THROUGHOUT THE 1920s pension and property administration were the major preoccupation of the Halifax Relief Commission. The commissioners not only concerned themselves with the financial side of their duties but also with the human side. They made decisions about giving extra money in times of need—money for education, for funeral expenses, for medical care—and they sent letters of every kind—letters of condolence, of encouragement, of stricture. Payment, for the most part, was routine, but some pensioners needed additional support.
The commission during this time consisted of two of the original appointees: Chairman T. Sherman Rogers, now a Supreme Court judge, and county court judge William Wallace. Businessman Frederick Fowke had gone back to Oshawa in early 1919 and had not been replaced. However, William E. Tibbs, a returned army officer with part of an arm amputated, was appointed secretary–comptroller in 1919. As their workload had lessened, the two commissioners’ stipends had decreased from $7,500 to $1,875. Tibbs’s annual salary was $5,000, and he was in charge of the day-to-day running of the commission; the commissioners now attended only to overall management, not details.
In 1928 Rogers and Wallace both died. By the following year there were once again three commissioners: Major H. B. Stairs, chairman, Richard Beazley, a former member of the legislative council who had served on the original fuel committee and the Massachusetts–Halifax relief committee, and Tibbs, secretary–comptroller as well. Stipends remained about the same, and there were now seven staff: a works superintendent, an accountant, a clerk–cashier, a rent collector, a caretaker, and two stenographers.
The medical–social service was still functioning, but by 1929 the number of social workers had dwindled to one. Jane Lockward had carried out her duties with enthusiasm and compassion. The last of her reports to the commission is dated August 1929, more than thirteen and a half years after the blast. During the month of July she had made 250 calls. She had brought the more serious problems of survivors to the attention of the commissioners, who, in turn, discussed her reports at their meetings. All the ups and downs were considered and, if necessary, acted on.
But the commission was flexible only to a point. Throughout the Depression pensioners often pleaded for an increase or an advance in payments: forty dollars a month had been adequate in 1918, but by 1929 it was considered insufficient. The commission, however, did not concede an increase. Although unemployment was high and some families were totally dependent on their pensions, few exceptions were made. The fear that the pension fund might run out always loomed large in the foreground.
Apart from the occasional bonus payment, the commission did not increase pension amounts until 1950, when it raised them by 87.5 per cent. Its fear of running out of money had abated to a great extent. Halifax had not slid into an economic slump after World War II, the commission’s investments had continued to prosper, and the number of pensioners had decreased. Thereafter the amounts increased periodically, mostly for those under seventy years of age, a distinction that could be made for fewer and fewer pensioners as time wore on. In 1946 Tibbs explained the commission’s philosophy in a report. “Pensions were not granted solely for the damage to the Human Machine,” he wrote, “but on the extent to which injuries were disability as regards former occupation.” He added that it was a fairly well-established fact that those in receipt of regular allowances had a higher life expectancy. As completed reports on pensioners usually had an obituary attached, he must have made a thorough perusal of such columns.
The Depression hit the Hydrostone hard. Houses and shops did not come close to full occupancy, numerous buildings were boarded up, and many businesses folded. A widow on a pension of forty dollars a month, with two children still receiving eight dollars a month each, and an older child earning ten dollars a week, paid out nearly half their income on rent. She certainly could not afford a fine wool coat or any other luxuries. Annie Liggins had moved into one of the houses when she was ten. Her father had remarried a widow with children of her own, and now they were a family of nine. The surrounding houses were empty, and with windows smashed, they looked derelict. Her father boarded up the downstairs windows of their house, and they lived upstairs most of the time because it was warmer. They stayed only about a year.
In 1939 the Halifax City Directory showed fewer stores, and nine were vacant. The only two left, a drugstore and a market, sold necessities; one other building still housed the relief commission offices. When conditions were at their worst, in the mid-thirties, 152 houses were empty, almost half of the total number. House and store tenants appealed to the commission to lower rents in the Hydrostone but to no avail.
With the outbreak of World War II in 1939, circumstances changed dramatically. Halifax was yet again a war base seething with uniforms and ships. Housing was at a premium, including the Hydrostone and other relief commission properties.
In July 1947 the commission increased its rents by 10 percent and gave tenants two-year leases. Nevertheless, Hydrostone rents were among the cheapest in the city. In 1948 such a waiting list had built up that the commission was forced to issue a special form for applicants in dire need of inexpensive accommodation so that they could be given higher priority. By that time some people had been on the list for seven years.
The same year, the commission decided to relinquish its landlord status. Beginning on January 1, 1949, it offered to sell its properties to tenants, announcing its new policy “to encourage home ownership, release capital for the pension fund, place properties on the city tax roll and to conform to the general policy of the Federal Government.” There had always been disagreement between the City and the commission, and it increased after properties went up in value. Although it had given grants to the City, the commission had never had to pay property taxes. City council had made several unsuccessful appeals to Ottawa, not only for tax payments but also for the release of surplus relief funds. The commission’s argument, however, was always more persuasive: “When our last pensioner dies, he or she will be paid from the Commission’s last resource.”
