IMMEDIATE RESCUE EFFORTS were largely uncoordinated, though policemen, firemen, and soldiers were on hand surprisingly soon after the blast. Vehicles of all kinds—horse-drawn drays, cars, army trucks—transported victims to the closest hospitals, where the living rubbed shoulders with the dead. Doctors and nurses had no idea what was to come. They might well have been at the battlefront.
It was impossible to make lists or find out names. A crying baby snatched from a burning house had to be taken somewhere. A woman bleeding to death could not be left until her husband came. A child badly injured on the way to school needed immediate care. There was no time to be systematic at the beginning of the emergency.
People relied on their own judgment. The night express train from Saint John, New Brunswick, the No. 10, had been about ten minutes late that morning, pulling into Rockingham soon after nine. As it approached the suburb, about two miles north of Richmond, there was an upheaval, and all the windows were smashed. Luckily no one was badly hurt. The engine driver proceeded cautiously until the track was impassable. Soon all the passengers got off the train to see how they could help. The conductor decided that the best thing to do was fill the train with injured and homeless and head back to Rockingham.
Nearly the whole Driscoll family was on that train, together with about 250 others. In fact, Cliff Driscoll had helped load the No. 10. The only one missing from the family was eleven-year-old Gordon, who had been on his way to school. Cliff had searched for him fruitlessly. Two of the family were badly injured: Mr Driscoll had a serious wound on his face and later had to have an eye removed; Art, the five-year-old, had not regained consciousness and lay limp in his mother’s lap.
Barbara Orr, meanwhile, was placed on a horse-drawn fish truck and unloaded at Camp Hill Hospital, on Robie Street. Mrs Duggan and her children also arrived at Camp Hill in a horse-drawn wagon. They stayed together in the little room that contained the switchboard. William Duggan, the father, was on duty on a minesweeper in the Atlantic. When the Mont Blanc blew up, the crew thought that their ship had hit a mine. But then a message crackled over the radio: “Get back. Halifax is destroyed.” He finally got home that afternoon, but only the house’s foundation was left; the family pet, a faithful bulldog named Molly, sat on guard, howling. Mr Duggan had no idea if his family was still alive. Nor did Evelyn Johnson. An army truck stopped for her, and a soldier jumped off and lifted her into the back. She, too, was taken to Camp Hill.
Rescuers were doing their level best to put out fires, free trapped victims, and alleviate pain. Then, about ten, a panic occurred that not only threatened to undo what little progress had been made but also caused considerable suffering and probably added to the death toll.
The main military barracks in Halifax occupied a large area between Barrington and Gottingen streets at the south end of Richmond. During the explosion it sustained heavy damage and casualties. Wellington Barracks, as it was called, also contained a large well-stocked magazine with a furnace room nearby. Live coals had been scattered close to the broken wall of the magazine, and if a young lieutenant, C. A. McLennan, had not acted quickly, there might have been a second explosion. He seized a fire extinguisher and played it on the coals. Great clouds of steam and smoke rose, creating panic among those who saw them. They fled, spreading rumours of further catastrophe. The immediate danger had in fact been averted, but some feared that it might come again. Soon uniformed men toured Halifax and Dartmouth, warning of the possibility of a second explosion and ordering everyone to go to the nearest open ground.
Few disobeyed. Only those who believed they were needed stayed put. Firemen remained in their places, and hospital staff refused to budge. According to the Children’s Hospital Record of Meeting book, the superintendent of that hospital stood firm. With a cut on her face, she addressed the staff: “No one shall leave this building. It would mean the death of many of the children if they had to be moved to the Commons, and it is the duty of everyone to stand by our post, and if it should be that we are to die, we will die at our post.” Not one nurse in the building said a word in objection.
In no time, however, a pathetic stream of humanity, shocked and confused, was pouring through the city, heading for Citadel Hill, Point Pleasant Park, or any nearby field. The sick and injured who could not walk were carried, and many were not dressed for winter. Some clutched a baby; others a precious possession, maybe a pet. Most of those from the worst-hit areas took nothing. They just complied with the command. Strangely silent, they left their violated homes, often forever.
