Worse Than Dying

On December 6, 1917, the French freighter Mont Blanc, carrying a cargo of more than 2,500 tonnes of explosives, collided with the Norwegian tramp steamer Imo in Halifax Harbour. The resulting blast held the tragic distinction of being the largest human-made explosion in history until the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. Of the city’s population of about 60,000, 2,000 people died and another 9,000 individuals were injured. Every conceivable kind and degree of wound was sustained, the most prevalent one being loss of vision (and of eyes themselves) due to flying glass. Disfigured corpses and unidentified bodies waited to be claimed, and many survivors sought their missing loved ones in vain forever after, uncertain whether they were dead, disoriented or unrecognizable. Hundreds of children separated from their parents in the mayhem were never reunited with them, and many unclaimed infants were placed in orphanages.

The degree to which this...