On a warm July night a year ago, the teams are drained as part of an expansion in the Irving shipyard began to take out a treasure of artifacts that are believed to be connected to the Halifax explosion.
In the weeks and months that followed, More than 100 pieces The explosion were among the 100,000 tons of material removed from the port of Halifax. In some cases, artifacts were metal pieces of the size of a car.
The pieces came from the current location of what would have been the home of Pier on December 6, 1917. This is the area where the collision between the Mont-Blanc occurred, a ship of French ammunition, and in my opinion, a Norwegian steam with supplies of Belgian relief.
Halifax’s explosion is the worst disaster in Canadian history, and possibly the most important event in the history of the city. Two thousand people were killed and 9,000 wounds, while two square kilometers of the city were level.
For municipal and provincial governments, artifacts were literally a problem too big. Despite their historical importance, both governments have done little with them, the records obtained through a request for freedom of information.
Joel Zemel, who has written several books about the Halifax explosion, said there is little appetite to preserve the history of the city, so it is not surprised that the artifacts were not received with much enthusiasm.
“If they wanted the space, they needed the space, they would make space. Period,” Zemel said.
The records obtained by CBC News include a letter from Amber Laurie, the curator of the Atlantic Maritime Museum.
In it, Laurie listed the reasons why some of the artifacts come from Mont-Blanc. This included that its thickness is similar to the existing pieces in the museum collection, as well as the irregular shapes of some of the pieces.
“A high force event combined with Heat would create such riveted metal turns,” he wrote in the document of July 25, 2024.
Given where the pieces were found, Zemel said they are probably from Mont-Blanc. But it questions the methodology used by museum officials to reach that conclusion.
“You need experts to enter, external experts, who are not involved with the [Maritime] museum [of the Atlantic]They have no predisposed ideas, “Zemel said.
Laurie’s letter also highlighted why artifacts are notable.
“The recently recovered fragments are much larger than the best known and would be considered historically significant in the municipal, provincially and potentially, the national level,” Laurie wrote.
Despite this enthusiasm, the Atlantic Maritime Museum only took two artifacts: a fragment and a rivet.
An arc that the museum collected later was determined that it was not from Mont-Blanc because it had welding, which meant it was too new to belong to the container. In addition, his condition was too pristine.
It is not clear if the arch is classified as one of the last two acquisitions of the museum.
An email of September 25, 2024 by John Cormier, the coordinator of special places with the Department of Communities, Culture, Tourism and Heritage, reveals some of the challenges that the province would face to store the artifacts.
“The pieces in this collection vary in size as small as 30 cm more than 30 feet long,” he wrote.
“This, combined with the number of artifacts collected, makes the healing of this collection impossible for the [Nova Scotia Museum] either [Davis, MacIntyre & Associates]Since none of the groups has the ability to maintain it, and the conservation of such an extensive collection would be expensive “(Davis, MacIntyre & Associates was the archeology consulting firm that worked on the dredging project).
At the municipal level, the answer was similar.
“HRM has no plans to create more display shows of explosion in the near future, so they are reluctant to assume large pieces, but we can accept two small fragments (<15 cm), together with any report/description that accompanies it to provide the context of its recovery/recovery, etc.", Susan McClure, the city of the city, wrote in a November 27 of November 27, 2024, email to some provincial and munials.
In a statement, the Department of Communities, Culture, Tourism and Heritage said that the dredging issued 127 articles that are believed to be Mont-Blanc.
In addition to the pieces given to the city and the Atlantic Maritime Museum, the rest are in an installation of Irving owned in Dartmouth, the department said.
To determine with certainty that some of the recovered artifacts were, in fact, the Mont-Blanc, Laurie recommended that metallurgical tests be performed.
The archaeologist who worked on the project, Travis Crowell, asked Irving if they would collect the tab. Irving, under no obligation to pay for this given the terms of his permission, declined.
Metallurgical tests were never performed.
In a statement, the province said that given the place where the articles were found and due to the investigation carried out by the department staff and the project consulting archaeologist, they did not continue with the evidence.
“[W]And they trust that some of the materials are related to the explosion of Halifax and/or are pieces of the Mont-Blanc, “he said.
