Halifax, Nova Scotia, December 7, 8:00 a.m.
As Friday morning dawned, the winter storm closing in on Halifax was growing in intensity. As the first flakes of snow began to fall, the temperature dropped. Soon it would be a frigid seventeen degrees Fahrenheit (minus eight Celsius), and the gale-force wind that blew in off the ocean cut exposed skin like an icy knife.
Sixteen inches of snow would fall on this day. By nightfall, the waist-high drifts smothered the last of the fires that had been burning in the city. The charred landscape in the North End now took on the monochromatic beauty of a winter wonderland. A few days earlier, such a scene would have evoked thoughts of a Currier and Ives print. Not today. The driving snow made almost impossible the already perilous job of the rescue workers who continued to search for survivors and the bodies of the dead in the ruins of collapsed buildings. “The narrow tracks cleared through the rubble of the devastated area were quickly blocked. Troops now had the added task of shovelling to try to keep a passageway open and of digging through the deep drifts covering the ruins to find out what lay underneath.”1
Nineteen-year-old Hugh Mills had been over in Dartmouth when the explosion occurred on Thursday morning. After responding to the call for volunteers, he had spent the afternoon in Richmond as a member of one of the search-and-rescue crews poking through the wreckage of buildings on Barrington Street in Halifax. The unpleasantness of the work—grim and dangerous to begin with—was compounded by the weather and by a shortage of tools; searchers had only their hands to work with.
THE SEARCH FOR VICTIMS AND SURVIVORS IN THE DEVASTATED RICHMOND NEIGHBOURHOOD WAS DIFFICULT, COLD, AND DANGEROUS WORK. (WILLIAM JAMES FAMILY FONDS, CITY OF TORONTO ARCHIVES)
Hugh Mills had toiled until after dark on the evening of December 6. Lean as a beanpole and slight of build, he felt exhausted. After spending a long, miserable night in the ruins of an abandoned house, he emerged at daybreak. Spotting a bonfire in the distance, he made his way over to it. The men whom Hugh found huddled around the fire welcomed him with a mug of hot tea. The liquid left Hugh feeling only slightly revived; he was still tired, cold, and feeling increasingly downcast. So far he had found no one alive in the rubble.
The men invited Hugh to join them in their search for survivors, but he declined. He wanted to go to Veith Street. “I know some people who live . . . or lived there,” he explained
Veith Street was in ruins, and a pall-like silence prevailed. The explosion down at Pier 6, barely 200 yards away, had flattened every building. Here and there, a listing telephone pole or the skeletal remnants of a tree remained upright, like hands of the dead reaching skyward from their graves. The only identifiable landmark still standing along the street’s two-block length was one wall of the Hillis foundry. Scores of people had worked in the building, but there were no signs of life now.
With the wind picking up and the snow falling ever harder, Hugh Mills’ spirits were sinking fast. Inside his tattered mittens, his hands were numb. That was a blessing of a sort, for it dulled the ache caused by wood splinters and cuts he endured while picking through the rubble.
Hugh was ready to go home. However, as he was clambering over yet another pile of splintered, broken lumber, he heard a strange noise. At first, he thought it might be a squeaky board, or maybe the wind was playing tricks. “Hello,” he called. “Is there someone there?”
The sound came again; this time Hugh realized it was beneath his feet. Dropping down on all fours, his adrenaline level rising, Hugh frantically began sweeping aside the snow and tearing at the lumber below with his bare hands. As he did so, he immediately knew there was more wood than he could ever move by himself. His pulse racing, his heart pounding, he stood tall and shouted for help. His cries drew a couple of American sailors, who came wading through the knee-deep snow to reach him. The men, burly bluejackets from the crew of the hospital ship the USS Old Colony, were much stronger and fresher than Hugh was.
Together, the men cleared away the snow and debris. Hugh Mills was the first to spot the body that lay trapped beneath the pile. “It’s a woman!” he cried. “Oh, my God! It’s Mrs. Hinch. She lives here on Veith Street.”
