The Great Halifax Explosion Quotes

“the Atlantic. Their hard-earned fatalism fostered”
― John U. Bacon, The Great Halifax Explosion

“In the wake of tragedy, people are often tempted to tell the mourners “Everything happens for reason,” “It will all work out for the best,” or “This is all part of God’s plan.” Reverend Swetnam, a devoted man of the cloth, was having none of it. “If this was the work of God,” he said, “I’ll tear off this clerical collar.”
― John U. Bacon, The Great Halifax Explosion

“But by making the last-minute decision to store most of the fuel on the deck and the TNT and picric acid below, the crew had unwittingly constructed the perfect bomb, with the easy-to-light fuse on top, and the most explosive materials trapped in the hold below.”
― John U. Bacon, The Great Halifax Explosion

“Put it all together, and the power of Mont-Blanc’s cargo works out to about 3 kilotons of TNT—or about a fifth of the 15 kilotons the “Little Boy” atomic bomb unleashed on Hiroshima.”
― John U. Bacon, The Great Halifax Explosion

“Mont-Blanc was chugging up the coast, burrowing through the deep waves kicked up by a coastal storm and weighed down with 6 million pounds of high explosives to attack German soldiers.”
― John U. Bacon, The Great Halifax Explosion

“The Red Baron and his eighty combat victories in the sky pale in comparison to legendary U-boat captain Lothar von Arnauld de la Perière and his 194 sunken ships.”
― John U. Bacon, The Great Halifax Explosion

“in World War I, Canada lost 60,000 young men, from a total population of 7 million. If the United States had lost a similar ratio in Vietnam, it wouldn’t have lost 58,000 men but 1.7 million—or almost thirty times more.”
― John U. Bacon, The Great Halifax Explosion

“The Mortuary Committee would be burdened with many unenviable tasks, but the first was straightforward: instead of storing the corpses at a half dozen locations around town, which made it more difficult for soldiers to transport the bodies and record-keepers and families to find them, they needed to select a single building to house an official, temporary morgue. They quickly settled on the Chebucto Road School, which, despite its broken windows, had a lot to recommend it: it was large, it could be quickly cleared out and converted to its new purpose, and it was close to Pier 6, minimizing the transport of corpses and travel for their relatives. The committee also needed a place that could keep bodies for as long as possible, giving them the best chance of being identified. They designated the upper floors for offices and the wide-open, cooler basement for the bodies, which they planned to lay in rows and cover with sheets. The Royal Engineers quickly fixed up the damaged school, covered its windows, and cleaned the space. As soon as people learned of the location, bodies began to pile up outside the building, stacked two and three high until morgue workers could retrieve them. The Relief Committee also dispatched crews of volunteers to put out fires and turn off water mains, faucets, and spigots, and to pick up the dead—tagging their names, when they knew them, to the victims’ wrists, or simply attaching a number when they didn’t—loading them onto rudimentary flat wagons dozens at a time. They soon learned to conduct this dispiriting job late at night so as not to offend the friends and relatives of the deceased. But because everyone could hear the horses’ hooves each night, the rolling midnight morgue was a poorly kept secret, one that woke many Haligonians whose homes still lacked windows.”
― John U. Bacon, The Great Halifax Explosion

“Tragedy comes quick and loud, while the small acts of decency that follow come slowly and quietly.”
― John U. Bacon, The Great Halifax Explosion

“assumed everyone”
― John U. Bacon, The Great Halifax Explosion