Disasters

Halifax has recently been described as 'disaster-prone', with a chequered history of catastrophes of international scope and significance. No large community or geographic area can ever escape the routine horrors, but given its size and density, the Municipality does seem to have had more than its share of tragedies — on land, under ground, at sea and in the air.

The painful memories of Swissair Flight 111 off Peggy's Cove in 1998 are still fresh. Marine disasters abound, from countless wrecks on the shifting sands of Sable Island — 'The Graveyard of the Atlantic' — to the foundering of the SS Atlantic off Prospect in 1873 — then the world's worst marine disaster with the loss of 565 people — to the aftermath of the RMS Titanic in 1912, when the principal rescue efforts were coordinated from Halifax.

During April 1936, "the attention of much of the civilized world [was rivetted] on Nova Scotia for nearly two weeks" (The Canadian Annual Review 1935 and 1936). On Easter Sunday, three men were trapped by a cave-in at the Moose River Gold Mine. North Americans listened to live news broadcasts — a first in Canada — as the details of the Municipality's most famous mining disaster unfolded: "It was an epic of tragedy, endurance, death and heroic rescue, the story of which was followed eagerly for many days by millions of people as it was conveyed by newspapers and the radio."

Fire is no stranger to any city, and Halifax is no exception. The North Barracks, along with forty houses, burned in 1850; an entire four acres and some sixty downtown buildings disappeared in 1859; the Poor Asylum burnt to a shell in 1882, the King Edward Hotel in 1911, buildings on Barrington Street in 1912, and the Queen Hotel in 1939. The last-mentioned blaze was the greatest disaster in the city since the 1917 Explosion, and is still vivid in the memory of many residents.

The Halifax Harbour Explosion, of course, is without doubt the best-known event in Halifax's long and colourful history. On that fateful morning of 6 December 1917, the munitions carrier Mont Blanc and the Belgian Relief vessel Imo collided in the narrowest part of the harbour. The resulting convulsion was the world's largest man-made explosion before the atomic bomb in 1945. More Nova Scotians died in that single disaster than were killed in World War I. Although somewhat anticlimactic, the Bedford Magazine Explosion of 1945 revived memories of 1917 and fears for a similar catastrophe.

'Disaster-prone'?

A 'City of Disasters'?

Read on and decide for yourself....