Exploded Identity: A Saga of the Halifax Explosion

By Catherine M. Mildon

I was four and half years old and living in Halifax with my seven siblings the day my city was devastated by an exploding ship in the harbour. It threw me to the floor as our windows collapsed. In the days, weeks, months and years that followed, this vivid, terrifying moment and the stories of altered lives dominated our daily thoughts and conversations. As CEO of the Northern Electric Company in Halifax, my father was heavily involved in the immediate demands. Years later I felt driven to record my family experiences and to study thoroughly the record of those awful days. As I wrote, I was struck by the overwhelming determination, heroism and cooperation that the unheralded citizens of Halifax demonstrated in the face of death, destruction and snowstorms.

For centuries women have known that when war came they would be needed for their sheets torn up for bandages, for clothing and for food. So, the women of Halifax met in August 1914 and made tentative plans should Halifax be attacked. Some don't believe it. Yet war was very frightening in a seaport city. And these Halifax ladies were the women who, two years before, gathered at city hall behind long tables with pen and paper to assist survivors of the Titanic to identify bodies gathered up from the sea and brought to Halifax on our own ships.

When the Explosion went off the wife of a judge met her friend and arrived at the city hall by 9:30 a.m. They swept up glass and plaster knowing that the women would be coming soon with everything they had mustered. At 11:30 a.m. one of the city councillors came downstairs and said to the women "Give everything to everybody who asks". Half-naked, blackened, bloodied people had been coming in all morning. The women were ready with "everything for everybody" because the ladies had planned for an attack.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trafford Publishing
• Release date: Nov 10, 2006
• ISBN: 9781412239769

Catherine M. Mildon

One of the youngest of eight children, Catherine learned to read and write before her fourth birthday. She did so even though born hard-of-hearing, a challenge all her life. The family was in Halifax the day their world exploded. In the years that followed the horror, with no radios or televisions, they gathered around the fireplace winter and summer remembering and embellishing the personal memories and the tales told by others. Catherine remembers learning a great deal beyond her years from those evenings. Much later, Catherine won a scholarship into Art School. However, when her father died in 1931, Catherine took a nursing course and nursed the poor during those grim years. In 1935 she returned home to Montreal to marry and to attend University with her husband, studying sociology and psychology. In 1960 Catherine moved to Toronto to allow her four children to go to university there. It was here that Catherine began to spend long hours studying the events of that fateful Halifax day still vivid from her childhood years. Having survived cancer at 55, Catherine was determined to set down the experience of her community. She read everything available, searched the archives of daily newspapers for that dramatic year and wrote the stories her family had retold and retold. After completing a degree in English and History at the University of Toronto, she continued to write and revise. Now in her 90's after three heart attacks, Catherine has decided it is time to finish her work and publish it for all to read.

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Contents

AUTHOR’S NOTE

FOREWORD

PREFACE

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

EPILOGUE

NOTES

BIBLIOGRAPHY

AUTHOR’S NOTE

MANY PEOPLE MAY BELIEVE ONE OF these events is like their family’s story. This may well be because those instances happened in several households in any one area. The suffering endured that first day and night, without closed windows, power, or telephones, was incredible. The decisions that had to be made by occupants of every household, or as may be, lost household, were brave, practical and wonderful. They just did what had to be done. Much later, when they looked back, they felt very proud of how they had managed throughout that first long day and bitter cold night.

This book is a tribute to the citizens, young and old; to the teachers who encouraged the children to be soldiers at home while their fathers were overseas and who kept the children alert to the possibility of an attack on their seaport; to the doctors and nurses who treated the wounded of the explosion in unbelievable situations; to the soldiers and sailors, many of them only seventeen and eighteen years old, who flinched at nothing in the rescue operations; to the school children, unofficially drafted to help by going to school every day, not to study, but to do what their hands could do, as did the High School girls who rolled bandages, hemmed diapers and baby nightgowns, and the High School Cadets and Boy Scouts who were drafted for yeoman service as messengers-a task which they accomplished to the great appreciation and pride of every body. They, like their elders, plodded on in their job day after day through blizzards, cold and high winds. Formal schooling did not start again until March, 1918. I want this book to be read because it is a report of the swift planning by the city councillors, the citizens and the military of Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada on December 6, 1917 and onward.

The planning started in August 1914 when the prominent men in Halifax knew that war was coming immediately. The great fear of all citizens was that submarines would get into the Halifax Harbour which was one of the largest and second deepest in the world. Plans had to be made, likely by the Navy, for a submarine net to be let down at the entrance to the harbour every day at 4:30 p.m. and not brought up until the light of day the next morning. Tentative plans had to be made for a possible attack on the port and some men must be ready to lead. My father carried a card in his front pocket that would give him the right to take charge if needed.

