Using the perspectives of law, politics, public policy and intergovernmental relations, historian Barry Cahill describes the complex activities of an almost-unaccountable agency that took the place of municipal, provincial and federal governments in addressing the needs of the citizens and the city after the Explosion. He provides new insight into the pioneering town planning and construction of the Hydrostone neighbourhood in Halifax. He also explains why this ad-hoc disaster agency continued to operate for nearly sixty years after the catastrophic event that precipitated its establishment. This book offers a new and unique perspective on the recovery efforts which followed a domestic disaster unprecedented in Canadian history.

Using the perspectives of law, politics, public policy and intergovernmental relations, historian Barry Cahill describes the complex activities of an almost-unaccountable agency that took the place of municipal, provincial and federal governments in addressing the needs of the citizens and the city after the Explosion. He provides new insight into the pioneering town planning and construction of the Hydrostone neighbourhood in Halifax. He also explains why this ad-hoc disaster agency continued to operate for nearly sixty years after the catastrophic event that precipitated its establishment. This book offers a new and unique perspective on the recovery efforts which followed a domestic disaster unprecedented in Canadian history.

This book looks at how a major philanthropic donation transformed medical education in Canada.

Catastrophe weaves together compelling stories and potent lessons learned from the calamitous Halifax explosion—the worst non-natural disaster in North America before 9/11. On December 6, 1917, the Canadian city of Halifax, Nova Scotia, was shattered when volatile cargo on the SS Mont-Blanc freighter exploded in the bustling wartime harbour. More than nineteen hundred people were killed and nine thousand injured. Across more than two square kilometres some 1200 homes, factories, schools and churches were obliterated or heavily damaged. Written from a scholarly perspective but in a journalistic style accessible to the general reader, this book explores how the explosion influenced later emergency planning and disaster theory. Rich in firsthand accounts gathered in decades of research in Canada, the US, the UK, France and Norway, the book examines the disaster from all angles. It delivers an inspiring message: the women and men at “ground zero” responded speedily, courageously, and effectively, fighting fires, rescuing the injured, and sheltering the homeless. The book also shows that the generous assistance that later came from central Canada and the US also brought some unhelpful intrusions by outside authorities. Unable to imagine the horror of the initial crisis, they ignored or even vilified a number of the first responders. This book will be of particular interest to disaster researchers and emergency planners along with journalists, and scholars of history, Maritime studies, and Canadian studies.

This is a collection of essays focusing on the process of city-building in Canada. The authors weigh the relative broad social, economic and technological trends as they attempt to explain the shaping of this urban landscape.

Award-winning author Anne Emery is back with another Collins-Burke team-up The students at Father Brennan Burke’s choir school have written a two-act play about the Halifax Explosion of 1917. The last thing Burke expects is a series of threats against his school and his students, designed to make sure they never perform act two. Then the body of a young woman, Trudi Ebbett, is found strangled in Halifax. A junior hockey player, a friend of one of the students, is the last person known to have seen her alive and is suspected of the murder. Lawyer Monty Collins, hired to represent him, cannot find anyone with a motive for killing Trudi. But Monty’s daughter Normie, who is a student at the school and one of the authors of the script, joins her dad and Father Burke as they look deeper into the case. And they begin to suspect that the death is somehow linked to the threats against the play and the events of 1917. But how could something that happened so long ago be a motive for murder in the 1990s?