With no time to spare, soldiers snatched crying babies from burning homes and took them to hospital. (MARITIME MUSEUM/KITZ)
Many people who had transport went out to the country. The Wallace family lived on Chebucto Road not far from the North West Arm. A huge, heavy chunk of metal had landed in the garden, just missing some of them. T. J. Wallace, the father, an optometrist, loaded his wife, their seven children, ranging in age from a few months to seven years, and two servants into the car. One of the boys wanted to give up his place for the Newfoundland dog, but Mr Wallace would not let him. The family also picked up a neighbour and then drove to Tantallon, on St Margarets Bay. The journey took a long time, as Herring Cove Road was thick with people, many of them limping and obviously injured. The Wallaces could not make room for anyone else.
In the city Eileen Ryan’s brothers had heard that everyone was leaving his house and going to high ground. The family was just about to set out when a group of sailors arrived. They had learned that the Ryans possessed a car, a 1917 Chevrolet, and wanted to find out whether it could still be driven. They got it out of the garage, and it started. The oldest boy, who had a licence, was asked to drive wounded to hospital. Glad to be of service, he quickly agreed. His mother had told him that before he reached home, their next-door neighbour had rushed in to see whether someone could take his daughter to hospital. The girl’s jugular vein had been cut, and she was bleeding to death. No one could drive the car or even get it out of the garage, and the little girl died. How the boy wished he had been there earlier.
Mrs Ryan put some valuables into her handbag, and she and her four younger children left for the outskirts of the city, beyond Chebucto Road. They were not alone. Laura went, too, carefully carried by one of the boys. Laura was beautiful, with sleek grey feathers and a crimson tail. She was the pet parrot, which Mr Ryan had brought back from South Africa. The Ryans loved this talented bird, which could mimic bugle calls heard from nearby Wellington Barracks and which could even sound like Mrs Ryan when she put out the cat. On the way, Mrs Ryan’s handbag became too heavy, and she hung it on a fence post, walking away and forgetting about it. When they returned, it was still there, untouched. Only life mattered that day, not valuables.
Frank Burford and his older sister, Winnie, made their way to the Commons, behind Citadel Hill. A soldier came by and treated the nasty gash on Frank’s leg, the cut he had received from the falling timber. Still carrying his torn schoolbag, James Pattison, with his brother Gordon, was on the North Common. Someone gave them each a coat and James a stocking cap. The cap, crawling with head lice, added to his misery. He could not understand how the lice got through all the oil in his hair, but that was something else that would have to be dealt with later. Local organizations such as the St John’s Ambulance Brigade, the Salvation Army, and the Red Cross were roaming the fields, handing out clothing and administering first aid.
Leighton Dillman and his family stayed in the woods above the Dartmouth shore. Ethel Mitchell was high up on the hill behind her grandmother’s house.
The crowds endured at least an hour and a half of uncertainty. Then, shortly before noon, the danger passed. Volunteer troops belonging to the Seventy-second Battalion, Ottawa, had flooded the magazine at Wellington Barracks and carried most of the ammunition to the harbour and dumped it into the sea.
Finally people were allowed to leave. The crowds dispersed as silently as they arrived. Those with houses to go to returned home, and those without sought shelter elsewhere. In Dartmouth, Ruth Poole and her family had gone towards Cole Harbour, on the Eastern Shore. As she and her family walked home, they watched the incredible sight across the harbour. “The whole world was pink,” Ruth recalled. “Pink arms, pink legs, pink sky, pink houses, even pink water, because the fires in Halifax were reflected in the harbour. Everything was bright.”
The Pattison boys were not allowed to go down to Barrington Street, where their home had been. The fires were too severe. Instead, they decided to head for Central Wharf, near the bottom of Duke Street, where they might be able to board the sugar refinery’s boat, the Ragus, and go to their grandfather’s house, near the Dartmouth sugar refinery. They reached the wharf and waited, but no Ragus appeared. Finally a government boat drew in and gave the boys a lift to the Marine and Fisheries wharf in Dartmouth. There the superintendent, obviously a worried man, gruffly ordered them to clear out. Then they walked about a mile and a half to their grandfather’s house, along the railway track and through the fields of the Mount Hope Lunatic Asylum. He was not home: he had gone to Halifax to try to locate the family. Their grandmother was there, and she cleaned the boys and tried to find out what had happened. Still shaken, James and Gordon could not tell her very much. They had no idea where the other members of the family were.