For centuries women have known that when war came they would be needed for their sheets to tear up for bandages, for clothing and food. So, the women of Halifax met in August 1914 and made tentative plans to be able to supply these should Halifax be attacked. I have been told by some they don’t believe it. But why? War was very frightening in a seaport city. After all these Halifax ladies were the women who, two years before gathered at the city hall and sat behind long tables with pen and paper to take information from the survivors of the Titanic sinking who were coming from New York to identify bodies that had been gathered up from the sea and brought to Halifax on one of our own ships.

People can believe men gathered in 1914 to make plans but find it difficult to believe women would. They did and made their plans and had all of 1915 and 1916 to persuade more and more women to save their baby clothes, family clothes, sheets and blankets ready for an attack. When the Explosion went off the wife of a judge met her friend and arrived at the city hall by 9:30 a.m. They swept up glass and plaster knowing that the chosen women would be coming soon. After the husbands, sons and grooms had left the women they went back to homes they knew had a ready pile of clothes to be picked up. At 11:30 a.m. one of the city councillors came downstairs and said to the women Give everything to everybody who asks. Half-naked, blackened, bloodied people had been coming in all morning. If the ladies hadn’t planned carefully long beforehand where did the everything come from? Electricity and telephone lines were down. No one could be called to come or be asked for clothing. No! They were ready because the ladies had planned for an attack.

In 1930 I wrote up some of the stories I remembered but when I went to the Montreal libraries for the history of the explosion I found nothing. In 1941, during the Second Great War, I was surprised to be asked by someone if I knew of anyone who had lost a small child in 1917. In the 1960’s, now in Toronto, I went to the library looking for history of the Explosion. There was none.

My brother and I knew that a historian from Dalhousie University had been given an office downtown and two young men to seek out the principal persons and get the true story. My eldest brother disappointed he couldn’t be a Boy Scout messenger was very excited and decided to be one of these men and gather the true stories from the right people. He wrote these stories and we had to memorize them. Up to 1926, whenever a new family moved into the neighbourhood all the children gathered on someone’s steps and exchanged stories of what happened to them in the Explosion. Whichever brother told the story, every word had to be exactly as written or it wouldn’t be the true story. I was there when they were told but I had to memorize the story of Jeff and Gary because I acted Madeline. We played this play throughout three summers and in the first year after the explosion on an average once a week.

In 1966 I wrote the first seven chapters of my family’s day to day life after the explosion. I thought this would be a history of sorts and I could not die without leaving some word of the amazing work of the citizens of Halifax and the bravery of all those in the Richmond area.

In 1967 a very fine book by Michael Bird, an English journalist, The Town that Died was published. In 1978 the history by the historian of Dalhousie, The Halifax Disaster was found in the Archives of Dalhousie University. It was edited and published by Graham Metson under the title The Halifax Explosion December 6, 1917. My day to day stories were correct and some dates and times were helpful.

In 1989 a great research of the Explosion Shattered City was written by Janet F. Kitz. It is a wonderful and stirring report of the suffering and bravery of the Halifax citizens of the Richmond area.

My book is of the men and women of Halifax working behind the scenes.

Catherine Mary Mildon

Toronto. Ontario, Canada

In Memory of

My father, William Murdoch

and my brother, Charles William II

FOREWORD

Some day the story may be written and when it is, the outside world will perhaps get some inkling of what will probably go down in history as one of the tragic happenings of the greatest war the world has ever known.

Ralph P. Bell, Secretary of the Relief Commission

FOR YEARS, I PLANNED TO WRITE about the 1917 Explosion in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada because, being present, I had a unique opportunity to know the day by day details. Also, my extended family of nieces and nephews, scattered over the continent, feel their father, mother, aunts and uncles did not tell much about their life in Halifax. Our family name is Murdoch. The Murdoch clan was a sept, meaning a small clan, and was part of the large MacPherson clan. Consequently, the Murdoch tartan is the MacPherson tartan. Pride in our clan heritage led me to choose MacPherson for the family name in the novel.

Although this is not an autobiography as such, Ross MacPherson is my father, the boys are my brothers, the girls are my older sisters. I am Jennifer and the stories are what I heard in 1917, 1918 and for many years after. There was a Mike. I saw Mr. Goddam in 1923. Barney with his fury at the newcomers trying to boss exhausted workers, even his Ye gods, hell and little fishes, is true, as are some of the other events. There was more order in the disorder than the newcomers realized. The Military, operating from Headquarters located at Spring Garden Road and Queen Street, was in charge and there was excellent cooperation between them and the City Council. The military moved swiftly in everything, including arrangements for mounted guards around Richmond and having passes issued to everyone permitted into the area. The housing of thousands of people within thirty days, into the newly erected houses on the

Common-built in spite of deeply frozen ground-and soon after into the repaired houses, is a landmark of accomplishment in which the military and citizens could and did take great pride.

