The Halifax Explosion

One hundred years ago today on December 6, 1917, the worst disaster in Canadian history occurred in the maritime port of Halifax, Nova Scotia. That morning, two ships collided in its harbour -- the French cargo ship SS Mont-Blanc and the Norwegian ship SS Imo. The Mont-Blanc was packed with TNT and other explosives being shipped to France for use in World War I. It caught on fire and blew sky-high.

The resulting blast levelled a big part of Halifax, killed nearly 2,000 people and injured another 9,000. It was the world's largest man-made explosion until the atom bomb was dropped on Hiroshima nearly 30 years later.

As stated in Wikipedia:

Nearly all structures within an 800-metre (half-mile) radius, including the entire community of Richmond, were obliterated. A pressure wave snapped trees, bent iron rails, demolished buildings, grounded vessels, and scattered fragments of Mont-Blanc for kilometres. Hardly a window in the city proper survived the blast. Across the harbour, in Dartmouth, there was also widespread damage. A tsunami created by the blast wiped out the community of Mi'kmaq First Nations people who had lived in the Tufts Cove area for generations.

And then, just to add to the misery, a blizzard occurred, hampering rescue and relief efforts. Trains full of supplies and aid were sent to Halifax from across Canada and the northeastern United States. The American city of Boston was especially quick and generous in sending doctors, nurses, medical supplies and funds, which is why Nova Scotia annually donates a huge Christmas tree to Boston every year in friendship and gratitude.

If you ever go to Halifax, be sure to visit the Halifax Explosion Memorial Bell Tower which was erected near the collision site. It is a very solemn and beautiful place of commemoration.

There is also an old historic Anglican Church called St Paul's, located in downtown Halifax on the Grand Parade, that is worthy of a visit. It survived the Explosion because it was outside the immediate blast radius.

Inside the church doors, however, a spike is still embedded high up on the interior wall where it was blown by the force of the Explosion. And towards the back of the church, you can see the famous "Explosion Window." Local legend has it that, due to the intense light and heat generated by the Halifax Explosion, the profile of one of the church’s deacons was etched into the glass of a second story window of the church.

Here's a better view of the Explosion Window --

[All photos from the internet]

Charles Walker

There is only one Canadian soldier from World War I to whom my family has a personal connection -- Charles Walker, who was mortally wounded at the battle of Vimy Ridge and died a month later on May 8, 1917, a hundred years ago today.

Charlie Walker was born in Scotland in 1891 and emigrated to Canada as a child. He came to our country as a "Barnardo Boy" -- one of a vast legion of destitute, orphaned and/or abandoned Victorian-era British children who were shipped to the colonies by a British charity called Dr. Barnardo's Homes. Designed to serve as an abundant pool of cheap labour, the boys were trained to be farm workers and the girls to be domestic help. These unfortunate "home children" (as they were also called) were often overworked, underpaid and maltreated in their new lives.

Charlie Walker spent his teenage years working as a farm labourer in southwestern Manitoba. Apparently he was not treated well by his various employers until he started working for my grandfather. He became very close with my grandparents and worked for them for several years until World War I broke out.

In the winter of 1916 when he was 25, Charlie Walker volunteered for the Canadian Overseas Expeditionary Force. He was sent to France with the 44th Battalion of the Canadian Infantry (Manitoba Regiment).

My grandparents sent him off to war with the gift of a pinky ring to remind him of home and those who loved him.

Before he died of his wounds received at Vimy Ridge, Charlie Walker arranged for the ring to be returned to my grandparents as a keepsake. He died unmarried, with no children. The ring has come down through my family and is today in my care, along with his enlistment and military unit photos.

As with all families whose loved ones were killed in the war, my grandparents were devastated by the news of his death. When their only son (my father) was born in 1924, they named him Charles Walker in tribute to their lost young man. My father also did his best during his life to keep Charlie Walker's memory alive. And now that responsibility is mine.

                               They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
                               Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
                               At the going down of the sun and in the morning
                               We will remember them.

