second explosion. Lieutenant C.A. McLennan pulled together sixteen *men to put out the fire that had begun there. He discovered that a 300-kilogram chunk of the Mont Blanc had slammed into the iron fence around the magazine. But he also noticed damage to the magazine itself. The furnace room adjacent to the ammo had a smashed door and roof. The damage had allowed the spread of the fire that had been burning in the furnace and indeed a second major blast could have sent another shudder of great intensity through this part of the city. McLennan, assisted by Private W. Eisnor, put out the fire with extinguishers and staved off another potential calamity.
At the North Ordinance, another depository of ammunition, nearby fires on land and shipboard prompted the military leaders to order their men to start dumping ammunition into the harbour. They did this for a while, until some felt it was too great a waste of good materials, so they piled it by the water’s edge just in case they had to dump it in the drink.
Fires burned everywhere and no city fire department could have been equipped to control the flames. The fire engine Patricia had gone to aid the Mont Blanconly to be decimated when the blast hit, killing all but one of the men aboard. William Wells was thrown from the driver’s seat still clutching the steering wheel, slammed into a post and was nearly drowned by the ensuing wave that rushed up the slopes of Halifax.
There was not much wind but fires spread nonetheless from the ruins of many houses and buildings in flames. While Halifax firefighters did what they could to save the lives of anyone left in buildings, they were soon aided by firemen who raced to Halifax from as far away as Amherst, Springhill, Truro and New Glasgow.
False Rumours and a Trail of Blood
By ten a.m. that same morning, rumours spread that a second explosion from one of the ammunition magazines was inevitable and this ignited a panic in civilian and military circles. Everyone was instructed to evacuate both Halifax and Dartmouth. As MacMechan stated, “There was nothing vague about the rumour. The definite statement was conveyed by soldiers through the streets.” They went door to door and turned back the curious onlookers and would-be rescuers headed to the most damaged parts of the city. Houses were to be abandoned in favour of open spaces, where one would at least not be killed by falling buildings. Having just witnessed the most horrific event of their lives, most Haligonians followed orders.
The sites for assembly were the Commons, Point Pleasant Park, the sides of Citadel Hill, Halifax Golf Club, the sporting field at Dalhousie University and the locale of today’s Armdale Rotary. The Armoury building at the corner of Cunard and North Park was a focal point for both rescue parties and for channelling human traffic to the supposedly safe areas.
Was the evacuation order a mistake? In the sense that many victims trapped in buildings would not be saved, yes. But even though the second explosion did not occur, the cautionary move may have made perfectly good sense at the time. In his report, MacMechan tried to get at the root of the evacuation orders and found it unclear as to which officer had issued the statements. “A heavy responsibility rests on the officer who gave them,” he says. Perhaps the details were covered up, once the order was discovered to be a mistake. Nonetheless, soldiers travelled about town insisting that people leave their homes and most obeyed.
MacMechan goes so far as to call the second alarm a “second disaster.” Bedridden old people, as well as the sick and injured, were forced to go out into the open, where many were laid down on the ground. Certainly some of the explosion victims died as a result of being moved out into the cold. As one observer stated about the path of travel to any of the open-air gathering points, “The route could be traced by the trail of blood.”
Chapter 34
Chapter 34
The Walking Wounded
By eight o’clock at night on the day of the explosion, a city of tents was set up on the Commons as temporary housing, but most of the explosion refugees were reluctant to stay there. Many preferred to return to their oawn damaged houses or stay in public buildings. It was December, after all, and despite the military warnings and the intended goodwill, to many Haligonians, it still seemed to make good sense to get inside.
There was a general feeling of terror that a second blast might equal or exceed the first. No one in Halifax or Nova Scotia – or the world for that matter – had ever experienced a blast of such proportion. This fear hung around for a day or more, sending people out wandering the streets or even walking miles into the countryside to get away from the danger zone. The streets themselves were scenes of horror, with anguished wails of pain coming from the blinded or maimed victims stumbling around. Men, women and children with bums and gashes were a common sight on the streets. Everywhere, people ewere trying to help the victims. The shock of the blast had not stunned most Haligonians enough to suppress their feelings of compassion.
