Family members who experienced it.
It was kind of bizarre watching this from the point of view of a person who heard about it all through childhood, but is too young to remember it.
My great uncle was killed in the explosion - he was downtown visiting his favorite tailor (the shop was erased from history). My great grandmother and great aunt experienced it. Both were 'shopgirls' at the Simpsons at what is now known as the "West End Mall' - about 2.5 miles from the harbour. My great aunt (Kay) was blown into a changing room, and great gran (Lou) hid under a pile of clothes. They thought the Germans had attacked and were outside of the store! Total panic ensued - do they surrender? Do they wait for 'the men' to swoop in and save the day? It was their boss - apparently a very rigid man who "looked like a bulldog chewing on a wasp" marched in with a lantern, and told the ladies to go home to their families.
News traveled via the backyard fence back then, and people were righteously frightened. Just like today, rumours spread, everyone knew someone who claimed to be 'in the know' (in our case, it was that old blowhard, Mr. Harrington, who lived next door). The men started walking downtown for information, while the women stayed at home and worried. Everyone dragged whatever weapons they had out into their kitchens - still convinced that the Germans were lurking in the shadows.
Halifax was - and still is - a big small town. Everybody is a few degrees separated from someone. It's one of the best, and one of the worst, things about living there. I left in 1992 as an angry teenager and stomped off to NYC in a self-righteous huff (as so many young people do). Years later, witnessing the planes hit the towers, brought back the childhood memories of being told about the Halifax Explosion. While one tragedy was a murderous attack and the other a tragic accident...it made me wonder how they dealt with it. We - in 2001 - had the internet and CNN. We knew everything up to the minute in spades. The citizens of Halifax - who knew they were in the middle of a WORLD WAR at the time - were basically stuck in the dark, while a snowstorm hit, hugging their children, scared out of their minds.
We think we're so tough nowadays. We're jaded, we're cynical - and if it's in black and white, it's easy to disassociate from it. That's like another world - it's on The History Channel in primetime. I think if most of us were somehow dropped back in time to that moment in 1917? We'd be bawling our eyes out like children and scrambling for a crawlspace.
On another note, it's sad that not one - not a single one - of my American friends have even heard of the Halifax Explosion. Actually, I'm guessing most of them could not find Halifax (possibily even Nova Scotia) on a map - but I'm not going to embarrass them in a challenge (Canadian manners and all...). Canadian history isn't in the curriculum in US schools.
Which leads me to ask, why did I have to spend ALL of that time in Grade 10 learning about THEIR (American) history and geography? Just a minor annoyance. And it should be noted that I had to point out where Nebraska is on a map a few months ago - to an American:).