                                           --From "For the Fallen" by Laurence Binyon

Vimy Ridge Centenary

Today is Vimy Ridge Day, which commemorates the First World War battle that has become a Canadian symbol of achievement, nationhood and sacrifice. Mainstream historical interpretation holds that Canada became a truly independent nation at Vimy Ridge, no longer viewed simply as part of the British Empire.

2017 is the centenary of the battle of Vimy Ridge and it is being marked across Canada this weekend by many events.

Vimy Ridge is an escarpment in France near Arras. The German army captured it at the beginning of the war in 1914. Neither the French nor the British succeeded in taking it back and, as a result, they believed Vimy Ridge to be untakeable.

But on April 9-12, 1917, the Canadian Expeditionary Force captured Vimy Ridge, thanks to "a mixture of technical and tactical innovation, meticulous planning, powerful artillery support, and extensive training, as well as the failure of the German Sixth Army to properly apply the German defensive doctrine." (Wikipedia)

Like all such victories, however, Vimy Ridge came at a terrible price -- 3598 Canadian soldiers killed and 7004 wounded. German casualties are unknown but 4000 prisoners of war were taken.

Today, a hundred years later, the landscape of Vimy Ridge is still heavily scarred from the battle, scars which are easily visible in the following aerial photograph. The whole area remains honeycombed with tunnels, trenches, craters and unexploded munitions. As a result, much of the site is closed off for public safety. Only sheep are allowed to wander those spots, in order to graze and keep the grass short.

Vimy Ridge is now dominated by the huge Canadian National Vimy Memorial. Designed by Canadian sculptor Walter Allward, the Memorial is constructed of white limestone bonded to a cast concrete frame and features 20 sculpted figures. Its towering twin pylons represent Canada and its ally France. The Memorial took many years to design and build after World War I. Its purpose is not to glorify war but to memorialize our national grief about the human price of victory.

Our country's grief at the terrible cost of Vimy Ridge and World War I is encapsulated in the central figure of the Memorial -- standing at the front, framed between the twin pylons -- the statue called Canada Bereft. She stands on the high parapet, looking down at the stone sarcophagus of the war dead found at its base. Before her stretches the Vimy battlefield. She is facing east, where each new day dawns.

Designed to evoke the Mater Dolorosa, the grieving mother Mary of Michelangelo's Pieta, Canada Bereft grieves for all time, on sunny days and in the rain, day and night, in summer, winter and all the other seasons of the turning year. The laurels of glory and victory hang forlornly from her hand.

The only personal connection my family has to World War I is a soldier named Charles Walker who was mortally wounded at Vimy Ridge and died about a month after the battle. I will post his story next month on May 8, the centenary of his death.

Remembrance Day

Today is Remembrance Day in Canada. Like the armistice which ended World War I, it is marked at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month. This year's Remembrance Day, however, has a special resonance for us. It is the centenary of Canada's most famous poem, In Flanders Fields, written by Lieutenant-Colonel John McCrae following the second battle of Ypres in 1915.

Here's a short video about the poem's history (thanks, Guillaume of Vraie Fiction, on whose blog I first saw it) --



It is said that In Flanders Fields achieved the prominence it did because, unlike the bitter and disillusioned poetry written by other famous soldier-poets of the Great War, John McCrae's poem of grief and loss was still tinged with patriotic romanticism, speaking of "glory and honour in a war that has since become synonymous with the futility of trench warfare and the wholesale slaughter produced by 20th century weaponry." (wikipedia) Certainly, the poem was promoted and made use of for propaganda purposes by the wartime governments of both Canada and Britain.

Yet, the sincerity of the poem's central focus on those who died saves it from being true propaganda, I think. While it does not challenge the institution of war, In Flanders Fields transcends its specific circumstances and touches the universal grief of war.

Valour Road

Last month when I was in Winnipeg, I went to the Manitoba Museum to see a special display -- three sets of Canadian war medals from World War I, all of which included the extremely rare Victoria Cross. In the British Imperial military honours system which applied to Canada in those days, the Victoria Cross was the highest decoration possible. It was given for "valour in the face of the enemy" and, by its very nature, was often a posthumous award.

These particular Victoria Crosses belonged to three Winnipeg soldiers -- Lieutenant Robert Shankland, Sargeant-Major Frederick William Hall and Corporal Leo Clarke. Only Shankland survived his heroic action to receive the award in person.

