Blizzard of Glass—The Halifax Explosion of 1917 (audio CD, unabridged)

December 6, 1917, started like any other day in Halifax. But everything stopped shortly before nine o’clock that morning, when two ships collided in Halifax Harbour. One of the ships was loaded with munitions for the troops fighting in Europe; the other was preparing to collect medical supplies for the war’s victims.

The resulting disaster was the largest man-made explosion until the detonation of the atomic bomb in 1945. The blast flattened large areas of Halifax and the town across the harbor, Dartmouth. It killed nearly two thousand people. As if that wasn’t devastating enough, a blizzard hit the next day, dumping more than a foot of snow on the area and
slowing much-needed relief efforts.

This harrowing story of tragedy and recovery reveals the extraordinary strength and determination of a community in one of its darkest hours.

Sally M. Walker is the author of Written in Bone: Buried Lives of Jamestown and Colonial Maryland; Fossil Fish Found Alive; and Secrets of a Civil War Submarine, which was awarded a Sibert Medal. She first learned about the Halifax Harbour explosion while she and her family were living in Nova Scotia. At that time, plans were underway for the construction of the Memorial Bell Tower.