Bells will be ringing again from City Hall this weekend, after roughly 100 years of silence. Two bronze bells are scheduled to be installed tomorrow (Saturday, October 30) in the bell tower on top of Halifax City Hall, and their chimes will be heard for the first time downtown at Grand Parade Square in the […]
Halifax Explosion
Posted inNews + Opinion
Explosive costs from 100-year memorial
Honouring our heritage can be educational, sobering and life-affirming. And expensive. Much of the cost of last year’s centennial commemoration of the Halifax Explosion covered the makeover of Fort Needham Memorial Park in the north end. That job came in at slightly more than $3.5 million, according to figures provided by city hall. The refurbishment […]
Posted inArts + Music
The year in visual art
In a year commemorating many anniversaries, 2017 is a landmark, for better or for worse. And with so much political upheaval it often felt like a landmark to come, history in the making. So with a historical lens pointed in all directions, it is no surprise that some of the most interesting exhibitions reflected this […]
Posted inArts + Music
In the room where it happened
The Zuppa Theatre Co. has made plays set locally before—Penny Dreadful takes place in a Nova Scotia mansion circa 1863; How Small, How Far Away happens in the north end in 2010—but At This Hour: The Deposition of Harbour Pilot Francis Mackey takes a different approach: It’s a piece of verbatim theatre that will be performed in the room […]
Posted inArts + Music
City nails new Halifax Explosion memorial
When Haligonians gather December 6 at Fort Needham Memorial Park to remember the blast that devastated the city 100 years ago, they will find some informative architecture has been added to the grounds around the old bell tower monument. The new commemorative elements don’t take the form of strenuous plaques droning on about the Imo, […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Citizens of the disaster
Even as the fires raged on December 6, 1917, many Haligonians were seized by a sudden generosity. “Citizens came in large numbers ‘flocking’ to give us places to put people,” reported Frank Gillis, an alderman from Ward 2 in the South and West Ends and chair of the relief committee’s transportation subcommittee. “One said ‘We’ll […]
Posted inArts + Music
Review: Lullaby: Inside the Halifax Explosion
Eastern Front Theatre’s latest production is just one of many events commemorating the centenary of the Halifax Explosion. Unlike the usual stories of disaster and relief, Karen Bassett’s delicate play does something new with the familiar story. Lullaby begins with three characters in a room in the aftermath of the explosion: a black man from […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
How we choose to remember the Halifax Explosion
If a hurricane passes over a deserted island, says Jacob Remes, no one calls it a disaster. According to the historian, a disaster is defined by people—how society responds or doesn’t respond to its impact. In his book, Disaster Citizenship: Survivors, Solidarity and Power in the Progressive Era, Remes examines those issues through the aftermath […]
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Traumatic re-creation
Arthur Lismer and the 1917 Explosion: When War Came to Halifax November 23–December 17 Dalhousie Art Gallery, 6101 University Avenue If it happened today, producers would be bidding for the film rights by noon. Instead, the Explosion in Halifax Harbour—the worst human-made disaster prior to the atomic bomb—was documented in a 75-cent paperback filled with 60 […]
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What if the Halifax Explosion happened today?
Given the inescapable 100th anniversary coverage, it’s quite hard to imagine anything worse than the Halifax Explosion occurring again. But given current events, it’s also all-too-easy to picture another Mont Blanc-meets-Imo situation taking place. The more war gets mongered by Americans, the likelier Halifax goes into action as a naval staging site. The nuclear-powered USS […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
The Halifax pop culture explosion
Non-fiction Catastrophe and Social Change, Based upon the sociological study of the Halifax disaster by Samuel H. prince (1920) T.N.T. by Allan Baddeley (1931) The Story of Dartmouth by John Patrick Martin (1957) The Town that Died: The True Story of the Greatest Man-Made Explosion before Hiroshima by Michael J. Bird (1962) 17 Minutes to […]
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Vincent Coleman and Rita Joe win Halifax ferry naming contest
The results are in for the second most important election in the province: The harbour ferry naming contest. As if that classic Heritage Minute weren’t enough, Halifax hero Vincent Coleman will be memorialized by having his name painted on the next ferry. Over the course of the 10-day naming contest, 11,014 votes were tallied, with […]