The 20 Minutes Before Halifax Was Destroyed (1917)

On the morning of December 6, 1917, a French munitions ship caught fire in Halifax Harbour. For about twenty minutes, thousands of people watched it burn. Then it exploded, in one of the largest human-made blasts before the atomic age. Nearly 2,000 people died, around 9,000 were injured, and Halifax's north end was flattened. This episode follows the Mont-Blanc and the Imo into the Narrows. It covers the train dispatcher who stayed at his telegraph key, the blizzard that hit the next day, the relief train from Boston, the inquiry that tried to find someone to blame, and why Nova Scotia still sends Boston a Christmas tree every year. The Halifax Explosion anniversary is December 6. ⏱ Chapters 0:00 A ship disappears 1:12 A city at war 2:47 Two ships in the Narrows 4:40 Twenty minutes 6:46 9:04:35 8:52 The storm after the storm 10:31 Who was to blame? 11:57 What Halifax remembers 📚 Sources The Canadian Encyclopedia, "Halifax Explosion" (Kernaghan & Foot): https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.c... The Canadian Encyclopedia, "Halifax Explosion and the CNIB" (Tattrie): https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.c... Maritime Museum of the Atlantic, "Explosion in The Narrows": https://maritimemuseum.novascotia.ca/... Government of Nova Scotia, "History of the Tree for Boston": https://novascotia.ca/treeforboston/h... Jewish Heritage Center, "Abraham Ratshesky and the 1917 Halifax Relief Effort": https://jewishheritagecenter.org/site... Canadian War Museum, "The Halifax Explosion": https://www.warmuseum.ca/firstworldwa... 🖼 Images Archival photographs and newspaper pages come from Nova Scotia Archives, City of Toronto Archives (William James), L'Illustration (January 1918), The Boston Daily Globe and The Halifax Herald, via Wikimedia Commons. They are public domain, CC0, or carry no known restrictions. "Halifax Memorial Bell Tower" by Jesse David Hollington, CC BY 2.0: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi... "The Hydrostone" by Paul from Hacketts Cove, CC BY 2.0: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi... Painted-style illustrations of scenes no camera recorded were made with AI image tools. They are interpretations, not photographs. Narration uses a synthetic voice (Kokoro TTS). Northbound History tells true stories from Canada and North America's past, carefully and from the sources. Subscribe for a new journey north. #HalifaxExplosion #CanadianHistory #NovaScotia