halifax explosion memorial: fall 2002
From Barometer Rising, a bit of description:
Three forces were simultaneously created by the energy of the exploding ship, an earthquake, an air-concussion, and a tidal wave....It took only a few seconds for the earthquake to spend itself and three minutes for the air-expansions to slow down to a gale. The tidal wave travelled for hours before the last traces of it were swallowed in the open Atlantic.
When the shock struck the earth, the rigid ironstone and granite base of Halifax peninsula rocked and reverberated, pavements split and houses swayed as the earth trembled. Sixty miles away in the town of Truro windows broke and glass fell to the ground, tinkling in the stillness of the streets. But the ironstone was solid and when the shock had passed, it resumed its immobility.
The pressure of the exploding chemicals smashed against the town with the rigidity and force of driving steel. Solid and unbreathable, the forced wall of air struck against Fort Needham and Richmond Bluff and shaved them clean, smashed with one gigantic blow the North End of Halifax and destroyed it, telescoping houses or lifting them from their foundations, snapping trees and lampposts, and twisting iron rails into writhing, metal snakes; breaking buildings and sweeping the fragments for hundreds of yards in its course. It advanced two miles southward, shattering every flimsy house in its path, and within thirty seconds encountered the long, shield-like slope of the Citadel which rose before it.
Then, for the first time since it was fortified, the Citadel was able to defend at least a part of the town. The air-wall smote it, and was deflected in three directions. Thus some of its violence shot skyward at a twenty-degree angle and spent itself in space. The rest had to pour around the roots of the hill before closing in on the town for another rush forward....
Underneath the keel of the Mont Blanc the water opened and the harbour bottom was deepened twenty feet along the channel of the Narrows. And then the displaced waters began to drive outward, rising against the towns and lifting ships and wreckage over the sides of the docks. It boiled over the shores...carrying with it the wreckage of small boats, fragments of fish, and somewhere, lost in thousands of tons of hissing brine, the bodies of men....
Over the North End of Halifax, immediately after the passage of the first pressure, the tormented air was laced with tongues of flame which roared and exploded out of the atmosphere, lashing downward like a myriad blow-torches as millions of cubic feet of gas took fire and exploded. The atmosphere went white-hot. It grew mottled, then fell to the streets like a crimson curtain. Almost before the last fragments of steel [airborne fragments of the exploded Mont Blanc] had ceased to fall, the wreckage of the wooden houses in the North End had begun to burn.
This is what Fort Needham looks like now:
This is part of the memorial tower. The gap between the two parts of it lines up with a path that runs straight down the hill to the spot in the harbour where the Mont Blanc blew up.
Amy walks down the path towards the water. The buildings on the other side of the harbour are Dartmouth.
We couldn't get very close to the harbour, as most of the land near it was fenced off. As usual, what we could see of the water was full of military ships.
This is part of Richmond, the area most devastated by the explosion. Obviously, everything here was built and/or planted after the old neighbourhood was wiped out.
This is what the memorial looks like from the other side of the hill on which it stands.
This is Hydrostone Market, which first caught my attention as Andrew and I drove past it in our rented car. It's in an area most notable for housing developments and warehouses; slightly to the south, before you get to the Citadel, is, well, the 'hood, with tattoo parlours and rehab clinics and sad-looking middle-aged men sitting around at all hours of the day. And yet, two minutes' walk from that, there's this pristine, adorable little yuppie market.
I shall quote the memorial plaque on the subject of Hydrostone:
"From the ashes of the catastrophic Halifax Explosion, which shattered the City's North End on December 6, 1917, rose the Hydrostone District, a splendid example of an English-style garden suburb. Completed in 1920, this well-preserved neighbourhood was designed according to the most up-to-date yet practical principles of town planning. The master plan featured three main elements: realigned streets, a large public park, and some 325 fireproof dwellings of the most modern type, served by a row of shops. The buildings, all variations on the same architectural theme and all constructed with 'Hydro-Stone' concrete blocks, are aesthetically arranged along each side of wide treed courts. The houses and landscape contribute to a remarkable sense of time and place. The neighbourhood is an important achievement by the influential town planner Thomas Adams; it is also Canada's first government-assisted housing project."
The plaque is mounted on a small concrete platform; on the platform is a large arrow pointing to the explosion site, which is approximately 950 metres to the northeast. (I didn't take a picture of that, so I don't remember the exact number.)
Amy and I stopped for coffee at this little "café/patisserie" in the market. Hydrostone Market is sweetly upscale, with a "bistro," an antique store (where we ogled some extremely beautiful wooden furniture and a dozen ancient cameras), yarn and fabric shops, a florist, a store selling upscale kitchenware, etc.
The café was sweet-smelling and warm inside and quaint in that endearing semi-artificial way, with old cocoa ads and china and photos of Paris and Provence on the walls and sweet-faced, Amélie-ish girls selling fresh loaves of bread. I fell in love with it immediately, because I'm a sucker that way.
Me, making a weird face over my café au lait.
So concludes another day of tourism.