The Halifax Explosion: Canada's Worst Disaster

On December 6, 1917, the French munitions ship Mont-Blanc and the Norwegian war-relief vessel Imo collided in the harbour at Halifax, Nova Scotia. That accident sparked a fire and an apocalyptic explosion that was the largest man-made blast prior to the 1945 dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Together with the killer tsunami that followed, the explosion devastated the entire city in the wink of an eye and instantly killed more than 2,000 people.

While much has been written about the d...