But what makes these Victoria Crosses unique in the world is the improbable coincidence that, before joining the Canadian Expeditionary Force, all three of these soldiers had lived within a block of each other on Pine Street in Winnipeg. What are the astronomical odds that a single city block would produce three VCs?

So shortly after World War I, Winnipeg honoured its "Pine Street boys" by renaming their home street "Valour Road."

Today, Valour Road is marked with special signage to indicate the street's historical and military status.

These large signs run up and down the length of the street.

And at one intersection, behind a fringe of these same signs, there is a freestanding stone and metal memorial to Shankland, Hall and Clarke.

The three soldiers also appear on other signs that decorate the street.

Their medals and VCs are part of the permanent collection of the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa. This special exhibit was loaned to the Manitoba Museum to mark the 100th anniversary of the start of World War I. The display will return to Ottawa after Remembrance Day.

[First photo by Phil Hossack, Winnipeg Free Press. All other photos by Debra She Who Seeks, October 2014]

PPCLI Centennial -- World War I

This month is the 100th anniversary of the establishment of Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry. I'm marking the PPCLI centennial on my blog over the next four days because my father was a Princess Pat when he served in World War II. His military service profoundly affected him for his entire life and therefore also shaped my family in indelible ways.

World War I

[William Barnes Wollen, Second Battle of Ypres (Frezenberg)]

Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry was privately raised and equipped in August, 1914, the same month that World War I began. Canadians were very enthusiastic about the Great War at the start and the new regiment quickly attracted financing and recruits.

The PPCLI's first honorary Colonel-in-Chief was Princess Patricia of Connaught, the daughter of Queen Victoria's son Arthur, Duke of Connaught and Strathearn, who was Governor-General of Canada at the time. That explains the regiment's feminine name. I'm sure having a female patron was meant to evoke the far-off days of chivalry when a royal damsel would send her knight into battle wearing a token of her love attached to his armour. That's the kind of romanticized nonsense about war that prevailed before the killing fields of France woke people up to modern realities.

The Patricias were the first Canadian infantry unit to arrive in France during the First World War. In May 1915, the PPCLI had its first battlefield victory at Frezenberg (Ypres) although it cost them 500 men in 3 days. The highest ranking officer still alive at its conclusion was a lieutenant. The Princess Pats also fought at the Somme, Vimy Ridge, Passchendaele, Amiens and Mons -- all the major battles in which Canada served.

"A Reckless Dance into the Abyss"

One hundred years ago today on August 4, 1914, Great Britain declared war on Germany, after Germany declared war on France and Belgium. Canada also was automatically at war with Germany, since we were part of the seamless British Empire. With scarcely any diplomatic negotiations, public consultation or apparent thought, the great imperial powers of Europe plunged the world into the as-yet-unknown and unimagined horrors of mechanized warfare and death.

Our modern era began with that "reckless dance into the abyss" as the Great War was called in a recent article by Brian Stewart, former CBC foreign correspondent and current Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Munk School for Global Affairs at the University of Toronto.* He wrote that World War I --

has been called the "seminal catastrophe" of modern times and the calamity from which all other calamities sprang. . . .

The conflict itself saw 16 million killed, including 10 million soldiers, half of whom, it has been estimated, were never found or identified in the sea of mud and craters that the battlefields became.

No one will ever be able to calculate the lifetimes of grief left for those millions of relatives of the fallen, and for those survivors with broken bodies and spirits.

For years after the war, people talked of "the great silence" as the pain lay too deep to be spoken aloud. . . . 

In just four years [the war] collapsed four entire empires — the German, the Austro-Hungarian, the Russian, and the Ottoman (Turkish).

It bankrupted Europe both literally and emotionally, shattered faith in governments everywhere and left people desperate for extreme new ideologies that promised to make life livable again.

By giving birth to communism, fascism and the Nazis, the First World War was the essential precondition for the Second World War just 21 years later, and for the nuclear age and Cold War that followed.

"It is hard to imagine a worse initial condition for the modern era of which we are the inheritors," the Australian historian Christopher Clark wrote.