In time their grandfather and uncles arrived. The Acadia Sugar Refinery, they reported, was a pile of rubble, the loss of life there great. As for the Ragus, it had been smashed to pieces, and her crew of five killed. Of the boys’ father, mother, sister, Catherine, and brother, Alan, there was no sign.
Charles Upham and his children, Millicent and Archie, along with a crowd of other refugees, had waited in a field behind Dean’s Nursery, off Longard Road, until the alarm was over. Most of these people did not know where to go. Then George Grant, superintendent of Rockhead Prison, on Gottingen Street, arrived and offered shelter. Mr Upham sent Archie there and then took Millicent, whose injuries looked worse, to the Military Hospital, on Cogswell. One of Archie’s aunts was also at the prison. She had to soak Archie’s shirt with water to get it off because the dried blood from his head wounds had run down and glued the shirt to his skin. He was given clothing belonging to one of the Grant boys. The clothes were too big, but appearance had ceased to matter.
Still separated from his family, Reg Rasley, Archie’s cousin, also spent a few hours at the prison before being taken into someone’s home. He felt a bit better. “I was with people, and I wasn’t afraid any more,” he said.
Grant had emptied many prison cells to provide refuge for some seventy homeless people, mostly fellow parishioners of Grove Presbyterian Church. Filthy with tar, wearing bloodstained remnants of clothing, and numb with shock, they were a pitiful-looking collection.
The civilian city of Halifax was not well equipped to deal with a major disaster. The police force, with a chief, a detective, eight sergeants, and twenty-nine officers, had taken on eight temporary men to help handle the wartime increase in crime but was very much overworked. Members of the fire department, which suffered such heavy losses in the explosion, had been employed only on a part-time part basis since 1894, and no change had been made, though the system was altered in 1918 to employ full-time firemen.
Nor were there enough hospitals or morgues to handle huge numbers of injured or dead. Halifax and Dartmouth had four public hospitals: the Victoria General, with 175 beds, already used to capacity; the Nova Scotia Hospital for Infectious Diseases, with 200 beds; the Children’s Hospital; and the small facility for infectious diseases on Gottingen Street. In addition, there were seven privately run facilities, such as the Halifax Infirmary, the largest with 30 beds, and four military hospitals, including the one on Cogswell Street, with 150 beds. There were three private undertakers in Halifax—Snow and Company, the Nova Scotia Undertaking Company, and Joseph Spencer—and two in Dartmouth.
Social services were lacking. Private organizations such as the Halifax Association for Improving the Conditions of the Poor, the Charitable Irish, and church groups carried out most of the work in this area. The Salvation Army ran the rescue home, as well as the maternity hospital. Schools for the sight and hearing impaired received grants from the provincial governments in the Maritimes, but most of their funds came from voluntary contributions. There was not even a public safety committee of the type then found in large American cities that could quickly take over emergency operations.
Against this unfavourable backdrop, the City of Halifax launched a large relief effort to begin caring for the victims of the explosion. During the evacuation to open spaces members of council and about twenty other concerned citizens met at city hall to take action. They included Deputy Mayor Henry Colwell—Mayor Peter F. Martin was out of town—Chief of Police Frank Hanrahan, City Clerk L. Fred Monaghan, former mayor Robert T. MacIlreith, legislative council member Richard G. Beazley, Mr Justice Robert E. Harris, and businessman Ralph Pickard Bell. Lieutenant Governor MacCallum Grant chaired the meeting.
The group unanimously agreed to form several committees immediately, all under the name of the Halifax relief committee. The following were appointed: executive, chaired by Robert MacIlreith; transportation, by Alderman F. A. Gillis; emergency shelter, by Controller Murphy; finance, by Mr Justice Harris; food, by J. L. Hetherington; and mortuary, by Alderman R. B. Colwell. The meeting adjourned in forty-five minutes, and the committees dispersed to begin work and solicit volunteers. Seldom had so much business been conducted at city hall in so short a time.
