Abstract

The Splintered City: The Halifax Harbour Explosion, 1917. Sean Street tells the story of the biggest man-made explosion prior to the atomic bomb, when a munitions ship and, ironically, a refugee relief vessel collided, leaving Halifax, Nova Scotia, devastated. With 2,000 people killed and many thousands more injured, the world was changed as it initiated the first global response to a disaster and the academic study of catastrophe. By the harbour and in the streets of the splintered city, Sean meets some of the survivors 90 years on and explores the causes and contradictions of the disaster