I very much appreciate the helpfulness of the Public Archives of Nova Scotia in Halifax. I was greatly encouraged by my many friends of the University Women’s Club of Toronto, especially Reta Henry who not only noted corrections but made suggestions as well. I thank my friend, Dante Anderson, a writer now living in New York, for his kindness and help and my friend Marta Kundratz who was the first to read my early chapters. I thank Dr. Julian Dent, professor of History at the University of Toronto, for his kindness, corrections and encouragement. I thank my friend and lawyer, G. Donald Scroggie for reading, making suggestions and having confidence in me, and Dr. Joan Harrison for her help and encouragement and Elizabeth P. Scott, lawyer, for her great interest and her loan of a special typewriter; I very much appreciate the kindness of Nancy Prasad, writer and editor, for the word corrections and suggested new wording. I am grateful to my family for their love and interest. I thank my grandson, Drew Mildon, for word-processing the book; and my daughter, Anne Mildon, for the use of her office and copying machine; and Anne Marie Clark who was there as a back-up to confirm the changes needed in the editing; and my son, Denis A. Mildon, PhD, for all his help and for arranging for the publishing of this book; and Janet F. Kitz, author of Shattered City, for her friendship and for sharing her exciting interest in the Halifax Explosion; and Alan Ruffman, environmentalist, author and President of the Geomarine Association Ltd. Halifax, for his encouragement and keen interest. In his broadcast on CBC, December 3, 1987, seventy years after the Explosion, he said:

Those who have written or done research work on the Explosion have generally not been Nova Scotian or long-time Haligonians.

I aspire be to that Haligonian because I was there. I outlined this book in the 1960’s. I wrote the last chapter and submitted it to the Canadian Writers’ Contest in 1969. Life events with children and grandchildren intervened and slowed my progress. However, as the anniversary of the explosion approaches, this novel is my memorial to that terrible event.

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PREFACE

HALIFAX CITY, BUILT AROUND ITS CITADEL hill, is a Canadian seaport on the south shore of Nova Scotia on the Atlantic Ocean. The city is on a rocky peninsula formed by the main harbour and a branch of it called the North West Arm. The harbour is the second largest in the world, fourteen miles long, eighty-three feet deep at the entrance and ice-free. Bedford Basin, at the northern end, is connected to the outer harbour by a deep channel of water called The Narrows. With 33,000 feet of berthing space, the Basin is large enough to give a great number of ships a safe haven for convoy purposes during war times.

Halifax was founded by the Honourable Edward Cornwallis, a general who fought in the war with France. General Cornwallis was the twin brother of the Archbishop of Canterbury and the uncle of the British Commander who was to surrender York (later Toronto). On May 9, 1749, General Cornwallis was formally appointed Governor of Nova Scotia. He sailed aboard the Sphinx, a sloop of war, along with thirteen transports carrying the needs for the settlement. They arrived June 21, 1749 at the beautiful harbour called Chebucto meaning ‘great long harbour’. Cornwallis renamed it Halifax after Lord Halifax, head of the Board of Trade and Plantations.

In one month the soldiers and settlers cleared twelve acres. The surveyor and the engineer laid out straight and handsome streets. At the south end of the peninsula 175 acres were set apart to be Point Pleasant Park. They provided 240 acres to the west of the Citadel for a Common. Between the Citadel and the harbour they set apart an acre of land called the Grand Parade where citizens could gather and soldiers parade for inspection.

The British parliament paid for oak frames from Boston to build St. Paul’s Anglican church and it was finished and holding services in 1750. This beautiful wooden church was so well built it stands today, two and a half centuries later, at the south end of the Grand Parade. By 1755, the British parliament had sent nearly one half million pounds for the building of this garrison and new settlement. It is little wonder the first newspaper in Canada appeared in 1752 and the first book and magazine followed. Millionaires found Halifax attractive. They built mansions in town; one large home of stone was built by 1754. Another large mansion was Carlton House, built of stone and finished in 1760. It stands today two and a half centuries later on Argyle Street as the Carlton Hotel.