Lieutenant Governor MacCallum Grant (in the top hat) was among the first officials to arrive at city hall. His wife (seated) also helped with relief work, as did his son Eric (third from left), on leave from France. Government House (in the background) gave shelter to injured cadets. (COURTESY MARGARET GRANT)
Halifax then became a hive of industry. The first task of the transportation committee was to secure automobiles to take homeless to shelters, injured to hospitals, and relief workers to damaged areas. Initially the committee could obtain only twenty-five cars voluntarily and so, without authority, commandeered others whenever possible. (At a meeting in the afternoon Lieutenant Governor Grant gave authorization.) The emergency shelter committee, meanwhile, opened an office at city hall where people offering or needing refuge could register. Members of the committee and volunteers also began touring the North End to seek out people whose homes were inadequate and to find shelter for them. In addition, this committee set up first-aid dressing stations at places such as the YMCA. (Drugstores and shelters also provided this service.) The finance committee, for its part, opened a line of credit at The Bank of Nova Scotia.
At first the food committee concentrated on arranging with wholesale- grocery firms and bakers and dairies for supplies to be delivered to Richmond, emergency shelters, hospitals, and dressing stations, and then it set up a food depot at city hall. With the three private undertakers unable to cope with, or keep track of, the large number of corpses, the mortuary committee had to find a building to house an official morgue. Chebucto Road School, outside the devastated area, or Richmond, was chosen: the upper floors could be used for offices, and the basement, for the mortuary. The building had been damaged, so a company of Royal Engineers were brought in to make the school fit for use. The men covered the empty windows and cleaned the facility. As soon as news of the location spread, bodies began to arrive. They were piled outside until the morgue was ready to receive them.
Before the hastily called meeting at city hall Deputy Mayor Colwell, Chief of Police Hanrahan, and City Clerk Monaghan had approached the military for assistance in emergency work, and they had received immediate co-operation. Colwell had also suggested that the army erect tents on the Commons for the homeless.
Soldiers from the Armouries were the first organized into action. Among them were members of the British Expeditionary Force, waiting to leave for Europe. One soldier, a young American volunteer, wrote to his girlfriend and to his brother, describing some of his experiences. More than a mile from the docks the soldiers saw pieces of armour plate from a ship, too heavy for the men to lift, and on the road they saw a ship’s compass and parts of an anchor chain. The men worked among the ruins for hours, making stretchers from pieces of wreckage to carry the injured to tugs that ferried them to ships where they could be treated or given beds. A son of the lieutenant governor, Lieutenant Eric Grant, on leave from France, said that the sights were worse than anything he had seen in the trenches.
One vessel that took wounded was the American hospital ship the Old Colony. A hundred sailors had been sent ashore to see how they could help. They returned to the ship with two hundred seriously injured victims, twenty-five of whom eventually died. Barbara Orr’s uncle, William MacTaggart Orr, found unconscious not far from the harbour, was on that ship, though his worried family was unaware of it. His wife, Edna, continued to search for him, and after a few days he was located.
Colonel Ralph B. Simmonds, a partner in Jas Simmonds Ltd, a large hardware firm, lived in Dartmouth. He offered his services at military headquarters, on Spring Garden Road, and was asked to supply one hundred men. About eleven in the morning they reached Halifax by boat from York Redoubt. Their orders were to clear a passage through the rubble blocking the entire northern end of Barrington Street. As they heaved and dug, they removed bodies and odd belongings, such as a silver wristwatch with a broken strap, two notebooks with a list of deliveries from the sugar refinery, and a set of keys. Simmonds sent a messenger to his firm to bring back as many labels as possible, to tag bodies and loose objects. All known information was hurriedly recorded. Some labels told where the body or the article had lain; others gave a tentative identification. The official mortuary was not yet ready to take the dead, so Simmonds and his men piled corpses along the side of the road. Family members, meanwhile, were taking their deceased relatives to the private undertakers.
Lieutenant Garnet Colwell, son of the deputy mayor, had taken Gwen Westhaver to the theatre the night before the explosion. On hearing about the damage in the North End the following morning, he raced to her house, but no trace of it, or Gwen, was left.
(COURTESY LINDA COLWELL)
Lieutenant Garnet Colwell, son of the deputy mayor, was in charge of a similar work party, and he took a special interest in the task. Stationed at York Redoubt, he had been home on a twenty-four-hour-leave pass, and the evening before, he had taken a pretty girl, Gwen Westhaver, to the theatre. When he kissed her good night, he tasted tears on her lips. She knew he was due to leave for France shortly. The next morning his father came home and reported that it had been an explosion that had broken their windows, not a German bomb. When Garnet realized that the North End had been destroyed, he sped on his bicycle to Veith Street, but it was unrecognizable, and there was nothing left of Gwen’s house. Two days later, after searching ruins for her body, he found her in the Chebucto Road mortuary.
