“We Didn’t Know If They Were Alive”: A Family Memory of the Halifax Explosion, 108 Years Later
A time to pause and reflect, and give thanks as we prepare for a more joyous Christmas
Some of You may have noticed that I’ve been away, or haven’t written anything in about a week. I’ve been here, sort of withdrawing a bit. Wanting to distance myself for awhile from the things of the World. From the World Problems, Politics, and other sometimes, seemingly, lost hope situations of our day! It was t until I realized what today is, I try to remember each year, and this year it nearly passed by unnoticed. Yet, something in me, caused me to search for “today in history in Nova Scotia”. Of course!
The Explosion!
Every December 6th, a quiet weight settles over Nova Scotia.
Most people know the Halifax Explosion as a historical tragedy. But for many families across Atlantic Canada—including mine—it is not simply a chapter in a textbook. It is a story carried through generations, shaped by grandparents and great-grandparents who lived it, feared it, survived it, or were forever changed by it.
As we mark 108 years since that terrible morning, remembrance is not just something Halifax does with ceremonies and wreaths. It is something many of us carry in our hearts—rooted in family stories, journals, and the aching silences passed down through time.
A Sailor’s View: Sidney D. Burrill Arrives to a Destroyed City
My great-grandfather, Sidney D. Burrill, was a soldier and sailor in the First World War. In early December 1917, he was aboard ship in the harbour at Saint John, New Brunswick, waiting to sail. Their departure was delayed because their vessel needed to rendezvous with another coming from Massachusetts.
When his ship finally rounded into Halifax Harbour, he saw devastation no words could prepare a person for. Entire neighbourhoods flattened. Smoke rising from places where houses, churches, and schools once stood. A silence so heavy it seemed to swallow the city.
He wrote in his journal that he didn’t even know if his wife, Hattie StClair (Dixon) Burrill, and their infant daughter—my grandmother, Norma—were alive.
Imagine that moment.
A young father, a world at war, his ship gliding into a ruined harbour—unsure if the two people he loved most in the world were beneath the rubble somewhere in the North End. Wondering if, by fate or by tragedy, everything familiar had been erased.
Thankfully, as it turned out, Hattie and baby Norma were away in Massachusetts visiting family. By chance or providence alone, they survived.
But that didn’t lessen the fear he carried as he approached Halifax. Nor the sorrow he must have felt when he realized how many others were not so fortunate.
The Family Who Stayed Behind
Not everyone in the Dixon family was spared.
Hattie’s uncle, Herbert Dixon, worked in the aftermath of the explosion, searching the ruins for survivors amid snow, smoke, and freezing temperatures. It was brutal work—emotionally and physically—and like many who took part in the rescue and recovery, he paid a terrible price.
His Nova Scotia Historical Vital Statistics record lists his cause of death as pneumonia brought on by exposure, contracted while searching through the ruins after the explosion.
His death record appears alongside others—children as young as six, elders as old as eighty-six—who died of shock, injuries, and complications from the blast. The dates on the page, from December 21st to 26th, tell their own tragic story:
A city grieving through what should have been Christmas.
There must have been so much silence that season. So many empty chairs. So many families—like yours, like mine—trying to understand how the world could change so completely, so quickly.
Why These Stories Still Matter
It’s been 108 years.
The buildings have been rebuilt.
The streets are different.
The harbour is busier than ever.
But the human stories—the fear, the courage, the grief, the resilience—are still alive in families across Nova Scotia and beyond.
They live in journals, old photographs, Bible margins, and the memories passed to us through parents and grandparents. They live in the way we pause on December 6th, even if we don’t speak it aloud. They live in the quiet pride we feel for the people who came before us.
Because what our ancestors endured did not end with the explosion. It echoed into every family touched by it.
A Shared Legacy of Atlantic Canadians
The Halifax Explosion isn’t only a story about Halifax. It’s a story that rippled across all of the Atlantic:
Sailors in Saint John who saw the smoke when news reached the harbour
Families in Yarmouth, Digby, Shelburne, and the Valley who waited days for word of relatives
Communities from Massachusetts to Newfoundland who came to help
And families like these, who carried forward through time with equal parts sorrow and gratitude
This region remembers in its own way—quietly, humbly, with a kind of steady strength that feels woven into the very culture of Atlantic Canada.
Carrying It Forward
The long list of names on that December page, and many others, of death records.
The Christmas season overshadowed by loss.
These personal memories are but a few of the Family memories held in the hearts of those who remember the stories tragedy handed down to us.
A legacy we carry honouring them by recalling their names, and telling their stories.
And by doing so, we help keep alive not just the grief of the Halifax Explosion, but the resilience, love, and humanity that rose from its ashes.
108 years later, we remember.
Recommend Reading:
Your Support for My Work is Much Appreciated ….