When her rescuers pulled a bloodied and bruised Mary Jean Hinch from the wreckage, she was semi-conscious and barely alive. The bluejackets loaded her onto a makeshift stretcher and transported her to the emergency medical clinic aboard the USS Old Colony.
EVEN AS THE BLIZZARD RAGED over Halifax, a massive relief effort was starting to take shape and build momentum. Trains carrying doctors, nurses, Red Cross workers, firefighters, tradespeople, and hundreds of volunteers ready to do whatever it took to help with rescue operations arrived daily. The explosion in Halifax harbour had made the headlines far and wide. In addition to the relief trains from Boston, others from Rhode Island; Bangor, Maine; and New York City were speeding toward Halifax.
Governments were the first to answer the city’s urgent pleas for dollars to fund relief efforts, and they would emerge as the biggest donors to the cause. Canada’s federal government provided more than $18 million in emergency relief money; in today’s currency, that would be about $350 million. In 1917, when a loaf of bread cost six cents, and twenty-five dollars was a solid weekly wage for a blue-collar worker, a dollar went much farther than it does today.
The American and British governments also stepped up, each providing gifts of $5 million to the relief fund. Smaller donations flowed in from far and wide. Among them were $250,000 from Australia, $50,000 from New Zealand, and a like amount from St. John’s, Newfoundland, which at the time was still a British colony.2
In Montreal, the first season of the newly formed National Hockey League (NHL) was about to get under way, and the Montreal Wanderers and Montreal Canadiens played an exhibition game, with proceeds going to the Halifax relief fund. Some hockey historians claim this was the first game played in NHL history—“or at least, the first game contested by players belonging to NHL teams.”3 Although there is no record of how much money the game raised, the gesture itself is noteworthy.
The Massachusetts–Halifax Relief Committee had much loftier fundraising ambitions than did the hockey players. The Massachusetts agency launched a campaign to raise a million dollars. Community relief drives collected pennies from schoolchildren and dollars from their parents. A thousand Boston women took to the streets for “Halifax Tag Day,” which raised $10,000 for the Halifax relief fund.4 Legendary Scottish music hall performer Sir Harry Lauder was among the celebrity donors at a luncheon that raised more than $2,000. Opera fans contributed to the cause by attending a benefit concert “given for the Relief of Sufferers from the Recent Disaster in Nova Scotia.” The performance featured members of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, celebrated Australian soprano Dame Nellie Melba, and Austrian violinist Fritz Kreisler. Boston’s largesse did not stop there.
Cap Ratshesky had sent a telegram home asking for window glass and glaziers to install it. The glaziers, accompanied by twenty-five doctors and sixty-five nurses, would reach Halifax aboard another relief train on the afternoon of Sunday, December 9. That same day, the first of two Halifax-bound ships carrying more window glass, glaziers, emergency food supplies, blankets, and winter clothing would sail from Boston. When the American Red Cross issued an appeal for donations, the public response was so enthusiastic that officials had to halt the collection; the hall where people were dropping off donations overflowed with piles, bundles, and boxes of incoming goods.
In Chicago, a citizens’ committee chaired by former Halifax resident James B. Forgan, an aide to the Chicago mayor, held a public meeting where attendees donated $43,000 to the cause.5
Heeding the adage that charity begins at home, towns, villages, churches, and chapters of the Red Cross from across Nova Scotia, the neighbouring provinces of New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island, and the New England states donated to the Halifax relief fund. Trains carrying doctors, nurses, firefighters, and rescue workers sped to Halifax from communities all over Nova Scotia—among others, Wolfville, Truro, Amherst, Sydney, and New Glasgow—and from Moncton, St. John, and Campbellton in neighbouring New Brunswick. Individuals across Atlantic Canada donated money, articles of winter clothing, and anything else they could spare. “The country folk sent in gifts of butter, cream, eggs, and poultry,” Archibald MacMechan reported.6
AMONG THE MOST VULNERABLE victims of the explosion on December 6 were children, thousands of whom suffered serious injuries, while hundreds were orphaned. Establishing the identities of babies and toddlers proved to be an especially difficult task.