About three hours after the explosion military and naval forces had complete emergency powers. They were acting as police, rescue workers, guards, and transport controllers. They commandeered vehicles if necessary, and they regulated movement into and out of Richmond. They had the authority to deal firmly with any attempt at looting, and many were armed.
Civilians from the less-affected areas of Halifax and Dartmouth dropped everything to help in the rescue effort. Twenty-one-year-old Joe Glube, who lived on Gottingen Street near North and who owned a busy tobacco and stationery store, had slept through the explosion because he had been up late the night before. His mother and his sister had wakened him, both “hysterical and covered in blood, [though] … their wounds were only superficial.” Joe was a bit startled himself when he realized that the roof had caved in. They ran out of the house. A great cloud hovered to the north, and Joe thought that the ammunition dump by Bedford Basin might have gone up. Coal was being delivered next door. When the driver left the coal and took away a body, Joe began to realize that the situation was serious.
Then the Glubes were told to go to the Commons. Mrs Glube suddenly remembered she had left behind her new fur coat. Joe went back for it through the silent, empty streets, but when he returned to the Commons, the crowds were so dense that he could not find his family. He started to worry about his store and had to find out whether it was safe. Other businessmen had had the same idea. By the time Joe reached his shop, on Barrington Street, not far from city hall, people were boarding up smashed windows. He broke up some wooden crates and began doing his own. He had just finished the job when Deputy Mayor Colwell appeared on the Grand Parade. “What are you people doing?” he bellowed through a megaphone. “Do you realize there have been thousands of people killed or hurt? They’re starving in the North End. We need help!”
Joe threw down his tools. “Where do we report?” he shouted.
“The Armouries. Bring transport if you have it.”
Joe took his second-hand Ford off its blocks and drove to the Armouries. Because of the food committee’s efforts, all the grocery warehouses in Halifax and Dartmouth had been opened, and large numbers of volunteers, including members of the Rotary Club, had begun to fill boxes with bread, butter, tea, condensed milk, cooked meat and fish, baked beans, and sugar. Joe was told to load his car with supplies already at the Armouries and to take the food to Richmond, especially milk for babies.
Joe Glube, a young storeowner in 1917, took his second-hand Ford off its blocks and delivered food to sufferers in Richmond. (RON E. MERRICK)
As Joe drove north, he was shocked to find that the desolation began less than four blocks from his own home. In Richmond he lost all sense of orientation. Some of the area was like a desert, with no buildings standing, and it was impossible to tell one street from another. At first he was overwhelmed by all the bodies lying around, but the job he had to do left no time to be squeamish. In minutes he was actually able to move a dead body out of the way so that he could give a survivor food and blankets. On his return trip, and on many others, he filled his car with injured and took them to already-overcrowded hospitals or the YMCA or some other hastily arranged dressing station.
Two men visiting Halifax had shown extra initiative. George Graham, general manager of the Dominion Atlantic Railway (DAR), had spent the night in his private railcar at North Street Station. Although the car was damaged, no one was hurt. Graham walked the two miles to Rockingham, where he sent a telegram to Kentville, Nova Scotia, requesting a relief train of doctors, nurses, medical supplies, and forty-five DAR track men and bridge builders to repair the railway lines.
W. A. Duff, assistant chief engineer of the Canadian Government Railways, had stayed at the Queen Hotel. After the explosion he borrowed a car and drove to North Street Station to inspect the railway property. The station, a fine building with a glass dome, now stood open to the sky. The farther north Duff travelled, the worse the situation became. Several times he turned back to drive seriously wounded people to hospital, but he finally decided that communication with the outside world was more important. Once he arrived in Rockingham, he cabled Moncton, New Brunswick, relaying the extent of the damage and asking for medical and relief supplies. Later, at the request of the deputy mayor, he sent similar messages to towns in Nova Scotia and to other areas of New Brunswick.
As a result, Truro was expecting the first train of refugees, the No. 10. The train had stayed outside Richmond for most of the morning and then moved as far as Rockingham, where, about one-thirty, the conductor was ordered to take it to Truro, some sixty miles away. The Driscoll family had settled in, but the children had soon complained of hunger. Mrs Driscoll and a neighbour remembered having some Christmas cake in sealed tins. Because their houses had not caught fire, it might still be edible. Cliff went back to the site and returned triumphantly, bearing two large containers. Noble, Al, and Lou filled themselves up on the rich cake.