Halifax was to grow wealthy when there was a war and in twenty years this seaport was the most important naval post and military garrison of the British Empire in the war with the Thirteen Colonies who fought for independence and established it in 1776. In 1790 the Duke of Kent, a general, arrived in Halifax to be the Governor. He was the King of England’s fourth son, a strict autocrat. He built the Citadel Clock, the beautiful round St, George Anglican church and remodeled the garrison on top of the Citadel. In 1796 England was building the Prince of Wales Martello towers along the south coast for protection against invasion by Napoleon. At the same time the Duke of Kent was building five Prince of Wales Martello towers on the coast at the south of Point Pleasant Park. One of these Martello towers is still standing today. The Duke of Kent left Halifax in 1800 and later had a daughter who became Queen Victoria. The British forces remained in Halifax to guard against any action from the United States. It came with the war of 1812. Invasion happened in Upper Canada when York, now Toronto, was captured and the Americans burnt the government buildings to the ground. In retaliation the British forces, led by Major-General Robert Ross, took Washington, D.C, and set the United States’ government buildings on fire. Major-General Ross died from wounds sustained at the capture of Baltimore. He is buried in the old cemetery on Barrington Street in Halifax.

From the beginning of Halifax the wealthy British officers used their money and talents on balls, sports and plays. The army gave Halifax its first theatre in 1789. The navy is credited with organizing the annual regattas and the founding of the Halifax Yacht Club in 1837 as well as curling in 1824. The army was responsible for the beginning of hockey and officers of both navy and army organized the Turf Club in 1825. This lively interest of navy and military officers in the life of the city led many a young man to join the British military and naval services. Wealthy men bought commissions for their sons and Halifax took great pride in local men who rose to the highest ranks in the Royal Navy. The citizens of Halifax were loyal and proud members of the British Empire.

In the middle of the nineteenth century the Trans-Canada railway brought produce from the west. In time Halifax would have a grain elevator with a capacity of two million bushels, so situated that ships at four berths could be loaded simultaneously.

After a century and a half of service the British soldiers and sailors left Halifax in 1906 leaving all buildings and equipment for the Dominion of Canada to build up their forces. The Prime Minister, Sir Robert Borden, formally established the Royal Canadian Navy in 1911 but the beginning of World War 1 was only four years away. In less than eight years the British forces were back in Halifax to facilitate the transportation of soldiers and supplies overseas and to be in control of the convoys. The population of Halifax in 1901 was 40,000; by 1917 it was 55,000.

All Canadian troops going overseas passed through Halifax, millions of tons of supplies going with them. The city struggled with accommodation and every available space was utilized. Women tied to their homes put cots up in their kitchen for themselves and children and rented all their bedrooms. Keeping thousands of soldiers occupied was hard work for the citizens. In January, prohibition became law. This made life easier for the volunteers—who were mostly women—but the police probably found their work more difficult dealing with speak-easies and bootleg liquor.

Entertainments and sports did much to keep the soldiers busy. In the winter rinks for skating were available. Bass Lake was a favourite but the largest was the North West Arm. Many skaters including soldiers and sailors as they had for more than a century pushed chairs on runners with their lady-friends in them, hands warmed in white muffs. Most women wanted to skate so the happy couples glided along with their arms crossed in front of them, the day not having arrived when they could cross their arms behind. Then there were the happy occupants of a tandem sleigh with two horses, one in front of the other, trotting away down the side of the Arm and back again. To enjoy the fun of this part of Halifax all one needed was a pair of skates.

In the summer the North West Arm provided the soldiers with swimming, boating and canoeing. There was the regatta, and you didn’t need a pair of white ducks or a straw boater to enjoy it. You could pack sandwiches in a bag hung on your arm or shoulder, find a spot to watch and when the last race came, two long thin boats with strong, energetic young men sculling for all their worth, you picked your boat and cheered, Row! Row! Row! along with all the others.

The soldiers and sailors could ride horses in Point Pleasant Park. Rugby and cricket could be seen on the Common most days, always on Saturdays. Young people entertained soldiers and sailors in their homes and it was a point of pride to have Japanese lanterns to give the room a soft lighting. Before the war, a home with a park-sized garden had a great many Japanese lanterns hanging from lines stretched from tree to tree for a grand evening of dancing on the lawn. When the people of the city heard about it, many wanted a lantern to hang in their home. The lantern had a wooden base with a holder in the middle for a candle but they were not cheap. Some creative person had the brilliant idea to cut to shape and sell lanterns flat for a cent! Directions called for a rope to go from tree to tree, pole to pole. Then several Christmas tree light cords were connected and tied along the rope with the light bulbs lowered six inches. It took only a minute to clip together the sides of the lantern, pull it up over the light bulb and tie to the rope. A slight push upward from the bottom made the slits open all around and when darkness came and the lights were turned on, the glow from these one-cent Japanese lanterns was thrilling and romantic. Even owners of pocket-handkerchief sized gardens, could afford a dozens lanterns. The merchants made money on these one-cent lanterns and probably sold more Christmas tree light bulbs in the summer than at Christmas time. When the war came, the lanterns had to be used indoors.

