100 Years Since the Halifax Explosion

Beginning the day of the devastating Halifax Explosion of 1917, Dazzle Patterns is an unforgettable story about loss, the resilience of the human spirit, and the transformative power of art.

While Clare Holmes waits for her fiancé, Leo, to return from the war in France, she works as a flaw checker at the Halifax glassworks. It is there that she meets Fred Baker, a mysterious master glassmaker who was trained in his home country of Germany. After the disastrous explosion on December 6, 1917 - whi …

At approximately 8:45 a.m. on 6 December 1917, the Belgian Relief vessel IMO struck the munitions-laden freighter Mont-Blanc in Halifax Harbour. The Mont-Blanc exploded in a devastating 2.9 kiloton blast, which killed 2,000 people and injured 9,000. More than 6,000 people were made homeless, and an additional 12,000 were left without shelter.

Bearing Witness tells the story of the Explosion, and the catastrophic damage it caused, through the eyes and words of more than two dozen journalists and …

In December 1917, one of the greatest natural harbours in the world was humming with excitement. Halifax Harbour was filled with naval convoys and merchant vessels while factories worked overtime in support of the Allied war effort in Europe. But on December 6, Canada's worst disaster struck, as two ships--one carrying high explosives--collided. The explosion killed and injured thousands, razing the city's North End and destroying nearly everything in its path.

The story of the worst human-made …

On December 6, 1917, the French munitions ship Mont Blanc and the Norwegian war-relief vessel Imo collided in the harbour at Halifax, Nova Scotia. That accident sparked a fire and an apocalyptic explosion that was the largest man-made blast prior to the 1945 dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Together with the killer tsunami that followed, the explosion devastated the entire city in the wink of an eye and instantly killed more than two thousand people.

While much has been written about the …

Modern urban planning has long promised to improve the quality of human life. But how is human life defined? Displacing Blackness develops a unique critique of urban planning by focusing, not on its subservience to economic or political elites, but on its efforts to improve people’s lives.

While focused on twentieth-century Halifax, Displacing Blackness develops broad insights about the possibilities and limitations of modern planning. Drawing connections between the history of planning and e …

The Halifax explosion was unprecedented in its devastation with regards to casualties, force and radius of the blast, and widespread damage to property.

This book offers a collection of carefully selected visuals that tell the story of the devastation caused by the explosion and the impact it had on Halifax. Joyce Glasner focuses on the impact of this wartime disaster on the thousands of survivors.

One hundred years ago, on December 6, 1917, the French munitions ship Mont Blanc collided with the Belgian relief vessel Imo in the Halifax Harbour. At first, a small fire broke out aboard the Mont Blanc, which grew bigger crowds of people and emergency responders linded the shores of Halifax and Dartmouth to get a better look. Suddenly, the Mont Blanc's explosive cargo blew up, flattening homes and businesses, and triggering a tsunami.

Amid the confusion and devastation that followed the blast w …

"The rumble got louder, the walls quaked as if in fear, and the classroom's windows started to pulse and shake before they completely shattered, showering everyone inside with glass."

On December 6, 1917, the face of Halifax changed forever when the Imo, a Belgian Relief ship, collided with the French ship, the Mont Blanc. Shortly after 9:00 a.m., the Mont Blanc, which was carrying a large cargo of explosives, blew up. It destroyed much of the city's north end and neighbouring communities like T …