There was medical aid on board. A Wolfville doctor, a Major de Witt, had been on his way to Halifax for a conference when his train was stopped at Rockingham. He was rushed to the No. 10—fortunately he had brought his medical bag—and he started tending to the most urgent cases. Using only simple instruments, he even performed two necessary eye removals. He had five days of nonstop work ahead of him.
At Windsor Junction, about ten miles from Halifax, a doctor and a nurse joined the train. Finally Dr de Witt had help. He knew them, too: they were his father and his sister. Cliff Driscoll left the train at this point and headed back to Halifax to look for his little brother Gordon and other relatives.
Although the people of Truro had made preparations to receive the No. 10 passengers, they were overwhelmed by their first sight of them. A young teacher, Josephine Bishop, saw them disembark. The state of the children worried her most, black as coal and horribly disfigured. An infant with both eyes gone had also lost its parents. Miss Bishop thought that it might be kinder if some did not survive. On December 7 she wrote to her mother, in Digby:
I hardly know what or how to write my heart is so full. Yesterday morning we were pursuing the even tenor of our ways when an awful calamity happened in our midst. School had just assembled and I was reading the Bible when two awful explosions shook the building with great force.… Thought at first that the Germans must have opened fire on Halifax. It proved to be as bad or even worse. By ten o’clock trains began to leave Truro with doctors, nurses, firemen, and fire apparatus. At noon came a call for the stricken inhabitants, and at half past three the wounded began to arrive.
About half an hour before the No. 10 pulled into Truro, the passengers on the first relief train from Kentville arrived in Halifax. Stationed at Camp Aldershot, Dr Percy McGrath had graduated from Dalhousie Medical School in May and, like most of his classmates, had gone straight into the army. On hearing about the explosion, he and his wife, a nurse, gathered all the medical supplies they could find and boarded the relief train, together with other medical personnel and with track and bridge repairmen. Every town along the line had been notified. As the train drew in to each station, waiting passengers climbed on board, carrying bags filled with supplies. The engine driver’s home was in the north end of Halifax, and the journey was completed in record time.
Soon after Rockingham the line was blocked, and the passengers had to get off and walk. They struggled through debris until they reached the northern end of Barrington Street, cleared by the military. Dr McGrath noticed bodies “stacked like cordwood,” three feet high on either side, and fires dancing all around. Another doctor muttered something about Dante’s Inferno. Survivors were still being taken out of basements, and people stumbled by, carrying bundles and baskets, heading for hospitals or mortuaries. Eventually the group reached North Street Station and the King Edward Hotel. The area was roped off, and soldiers were limiting entry. The guards arranged for transport to take the relief workers to city hall for instructions.
The McGraths were sent to Camp Hill Hospital, recently built for returning veterans. It was jammed. Ambulatory soldiers had given up their beds. The injured were lying in the beds, on the floor between the beds, and in any other available space. The windows were gone, and blankets covered the empty frames. The hospital was dark and cold.
Camp Hill doctors had been overwhelmed by the rush of patients. Dr Samuel MacLennan, father of Frances and Hugh, was an ear, eye, nose, and throat specialist. He had been about to operate when the explosion took place. Having served overseas, he and his team knew what to do. They picked up the patient and laid him under the operating table. Then, expecting another bomb, they threw themselves on the floor. Dr MacLennan concentrated on eye work around the clock for several days. When he finally did go home, he brought along out-of-town nurses and doctors. Frances and Hugh were soon sent to stay with relatives in Cape Breton until the emergency was over so that the MacLennan house could be used for visiting medical personnel and their mother and father were free to spend long days on relief work.
The overcrowding at Camp Hill was also hard on the patients. For some time Barbara Orr lay on a stretcher near the entrance to the hospital. The people around her seemed unnaturally still. She waited, but no one came. Finally she called out to a young orderly walking by. He was extremely startled because he had assumed that all in that area were dead. He lifted her up and carried her into a ward. It would be months before Barbara could walk without pain.
