Blizzard of Glass:
The Halifax Explosion of 1917

Hal­i­fax, the largest city of Nova Sco­tia, Cana­da, has a sto­ry to tell. Four­teen bells in a memo­r­i­al tow­er ring part of the tale. In the city hall clock tow­er, the locked-in-place hands on the clock that faces north freeze a moment of the sto­ry, left as it was on that long ago day. A muse­um con­tain­ing grim reminders and libraries filled with age-old pages share more. The peo­ple of Hal­i­fax add chap­ters to the sto­ry each time they speak the mem­o­ries of those who lived—and died—at the time. Old scars are hid­den by stur­dy stone hous­es, and tall trees line remade streets. But the roots of the sto­ry are still there, and they grow deep.

On Decem­ber 6, 1917 two ships col­lid­ed in Hal­i­fax Har­bour. One ship was loaded top to bot­tom with muni­tions and one held relief sup­plies, both intend­ed for war-torn Europe. The result­ing blast flat­tened two towns, Hal­i­fax and Dart­mouth, and killed near­ly 2,000 peo­ple. As if that was­n’t dev­as­tat­ing enough, a bliz­zard hit the next day, dump­ing more than a foot of snow on the area and par­a­lyz­ing much-need­ed relief efforts. Fol­low the mem­bers of five fam­i­lies as they expe­ri­ence this ter­ri­ble event and strug­gle to rebuild their lives in the aftermath.