Remembering Halifax Explosion
A service was held to honour orphans that died in catastrophe of 1917
HALIFAX — They came to the orphanage because their families couldn’t care for them. Then, disaster struck.
The wards of the Halifax Protestant Orphanage were as young as three and as old as 13 when a massive explosion tore through Halifax in 1917.
A century later, dozens of mourners gathered at their gravesite in a cemetery in Halifax’s north end on Sunday to ensure that even though their lives were cut tragically short, they would not be forgotten.
“The other victims that are here would have descendents, they would have families and things like that who could pay homage to them and remember them,” Rev. Randy Townsend of the St. John’s Anglican Church said in an interview.
“The children of the orphanage wouldn’t have anyone. They died as young children with no families, and so we thought we would just take time out of the business of our lives on this day to come together and remember them.”
About two dozen children and three caretakers at the orphanage were among the 2,000 people killed in the 1917 Halifax Explosion.
They were laid to rest in St. John’s Cemetery in a plot marked with two aging obelisks, two gravestones, and on Sunday, a mini Canadian flag as a crowd sang hymns and held a moment of silence in their honour.
Under an overcast sky, a bell rang as each of the victims’ names were called out.
Townsend reflected on the trials the children must have faced growing up in an institution in the early 20th century, raised by staff members rather than a loving family.
“The lives of the children perhaps were not filled with hope,” Townsend told the crowd. “Their hope may have been that one day they would be adopted out to a loving family.”
He imagined what the children may have felt like on Dec. 6, 1917.
The blast — the largest humancaused explosion before the first atomic bomb — followed a collision in Halifax harbour between the French munitions ship Mont Blanc and the Norwegian-flagged Belgian relief vessel Imo.