Linda Colquhoun helped feed the seriously injured at Camp Hill Hospital. Shown here on her wedding day in 1924, she married Garnet Colwell. (COURTESY LINDA COLWELL)
Evelyn Johnson, whose arm had been nearly severed from her shoulder, was treated without much delay, her wounds cleaned amid the confusion. At first, however, her prospects appeared grim. Her mother arrived, and a doctor told Mrs Johnson that Evelyn’s arm might have to be amputated. Mrs Johnson begged the doctor to do what he could, and Evelyn’s arm was saved.
The McGraths had no time to look for someone in authority. They responded immediately to urgent cries such as, “Here. Come over here!”
In no time they were in the thick of things. There was bleeding to staunch, broken bones to fix, burns to bandage, and wounds to stitch. The particles of wood, glass, and plaster inside the wounds made them difficult to clean. Then they had to contend with the general state of the skin. No amount of washing was effective. Soon the McGraths lost all track of time and all sense of fatigue and hunger. About six in the evening, relief workers arrived from New Glasgow. Every helping hand was a godsend: Camp Hill had only 280 beds, but an estimated 1,400 patients were admitted on December 6.
Stores of anaesthetics soon ran low. Doctors noted, however, that patient fortitude was remarkable, probably because many were still in shock. It was possible to perform certain operations without chloroform, unthinkable under normal circumstances. Anti-tetanus serum was also in short supply, so it was used only on very deep wounds. Nonetheless, only two cases of tetanus were ever reported.
A sixteen-year-old girl from the Halifax Academy was helping out at Camp Hill. She belonged to C Company, which did volunteer work to help soldiers overseas. Members of the organization had been asked to assist until professional nurses arrived. They followed surgeons around, holding bowls of water containing dissolved blue tablets, probably disinfectant. Some surgeons were removing glass from people’s faces. The wounds were horrific: disjointed limbs, oozing burns, and gaping cuts. Several members of C Company had to leave, as they felt too nauseated. Not the sixteen-year-old girl, however. She stayed and even came back the next day.
The military hospitals in Halifax bore most of the burden of medical work, though civilian facilities were also swamped soon after the explosion. The one on Cogswell, like Camp Hill, was quickly overflowing. Uninjured children, especially toddlers, accompanying mothers, as well as streams of people searching for relatives, added to the confusion. It was hard to list the people admitted to hospital, so the only way to locate someone was to look at each patient carefully, and many of them, unconscious, were covered in black grime and suffered facial wounds.
To make matters worse, some facilities were severely damaged. Rockhead Hospital, which held 80 convalescent soldiers, had lost all its windows, and its steampipes had burst or broken. By afternoon, about 90 injured people had been taken in, and the soldiers had dispersed. As quickly as possible the patients were transferred to another hospital. Considering its purpose, Pier 2 Casualty Depot might have been used, but the blast had levelled it. The Pine Hill Military Convalescent Home, with 125 beds, did not fill up so quickly because it was much farther south. After transport was arranged, however, it, too, admitted sufferers. Even the civilian hospital in Dartmouth, the Nova Scotia Hospital for Infectious Diseases, had been damaged. It had lost all its windows, and the ceiling of one ward had fallen in. The small number of patients were transferred to another building, and in the afternoon 150 injured were being treated there.
The damage lessened outside Richmond, but almost no building in Halifax had gone unscathed: the relief committees calculated that 1,630 had been destroyed and 12,000 damaged, leaving 25,000 people without adequate housing, not to mention the 6,000 who needed shelter, as their houses had been demolished or rendered completely uninhabitable. The evacuation to open spaces had prevented people from tending to their homes, but by afternoon they were finally able to start making their houses, or at least one room, as weatherproof as possible. Those who had delayed installing storm windows now fitted them—if they were lucky enough to find them intact. Stores selling building materials quickly ran out of tarpaper. Cardboard, carpets, blankets—anything that came in handy—covered windows and gaps in the walls. Jack Tappen, from the Middleham Castle, cut up a roll of heavy brown paper from his mechanical-drawing class to cover the missing window panes in his family’s house.
The Ryan boys shovelled out the debris from a bedroom that had only one window. They nailed a blanket over the space and brought in an oil stove for warmth and for heating water to wash the grime off themselves. On a wall one picture remained, the Immaculate Heart of Mary. Mrs Ryan remembered a bottle of rum, salvaged from a torpedoed ship by her brother. She used the contents now to rub her children, to try to bring some warmth to their chilled bodies. After Eileen stopped feeling cold, the pain in her shoulder grew even more severe. It had troubled her all day, but there had been no time to have it treated. It was at an odd angle, and her mother bound it tightly. That made it less uncomfortable.
