The Halifax Citadel’s cannon will fire a few hours early this morning. At 9:04:35 a.m., the cannon’s boom will mark the moment the Halifax Explosion forever changed the city 100 years ago.
After the cannon is fired, the city hall’s tower bell, church bells, ferry horns and naval and merchant ship sirens will all ring out for one minute.
On December 6, 1917, the Norwegian steamship Imo, which was carrying Belgian relief supplies, rammed into the French munitions vessel Mont-Blanc, which was carrying TNT through the narrowest part of Halifax harbour.
Two thousand people were killed in the Halifax Explosion and another 9,000 injured. The explosion is the worst man-made disaster in Canadian history.
A view across the devastated neighbourhood of Richmond in Halifax, Nova Scotia after the Halifax Explosion, looking toward the Dartmouth side of the harbour. The steamship Imo, one of the ships in the collision that triggered the explosion, can be seen aground on the far side of the harbour. Halifax after December 6, 1917. Source: Nova Scotia Archives, #DNDHfxExplosion-2.
On Ancestry
To commemorate the anniversary, Ancestry released the Halifax Explosion Remembrance Book — a definitive listing and searchable database of those killed in the 1917 disaster. The collection is available to all Canadians for free on Ancestry.ca.
On Nova Scotia Archives
The Halifax Explosion Remembrance Book that contains 1,835 names is also available on the Nova Scotia Archives website.
The book was originally developed in 2002 as a commemorative project sponsored by the Halifax Foundation and its chair, the late Edmund Morris, a former city mayor, to mark the 85th anniversary of the Halifax Explosion. The objective of the project was to compile a definitive listing of the known dead from the disaster.
The database version of the Remembrance Book featured on the Nova Scotia Archives website is an expanded and updated version of the one developed in 2002. The revision incorporates details from a newly discovered source of information, and adds many corrections provided by visitors to the website.
The original chief source of information for the project was the list of 1,535 victims published in McAlpine’s Halifax City Directory for 1918, and entitled “Names of the Identified Dead Killed in the Explosion at Halifax 6 December 1917.” This source was also used in compiling an augmented list published in 1998 by the Genealogical Association of Nova Scotia.
Mapping the tragedy
For the 100-year anniversary of the Halifax Explosion, Global News, with King’s College journalism students, has mapped the homes of as many of the victims as they could — and “the results paint a staggering picture of the human cost of one of Canada’s greatest tragedies.” Two maps were created: a main one and one with only child victims. Each name is linked to a page on the Nova Scotia Archives website with information from the Remembrance Book.
Global News and King’s College journalism school placed the names and addresses of 1,439 victims of the 1917 Halifax Explosion on a map of modern Halifax.
Truly horrific event in Canadian history – with more and more details coming to light about the post-event decisions made. Thanks for posting this, I hadn’t seen the map of casualties.