Halifax Explosion memorial service to be held Tuesday
Posted Dec 4, 2022 08:30:00 PM.
The Halifax Explosion took place almost 105 years ago, and the municipality has plans for its annual memorial service at a park in the vicinity where the blast happened.
People will gather at Fort Needham Memorial Park on Dec. 6 for a 9 a.m. remembrance ceremony “honouring the resilience, recovery and rebirth of those who survived” the 1917 disaster, Halifax Regional Municipality’s website says.
The solemn commemoration is to include remarks from civic officials, a moment of silence, a wreath-laying ritual, an Indigenous smudging ceremony and a closing prayer.
Other memorial practices during the morning of the anniversary are cannon fire from Citadel Hill, at the time the explosion occurred, the ringing of church bells and the sound of ferry horns from Halifax Harbour.
About 2,000 people were killed in the explosion, which took place after the collision between two ships in the harbour near north-end Halifax, during the days of the First World War. Thousands more were hurt and many homes were destroyed.
Scores of residents were left homeless as winter set in.
On the Dartmouth side of the water, the Mi’kmaw community of Turtle Grove was razed by the blast. Inhabitants were killed but others survived; the settlement was not rebuilt.
Aside from the coronavirus pandemic years, there’s been a small gathering of remembrance at a street corner site on Albro Lake Road on the anniversary of the explosion.
A cannon from one of the ships was blown kilometres away to Dartmouth and is displayed there, after it was moved from another location in 1992.
According to The Canadian Encyclopedia, the Halifax Relief Commission was set up on Dec. 6, 1917, “as an emergency committee to provide immediate (disaster) relief” following the explosion. It was disbanded in 1976.
In 2019, CBC News reported researchers found that Halifax’s Black families were discriminated against by the commission after the tragedy.
For more information on the history of the Halifax Explosion, and this year’s memorial service, go here.
Michael Lightstone is a freelance reporter living in Dartmouth