Those whose homes were gone found refuge with friends, relatives, and even complete strangers. The Reverend William Swetnam and his daughter, Dorothy, went to friends in Dartmouth. Mr Swetnam had to borrow the fare for the ferry. His money had disappeared with his clothes. The Reverend Charles Crowdis and his children, Jean and Don, stayed in another manse; Joe Glube, his mother, and his sister, with relations.
The Mitchell house, in Dartmouth, was in bad shape. Ethel’s father had returned by ferry from Halifax, where he was a partner in the heating-engineering firm Mitchell and MacKay. His wife and daughter were eventually taken to a doctor who cleaned and sutured Mrs Mitchell’s badly cut arm. Ethel was still not fully aware of what was going on around her. Then a young friend, Edwin Morash, well known to her parents, appeared in his car. He suggested that Ethel accompany him to his parents’ house in Woodlawn and stay there until the Mitchells could find somewhere to live. Ethel was bundled into the car, and off they went. Other friends, from Cole Harbour, offered Mr and Mrs Mitchell a room in their house. Mrs Mitchell went, but Mr Mitchell stayed at the house. During the afternoon he boarded it up as best he could and then decided to camp out in it, to protect his property from looting.
Leighton Dillman, also in Dartmouth, stayed with an aunt and an uncle who lived next door. One room was in fairly good condition. More than twenty people squeezed into that room: there was not too much sleep for anyone that night.
In Truro most of the passengers from the No. 10 were taken to the academy, the courthouse, the fire hall, the civic building, and the old William Street school—all prepared as shelters with medical treatment available. Most of the Driscoll family went to the courthouse, but Noble and Al went to the experimental farm by horse and cart. They had jumped at the offer, thinking that a farm would be fun. That is, after they had attended to their most pressing need. The first thing the boys had done was look for a washroom where they could throw up quantities of Christmas cake mixed with black oil and dust. Before they nestled between clean sheets that night, however, both boys had a long hot bath and a good scrub.
The tent city on the Commons remained largely unoccupied on the night of December 6.
By nightfall most of the homeless people had found some sort of shelter. The emergency shelter committee had been offered a number of buildings that could be used as temporary hostels: St Paul’s Hall, on Argyle Street; the Academy of Music, on Barrington; the Strand Theatre, on Sackville; and the Knights of Columbus Hall, on Hollis. The transportation committee had moved five thousand people, but some, not yet found by rescue squads and their wounds untreated, remained with the pitiful remnants of their houses, crowding apathetically into tiny unsuitable spaces. For others, railway boxcars, halls, schools, and church basements all gave asylum.
About nine the Engineering and Ordnance Corps finished putting up the tents on the Commons, including temporary hospital accommodation for 250. The tents were equipped with canvas floors, cots, blankets, and oil stoves. Medical supplies and personnel waited, but patients refused to be transferred there. Nor did many uninjured occupy the tents that night. After the events of that morning tents probably seemed much too flimsy.
The military had worked long and hard all day. Then an American troop transport, the Von Steuben, arrived in port and discharged a work party. Two hundred and fifty fresh, eager sailors were more than welcome to replace exhausted workers. (Ironically the ship, the former Kron Prinz Wilhelm, had belonged to the North German Steamship Line. It had been seized in an American port at the outbreak of the war and later had been taken over by the United States Navy.) Relief supplies and workers, including firemen and fire equipment, also arrived from Moncton, New Brunswick, and Amherst and Springhill, Nova Scotia, giving local men a chance to rest. Some of the hoses, however, were a different gauge and could not be used. (This later led to the standardization of fire hoses throughout the province.)
That night few homes contained all their residents. Families split up in the confusion felt lost, and hallucinations were common. The cuts and bruises were much easier to bear than the feelings of loss and bereavement. Even so, a curious detachment was prevalent among the refugees. Many of the seriously injured died during the night. At the same time, babies came into the world in the cold and the discomfort of temporary shelters or overcrowded hospitals. Premature and still births had been brought on by shock, falls, and injuries. Fires and torches gave heat and light in the devastated area, now without power of any kind. Candles and oil lamps also cast a kindlier glow on disfigured faces.