LEST WE FORGET

* Brian Stewart, "The 100-year conflict that is the First World War" (July 30, 2014) found here.

[All photos are from the internet. The first two are of Canada's National War Memorial in Ottawa. The third shows one of the seven Books of Remembrance housed in the Peace Tower, Parliament Hill, Ottawa which list all the names of Canada's war dead.]

Vimy Ridge Day

April 9th of each year is Vimy Ridge Day in Canada, designed to honour the special significance of this battle. Our country's grief at the terrible cost of Vimy Ridge and World War I is encapsulated by the central figure of the Canadian National Vimy Memorial, she who stands at the front of the Memorial, framed between the twin pylons -- the statue called Canada Bereft.

She stands on the high parapet, looking down at the stone sarcophagus of the war dead found at its base. Before her stretches the battlefield of 1917. She is facing east, where each new day dawns.

She is designed to evoke the Mater Dolorosa, the grieving mother of Michaelangelo's Pieta.

Canada Bereft grieves for all time, on sunny days and in the rain, day and night, in summer, winter and all the other seasons of the turning year.

My father's namesake, Charles Walker, was mortally wounded at Vimy Ridge and died about a month after the battle. He is the only connection my family has to the Great War. I have written about him before (here and here) if you want to read his story.

[Photos borrowed from various sources on the internet.]

[Remember to enter HRH's Birthday Giveaway if you haven't yet -- click here to do so!]

Canadian National Vimy Memorial

Today, Vimy Ridge is dominated by a huge Canadian war memorial. Designed by Canadian sculptor Walter Allward, the Memorial is constructed of white limestone bonded to a cast concrete frame and features 20 sculpted figures. Its towering twin pylons represent Canada and its ally France.

The Memorial took many years to design and build after World War I. It was officially dedicated in 1936 by King Edward VIII. Recently, the Memorial has been extensively restored and refurbished. It was rededicated by Queen Elizabeth II in 2007.

The Canadian National Vimy Memorial is dedicated (in French and English) to all Canadian soldiers killed in World War I --

While the Memorial was being constructed, some of the extensive trenches on the battlefield were also cast in concrete by the same workers. Vimy Ridge is one of the very few places on the former Western Front where trench lines and war ravaged terrain are preserved.

Tomorrow -- Vimy Ridge Day, the statue of Canada Bereft and my family's connection to Vimy Ridge.

[Photos borrowed from various sources on the internet.]

[Remember to enter HRH's Birthday Giveaway if you haven't yet -- click here to do so!]

The Battle of Vimy Ridge

In Canada, this Saturday is Vimy Ridge Day. It commemorates a First World War battle that has become a Canadian symbol of achievement, nationhood and sacrifice. Mainstream historical interpretation holds that Canada became a truly independent nation at Vimy Ridge, no longer viewed as simply part of the British Empire.

Vimy Ridge is an escarpment in France near Arras. The German army captured it at the beginning of the war in 1914. Neither the French nor the British succeeded in taking it back and, as a result, they believed Vimy Ridge to be untakeable.

But on April 9-12, 1917, the Canadian Expeditionary Force captured Vimy Ridge, thanks to "a mixture of technical and tactical innovation, meticulous planning, powerful artillery support, and extensive training, as well as the failure of the German Sixth Army to properly apply the German defensive doctrine." (Wikipedia)

But, like all such victories, Vimy Ridge came at a terrible price -- 3598 Canadian soldiers killed and 7004 wounded. German casualties are unknown but 4000 prisoners of war were taken.

Today, the landscape around Vimy Ridge is still heavily scarred from that wartime period, scars which are easily visible under the fresh green grass. The whole area remains honeycombed with tunnels, trenches, craters and unexploded munitions. As a result, much of the site is closed off for public safety. Only sheep are allowed to wander these spots. Their job is to graze and keep the grass short.

And, of course, Vimy Ridge is also surrounded by Canadian war graves.

Tomorrow -- the Canadian War Memorial at Vimy Ridge.

[Photos borrowed from various sources on the internet.]

[Remember to enter HRH's Birthday Giveaway if you haven't yet -- click here to do so!]