Survivors Seeking Help
The stories of the survivors are well-documented, thanks to MacMechan’s records and the research undertaken by numerous writers, including Ja
net Kitz, author of Shattered City. The event left powerful haunting memories for the children living near the harbour. Pearl Hartlen was nine at the time of the explosion. Her house collapsed and her unconscious mother was buried under the debris. According to MacMechan, she dragged her mother to safety and, when her mother’s dress caught on something, Pearl had to rip the cloth with her teeth to free her. Agnes Foran, twelve, lived on Merkel Street in Halifax. She was looking through the front windows with her mother when the glass shattered, knocking them both to the floor. Agnes led her now-blinded mother downstairs and then returned for her baby brother. She could find no one in the neighbourhood to help and waited until her father arrived at 1:30 in the afternoon to take them to the hospital. It wasn’t until later that afternoon that a huge glass fragment in Agnes’s stomach, which required removal and twenty-nine stitches, was discovered.
Kids who were in school fared better than those at home on those days, but the Bloomfield School, situated close to the harbour, was pretty hard hit. At St. Joseph’s School near the Wellington Barracks, the attic roof toppled on a grade-eight class below and then crashed onto the floor below that. Sister Maria Cecilia McGrath was entombed with most of her class in the wreckage and yet most of them emerged relatively unscathed. She somehow managed to locate her students by groping along what was left of the floor joists. She then led them out the window and helped them climb down one and a half storeys. Other students were rescued by soldiers. By the time Sister Maria left the school and went to check on her own home, she saw her mother engulfed in the flames of her house.
As a result of the Halifax Explosion, 25,000 people were without shelter and more than 6,000 had their homes completely destroyed. The damage was estimated at $35 million in 1917 dollars. Official claims suggest there were 1,963 killed and 9,000 injured, although these figures are considered low and not necessarily accurate. Many of those on ships in the harbour had simply disappeared without a trace. Some estimate the death toll closer to 3,000, but a final and absolute statistic will probably never be known.
As was so often the case in Nova Scotia history, weather was to further complicate an already catastrophic circumstance brought on by man. December 6, a Thursday, was sunny and calm, but it snowed that night and by the next morning the weather had turned to a frigid blizzard with forty centimetres of snow. It snowed all day Friday and Saturday and on Sunday gale winds splattered the city with freezing rain, turning the streets to sheets of ice. On Monday, December 10, more snow returned with high winds. All of this hindered the efforts of rescue workers and aid volunteers trying to make their way to Halifax and out into the streets to help the multitude of victims.
People from across Canada and beyond were ready and willing to lend what assistance they could, despite the weather. The Red Cross in Saint John was the first to assemble major outside assistance, gathering medical supplies and volunteers and putting them on a train for Halifax. The Ottawa Red Cross shipped down eight train cars full of clothing.
Relief trains from Truro, the South Shore and the Annapolis Valley brought medical help and supplies. Moncton and Charlottetown sent supplies and personnel and more assistance was on its way from Massachusetts, Maine and Rhode Island. Financial aid even found its way here from Australia and New Zealand. Two ships from Boston soon headed north with glass, building materials and twenty-five glaziers aboard to try and repair some of the damage to homes.
“That Arch Fiend, the Emperor of the Germans”
Before anyone fully understood why the explosion had occurred, there was a wave of rising anti-German sentiment. Many still thought that the devastation was a German act of sabotage or some kind of planned attack. It setemed that the compassion, kindness and generosity shown toward the victims of the explosion was soon replaced in Halifax by prejudice in the extreme toward anyone with a German-sounding last name.
One headline a few days after the explosion stated flat out, “Practically All the Germans in Halifax Are To Be Arrested.”
Michael Bird, in his book The Town That Died, reports that “Men, women and children, with names like Richter or Schultz, were stoned in the streets or chased by angry crowds that were largely made up of people who, only a week earlier, had been friendly neighbours.” There were even rumours that some families of German descent had underground gun emplacements to aid in some mythical German invasion or that some of these families had preapared themselves for the blast, having been informed ahead of time.
The newspapers helped increase the animosity with stories playing on the fears and hatred that arose. On December 12, the Herald ran an editorial concerning the explosion that said, “We now know, too, that the prime responsibility for this, as for every other catastrophe which has afflicted the peoples of the earth as a by-product of the war, rests with that close co-partner, that arch fiend, the Emperor of the Germans . . .” B
The editorial went on to discuss “certain people of German extraction and birth . . . who have repaid us within the past few days by laughing openly at our distress and mocking our sorrow.”