In 1917, with so many men—the breadwinners for their families—fighting overseas, the wives of men in uniform often struggled to make ends meet. When the women were unable to do so, their children sometimes ended up in an orphanage. There were six in Halifax. Four were Roman Catholic, two were Protestant. All received funding from private donations and local churches.
In the wake of the explosion, “upwards of 500 families, including more than 1,500 children”7 were in need of emergency relief. In response, the Liberal provincial government of Premier George Murray organized an emergency relief committee headed by Ernest H. Blois, the provincial Superintendent of Neglected and Delinquent Children. Blois, a forty-nine-year-old former teacher, was a staunch advocate of government involvement in child welfare matters. A big man with imposing physical presence and a personality to match, Blois had very definite ideas about how to do his job.8 For that reason, he refused to allow American Red Cross officials to be members of the committee he headed, despite their expertise in disaster relief and child welfare. The Americans complained that Blois was “inflexible and went so far as to call him jealous of the rehabilitation workers.”9 Their comments were like water off a duck’s back to Blois, who forged ahead with his own agenda.
The Blois committee provided Halifax newspapers with lists of the names of “unclaimed” children. “Out of 617 Robie Street, a little boy with light hair and dark brown eyes, aged about 2½ years,” a typical announcement read. “He can give no account of himself or his people other than that ‘Daddy is at war.’”10
In some cases, one or both parents of needy children were dead or had suffered serious explosion-related injuries. No less tragic were those situations in which youngsters and parents found themselves separated. This was the case with scores of injured children who convalesced in smaller cities and towns in Nova Scotia and neighbouring New Brunswick. With the blessing of provincial child welfare officials, families who helped care for the children eventually adopted some of them. This sometimes proved problematic. That was so in the case of thirteen-year-old Fred Kidd.
The grade seven student at Bloomfield School in Halifax suffered a head injury in the explosion. After Fred had spent four days in an emergency first-aid clinic, an administrator asked the lad and some of the other children if they would like “to go for a little trip.”11 When they agreed, they soon found themselves on a train bound for Campbellton, New Brunswick, 340 miles to the northwest. The children celebrated Christmas there, and afterward they learned they would be “placed” with local farm families. By this time, Fred Kidd’s mind had cleared, and he rejected this plan. He raised such a fuss that the provincial child welfare officials put Fred and all the children who had come to Campbellton with him on a train back to Halifax. When they arrived, Fred was reunited with his family, who had been searching for him.
All turned out well for Fred Kidd, but many other Halifax youngsters were less fortunate. Some children, mostly toddlers and babies, simply disappeared in the post-disaster whirl of confusion, and their parents never saw them again. That was the fate of the three children of Lottie and William Moore.
The explosion on December 6 destroyed the Barrington Street home in which Lottie and William and their three children lived. When soldiers dug twenty-six-year-old Lottie out from under the rubble, she learned that her two daughters, nine-year-old Hazel Moore and six-month-old Hilda, and her five-year-old son Gerald had disappeared. The Moores spent years hunting for the children; however, their efforts were in vain. The names of the two older children—or those of others with the same names—appeared on the ledger of a ship that served as a temporary shelter for explosion survivors, but there the trail went cold. Were the Moore children alive or dead? No one could say for certain, and so their names were ultimately included in the Halifax Explosion Book of Remembrance.12
Lottie Moore could never bring herself to accept that Hazel, Gerald, and Hilda were dead. For her and for her husband, there was and could be no closure. The couple never gave up hope of finding their precious children. “Had I known they were dead, I could have put it to rest in my mind,” she would often say.13
DESPITE THE PALL THAT LINGERED OVER HALIFAX IN THE WAKE OF THE DISASTER, SMALL CHRISTMAS PARTIES WERE HELD FOR AT LEAST SOME OF HALIFAX’S ORPHANED CHILDREN. (WILLIAM JAMES FAMILY FONDS, CITY OF TORONTO ARCHIVES)