Still no plans for Mont Blanc pieces found last summer
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CBC
3 days ago
- CBC
Halifax Explosion artifacts were pulled from the harbour last year. So, now what?
On a warm July night a year ago, crews dredging as part of an expansion at Irving's shipyard started pulling out a treasure trove of artifacts believed to be connected to the Halifax Explosion. In the weeks and months that followed, more than 100 pieces from the explosion were among the 100,000 tonnes of material pulled out of Halifax harbour. In some cases, the artifacts were car-size chunks of metal. The pieces came from the present-day location of what would have been home to Pier 6 on Dec. 6, 1917. This is the area where the collision happened between the Mont-Blanc, a French munitions ship, and Imo, a Norwegian steamship carrying Belgian relief supplies. The Halifax Explosion is the worst disaster in Canadian history — and arguably the most important event in the city's history. Two-thousand people were killed and 9,000 injured, while two square kilometres of the city were levelled. For the municipal and provincial governments, the artifacts were, literally, too big of a problem. Despite their historical significance, both governments have done little with them, records obtained through a freedom of information request show. Joel Zemel, who has written several books on the Halifax Explosion, said there's little appetite for preserving the city's history, so he's not surprised the artifacts were not greeted with much enthusiasm. "If they wanted the space, they needed the space, they'd make the space. Period," said Zemel. The records obtained by CBC News include a letter by Amber Laurie, the curator of the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic. In it, Laurie listed the reasons why some of the artifacts are believed to come from the Mont-Blanc. This included their thickness being similar to existing pieces in the museum's collection, as well as the irregular shapes of some of the pieces. "A high force event combined with heat would create such twists in riveted metal," she wrote in the July 25, 2024, document. Given where the pieces were found, Zemel said they are likely from the Mont-Blanc. But he questions the methodology that was used by museum officials to reach that conclusion. "You need experts to come in, outside experts, who are not involved with the [Maritime] museum [of the Atlantic], who don't have any predisposed ideas," said Zemel. Laurie's letter also highlighted why the artifacts are noteworthy. "The fragments recently recovered are far larger than most known ones and would be considered historically significant at the municipal, provincial, and potentially, the national level," Laurie wrote. Despite this enthusiasm, the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic only took two artifacts: a fragment and a rivet. A bow the museum collected was later determined not to be from the Mont-Blanc because it had welding, which meant it was too new to belong to the vessel. As well, its condition was too pristine. It's unclear if the bow is classified as one of the museum's two latest acquisitions. A Sept. 25, 2024, email from John Cormier, the co-ordinator of special places with the Department of Communities, Culture, Tourism and Heritage, reveals some of the challenges the province would face in storing the artifacts. "The pieces in this collection range in size from as small as 30 cm to more than 30 feet in length," he wrote. "This, combined with the number of artifacts collected makes curation of this collection impossible for the [Nova Scotia Museum] or [Davis, MacIntyre & Associates], as neither group has the capacity to hold it, and conservation of such an extensive collection would be expensive." (Davis, MacIntyre & Associates was the archaeology consulting firm working on the dredging project.) At the municipal level, the response was similar. "HRM does not have plans to create more Explosion commemorative displays in the near future so are reluctant to take on any large pieces, but we can accept two small fragments (<15cm), along with any accompanying report/description to provide the context of their recovery/provenance etc.," Susan McClure, the city's archivist, wrote in a Nov. 27, 2024, email to some provincial and municipal officials. In a statement, the Department of Communities, Culture, Tourism and Heritage said the dredging turned up 127 items that are believed to be from the Mont-Blanc. Besides the pieces given to the city and the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic, the remainder are at an Irving-owned facility in Dartmouth, the department said. To determine with certainty that some of the recovered artifacts were, in fact, from the Mont-Blanc, Laurie recommended that metallurgical testing be conducted. The archaeologist working on the project, Travis Crowell, asked Irving if they would pick up the tab. Irving, under no obligation to pay for this given the terms of their permit application, declined. No metallurgical testing was ever done. In a statement, the province said that given where the items were found and because of research done by department staff and the project's consulting archaeologist, they did not go ahead with the testing. "[W]e are confident that some of the materials are related to the Halifax Explosion and/or are pieces of the Mont-Blanc," it said.
CBC
13-02-2025
- CBC
Still no plans for Mont Blanc pieces found last summer
The SS Mont Blanc is famous for its role in the Halifax Explosion, and historians are urging the province to preserve these pieces of history. Tom Murphy has the story.
CBC
18-12-2024
- CBC
Pieces of Halifax Explosion ship have been found but it's not clear if the public will see them
Pieces of the munitions ship involved in the Halifax Explosion were discovered earlier this year when Irving Shipbuilding workers were dredging the harbour, and questions remain about where these shards of local history should go. This month Halifax marked the 107th anniversary of the 1917 explosion, which was the largest man-made explosion at the time. The blast flattened everything within a radius of more than two kilometres, killed close to 1,800 people and injured more than 9,000 others. It was caused when the SS Mont-Blanc, a French ship carrying ammunition, colliding with an empty ship, the Imo. The Mont-Blanc was torn asunder amid the explosion and its fragments scattered around the city. Marilyn Davidson Elliott is the author of The Blind Mechanic, which details the story of her father who was blinded in the explosion. She told CBC Radio's Information Morning Halifax that due to the fact that the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic cannot house ship pieces as large as what was discovered, Halifax should have its own museum of artifacts from the explosion. "Perhaps Irving Shipbuilding could invest in such a museum and that would be a wonderful contribution to the community," she said. She said it could be similar to the Titanic museum in Belfast or the Vasa Museum in Sweden, which is solely dedicated to one warship that sank on its maiden voyage in 1628. More than 300 years later, the largely intact ship was raised from the bottom of the Stockholm harbour and became the centrepiece of the museum. A lot of effort was put into creating a museum around the ship, but according to Fred Hocker, the director of research at the Vasa Museum, it was well worth it. "We received over a million visitors a year, we're the most-visited maritime museum in the world, we believe, and the most-visited tourist attraction or museum of any kind in Scandinavia," Hocker told Information Morning. "That was part of the reason, part of the motivation. It was seen as a good tourist draw." It's this type of initiative that Elliott thinks the province should also take on in order to preserve pieces from a historical event so close to the city. "Other places find ways to preserve their history. And I call on Nova Scotia to do the same," said Elliott. According to an environmental assessment registration document from Irving Shipbuilding, there is currently a permit for dredging operations that lists two possible spots for a temporary sorting facility for dredging materials in Dartmouth. It provides a permit to establish a temporary building at one of those two sorting facilities to sift through the sediment. It is unknown whether or not the newly discovered pieces of the Mont-Blanc are inside the building. Elliott said the province should also be more transparent about the discovery of pieces of the ship that directly impacted her family. "I can say the Mont-Blanc has been ever present in my life. My father was blinded and how I used to wish that the explosion never happened and that he could see," said Elliott. "So this discovery relates directly to me, my children, grandchildren and thousands of descendants. "And I would ask that the provincial … powers that be, think about us and consider us when they're making whatever decisions they're going to make."