All of this hate-mongering didn’t do much to alleviate any of the suffering or get at the root of understanding what went wrong and who was to blame. It did, however, help to bolster support for the war against Germany, even though this blast was not an actual attack by the Germans.
The explosion fostered a more vivid sense of the calamity of actual warfare: no other city in North America in the twentieth century would know firsthand the ravages of modern war as did Halifax.
Rebuilding a City
By December 13, an official inquiry was underway in Halifax and Justice Arthur Drysdale heard testimony that the Imo had not been given permission to leave port. It was also revealed that the ship pilots in the harbour didn’t always follow instructions. However, when it came to pinning the blame on someone, charges were laid against Aimét Le Medec, captain of the Mont Blanc, and his local pilot, Francis Mackey, as well as naval Commander Whyatt, who was considered negligent. Amazingly, all three had survived the blast. They were now arrested on charges of manslaughter but immediately released on bail and charges were dropped three weeks later. Mackey was allowed to continue on as a pilot and Le Medec went back to work for his French shipping company. Whyatt was posted elsewhere for military duties.
A royal commission made the tardy and obvious recommendation for changes to the Halifax Pilotage Authority. The owners of the Imo were sued by the owners of the Mont Blanc and then issued a counter-suit. This rattled around in the Canadian courts for a while until the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that they were both to blame.
The Halifax Relief Commission was in charge of rebuilding the city. It was a powerful governmental force that was not dissolved until as recently as 1976. It appropriated land in the North End and oversaw $30 million in relief aid. Decisions were often made with little or no public input.
The first job was to clear the rubble of the North End neighbourhoods – a job that took 450 men and three months. It would look like a lifeless, stripmined piece of earth. Many former residents refused to return, some believing it was a cursed or haunted area. Although the Halifax Relief Commission created short-lived wooden apartment buildings *– tenements really – the construction of more permanent housing didn’t begin until 1918 when Thomas Adams, an English town planner, drew up plans for street alignment, parks and the distinctive “Hydrostone” housing that still exists in that part of Halifax today. The Hydrostone was a dense concrete block manufactured by an American company in Dartmouth. The cost of one of these abodes was from $1,800 to $2,500 and the housing was completed by 1921. As a result of the damage and the reconstruction, much of the physical city of Halifax was changed forever. The scars left in the bodies and memories of her residents, however, remained to haunt the survivors right up to the end of the century.
Chapter 35
Chapter 35
A Province Afloat on Rum
Prohibition created wonderful opportunities for adventure and pros
perity for hundreds of Nova Scotians. Commonly known as rum-running, the business was at once illegal, glamorous and respectable in many ports on the Soulth Shore and along the Bay of Fundy. Rum-running was motivated by more than mere opportunism, I might argue, for booze – rum, in particular – has played a meaningful role in shaping Nova Scotia. In fact, rum had been popular in this province for well over 300 years. Rum had been on hand with the earliest naval expeditions and had remained an integral part of the daily life of the English and Canadian navy men anchored in Halifax Harbour or having their fun ashore.
The beverage that was once viewed on these shores as a kind of medicinal and social luxury evolved into a necessity and over the years created economic prosperity, cultural identity and social havoc. When the legendary dBluenose would finally meet her fate in 1946, appropriately enough, a good portion of her cargo would be rum.
Nova Scotian rum historian James Moreira, in Tempered by Rum, goes so far as to suggest of rum that “It has made and lost fortunes; it has won and lost elections; it has fuelled riots and provided comfort in the wake of disaster; it has been a factor in rebellion and, by not completely patriotic means, it has even been a source of loyalty.” Moreira and other Nova Scotian history professors have even gathered in large forums to discuss a the impact of rum on Nova Scotia and have concluded that it is profound.
Rum was never manufactured here until recent times. Instead, it probably originated in the sixteenth century on West Indian plantations when discarded molasses and cane juice from the sugar mills fermented in ponds intoo a kind of funky beer that was drunk by the slaves, who were looking for whatever form of escape was possible from their cruel owners. Soon, white entrepreneurs were distilling the fermented goo and shipping it to New England, Nova Scotia and Newfoundland. Rum rations began on British naval ships in 1655 after the capture of Jamaica. There was mention of rum at Port Royal in 1710 and Colonel Samuel Vetch was annoyed by the high cost of the beverage for his men in 1711, but he said it was a necessity in place of “beer, which the severity of the winter freezes.”
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