Many tenants objected to the proposed sales, especially returned servicemen who had recently settled back into civilian life and were reluctant to seek a mortgage. Prices started at twenty-five hundred dollars for a four-and-a-half-room apartment, three thousand for a five-and-a-half-room house, and thirty-five hundred for six rooms—low compared with similar properties at the time. But many of the buyers had paid rents for years, often with hardship, and were not prepared to purchase a house immediately. Annie Liggins, now Annie Welsh, moved back to the Hydrostone with her husband and family. They bought their house on Kane Place and still live there. (At present the semi-detached houses sell for more than ninety thousand dollars.)
In 1955 the commission reported that the sales to tenants had been completed, but it had kept several units, including its offices, to “offset any decline in value affecting other resources, or counterbalance any increase in liabilities not presently discernible.” The pension fund had to be kept secure.
During the Depression Annie Liggins lived in the Hydrostone. About twenty years later she moved back, this time as Annie Welsh, with her own husband and family. All along she cherished the photograph taken of her in hospital in December 1917. (RON E. MERRICK)
Soon after the commission started to put properties on the market, it began to discuss plans to turn Fort Needham into a memorial park including playing fields and picnic areas. The initial cost was estimated at about $110,000, but by the end of 1957, just before handing the park over to the City, the commission had spent about $165,000. Meanwhile, in 1951, it contributed $7,500 towards sidewalk improvements in the Hydrostone.
The City, along with the Province, again tried to secure relief funds in the summer of 1958. The commission, in turn, presented its case in a report to the federal government, rejecting any notion of handing over its monies.
The funds were already lessened by a third, owing to increased pensions and higher medical costs. The cost of living was rising, and the commission would need fifteen more years to fulfil its duties to pensioners.
The commission, however, continued to spend money on the betterment of the North End. In the mid-1960s it donated $100,000 to the building of the North End Memorial Library, on Gottingen Street, a monument to the victims of the explosion. Again the commission came under fire. People objected to funds being used to refurbish parks or build libraries, rather than to help those who had suffered. It was pointed out, though, that the library would certainly benefit the North End and, presumably, explosion survivors.
Charges of misplaced priorities were levelled against the commission until its dissolution in the mid-seventies. In 1971 a radio program discussed the use of relief funds and caused a spate of letters from survivors who felt they had been poorly treated or who thought they had a right to a pension for complaints that were probably explosion related. One woman wrote that her facial scars had ruined her life. “My beauty was gone,” she said. Few of these appeals were successful, though a small number of medical bills were paid.
The bill to repeal the act that incorporated the Halifax Relief Commission had its first reading in the House of Commons on December 4, 1975, two days before the fifty-eighth anniversary of the explosion. Under the proposed legislation all assets of the commission would be transferred to the Canada Pensions Commission, where they would be kept in a special fund, the Halifax Explosion Pension Account. The bill stipulated that after all pensioners had died, the balance would be handed over to a Nova Scotia or Halifax government body for further rehabilitation of the area damaged by the blast.
December 31, 1975, had been the original date for the disbanding of the commission, but it was postponed until June 11, 1976. The commission had spent more than $30 million on the relief and reconstruction of Halifax. More than $27 million had been amassed for the purpose, and through its investments and real-estate income it had been able to add to its funds. In all, it had disbursed $3,970,808.76 on emergency relief, $20,231,727.45 on claims, construction, and temporary housing, and $6,420,000 on pensions and medical care. It had also been able to cover all other expenses, including salaries for staff and stipends for commissioners and to hand over $1.5 million to the federal finance minister to defray the costs of pensions to explosion victims for the rest of their lives. The necessary reserve had been calculated at $1,126,950.
The commission had been in operation for nearly six decades and had seen a small turnover in commissioners. Only nine men had served, and four had died in office. The two commissioners at the time of dissolution (William Tibbs had retired and had not been replaced), A. M. Butler, chairman, and F. H. Flinn, served twenty-nine and twenty-six years respectively. Tibbs, however, had had the longest connection. He was secretary–comptroller from 1919 to 1951 and a commissioner from 1929 to 1973, making a total of fifty-four years. Two clerical staff remained. One had worked as cashiertypist for fifty-one years; the other, twenty-four and a half.
The commission’s offices at 139 Young Street were sold to the federal government for seventy-five thousand dollars. Some of its voluminous records remained in the basement vault; others were entrusted to the Canada Pensions Commission and the Public Archives of Nova Scotia.
On January 1, 1976, six months before it met for the last time, the commission introduced one final pension increase, 11.3 percent for all. Sixty-six pensioners remained. Five widows were now receiving $199.44 a month; one dependant, $119.66; nine disabled, from $40.00 to $290.00; four blind men, from $372.28 to $422.28; seven blind women, from $265.00 to $319.10; and forty partially blind men and women, $99.72. Three pensioners died before the dissolution in June.
In January 1989, according to the Department of Veterans Affairs, which now handles the pension fund, there were thirty survivors still receiving pensions: five blind men and women (now on the same amount), two widows, twenty-one partially blind, and two suffering from general disability. The rates average $362.08, and they are indexed according to the cost of living and adjusted each January. Seventy-two years after the explosion, nearly $800,000 remains. The Halifax Relief Commission, it seems, succeeded in its oft-repeated goal of making sure that the fund would endure as long as the last pensioner.