In the fall, the three-week long Exhibition had fun and excitement for the soldiers and sailors. People came from all around the province and attendance at times reached 4000. Halifax had three large theatres, concerts and activities in the church to attend. The YMCA and many other halls held dances every evening and chaperons had to be present. The matrons of the city organized themselves to share these duties and their husbands helped when they could.

On December 5, 1917 the soldiers were restless and anxious to embark. They may have surmised from the activity they could see that a convoy was due to leave in a few days. The son of the Deputy-Mayor, a lieutenant in the army, took a beautiful young lady to the theatre that night. He said goodnight to her in front of her pretty house on Veith Street in Richmond, both conscious he would be leaving for overseas shortly. An artist, Arthur Lismer, who would one day be one of the Group of Seven, had been asked to restore the city’s Art Gallery. He had the interior decorating done to his satisfaction and then hung pictures, some on loan from galleries and private collection. He was nearly ready for his first Art Show. The city slept easily that night. Their seaport had always been orderly and safe. No one thought of or was ready for calamity.

PROLOGUE

The Explosion

THE GREATEST MAN-MADE EXPLOSION BEFORE HIROSHIMA occurred in the third year of World War I when the seaport city of Halifax, Nova Scotia, was cut off from the rest of Canada by a devastating eruption. In seconds this explosion brought, simultaneously, an earthquake that shattered windows as far away as sixty miles, an atomic-like blast that laid waste much of the city, a monstrous tidal wave thirty feet in height, and fire raining from the sky in thousands of burning ship fragments which, falling far and wide, set on fire the wrecked houses and buildings. Railway tracks were ripped up and twisted, roads were made impassable by human corpses, dead animals, fallen telephone poles and electric wires whipping through the air like snakes spitting sparks.

This disastrous blast of 2, 622 tons of explosives from a ship afire on the harbour was so powerful the resultant shockwave carried a half-ton shank of anchor two miles westward clear through the sky over Halifax to a wooded area near the North West Arm. At the same time, the barrel of a deck cannon went flying three and a half miles eastward high over Dartmouth to Albro Lake. The shockwave, forceful enough to fling away tons of steel, blew human beings around like feathers. A sailor lifted into the sky, tumbled over and over until, stripped of his clothing, he landed lightly on his feet on top of Fort Needham Hill. He stood there until his vision returned and then walked away, stepping over cut and bloodied bodies as shorn of clothes as he was. A nine-year old girl twisted and somersaulted through the air to a spot a few blocks up the slope. When her eyesight cleared she realized the naked man near her was dead. Frightened, she crawled six feet over dead and living bodies until she came to a clear patch of earth where she collapsed into unconsciousness.

Two miles away the shockwave’s back draft snatched infants out of their prams and carried them toward the city. A baby in a folded-over sheepskin bag was let down gently into a hedge below the Common. A soldier heard a cry and looked into the bush. The baby smiled and laughed up at him. Others were not so fortunate. The back draft joined the returning rush of water, one man held onto a telephone pole for dear life while the powerful pull of the water swirled around him and down the slope, sweeping along dead and living bodies to the harbour where the thirty foot high wave was crashing down into the crater that the earthquake had ripped out of the floor of the harbour. Then the water on the surface became as tumultuous as fiercely boiling water. Gases arose into the sky in atom bomb style but its form was not a white mushroom but a dirty gray and black mass in no definable shape. Oily soot, the unconsumed carbon of the explosives, fell like a black rain, blackening everything and everyone it touched. Few had time to notice. In the ill-fated northern district of Halifax, called Richmond, those who were alive and able were digging out their dead and living and pulling them from burning houses. The story of these heroic survivors, along with the Haligonians and military personnel who rushed to help, is a story that needs to be told so the outside world gets some inkling of the incredible catastrophe bravely endured by the people of Halifax and Dartmouth.

On December 1, 1917 the munitions ship, Mont Blanc, was prepared to leave New York to join the convoy gathering at Halifax. The Mont Blanc, a large steamer 330 feet long and 40 feet wide, built in England, was bought in 1915 by the reputable Compagne Generale Transatlantique, generally known as the French Line. It was painted and thoroughly overhauled to bring war supplies from America. During the Great War, the French Admiralty controlled all sizable ships. Merchant officers were made officers of the Naval Reserve and the merchant crews became members of the French Navy. France had been invaded in 1914 and by 1917