Canada's Day of Devastation

[Molly Pitcher]

I saw on CBC tonight the two part show "Shattered City". Now I knew about this because a lady from Halifax was my neighbor when I was a kid growing up in Rhode Island. Most of you will have never heard of it, even some of you Canadians as the indepth part of the show revealed.

On December 6, 1917 a French ammunition ship bound for the war on the western front in WWI blew up in Halifax Harbor, Nova Scotia. About 2,000 people died and another 9,000 were injured. That's the minimum. The toll may be higher but as entire families were wiped out nobody could be sure.

The blast was the largest in recorded history prior to the atomic bomb.

Bostonians made a massive effort to help. Being a maritime city much in contact with Halifax they saw it as family in need. To this day Halifax sends Boston a Christmas tree in honor of the time they came when the need was great.

http://www.cbc.ca/halifaxexplosion/

http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/kylet1/halifax.htm

and other sites I'm sure you can Google.

 

[Charge 7]

When I was a kid my family often went to Nova Scotia in the summer. I remember going through Halifax and hearing about the explosion. I saw the anchor of the Mont Blanc that was blown so far away. Still have a book about it here somewhere. An amazing story. Such tales of heroism from ordinary people - many of them children. All the more amazing is how little it is remembered.

 

[C/2nd Lt Robot]

I've heard about that. My Squadron Cadet Commander told me about it a while ago.

 

[jimfalcon]

yeah i heard about this aswell.

where i live we get alot of these "heritage" videos on the tv from time to time, where commercial breaks would be.

one was about this explosion. aparently there was a calm before the explosion in between the crash and the explosion.

one man saw the problem, knowing what the one ship was carring (hordes of ammunition) and ran to the train station. he sent out over morse code a message telling an inbound train to stop. he succeeded meer seconds before the ships exploded.

the main problem was alot of people ran to the windows to see what was going on in the harbour so when the ships exploded thousands of people were blinded and scared for life by shards of glass.