The Halifax Explosion: 6 December 1917 at 9:05 in the Morning

The Halifax Explosion is a poem written by Halifax’s seventh poet laureate, Dr. Afua Cooper. It reveals dramatically what happened on 6 December 1917 at 9:05 when two ships carrying munitions and war supplies collided in the Halifax Harbour. The poem shows the tragic toll the resulting explosion and fire took on the residents of Halifax and the surrounding area, which stretched all the way north to Africville. Dr. Cooper commemorates the Halifax Explosion through verse and highlights the experiences of the Black Haligonians in this disaster. Her powerful words are magnified in this book with dramatic historical photographs and poignant art.

Poetry is movement, poetry is politics, it’s everything. It fires the imagination and so that excites me because in firing the imagination then we produce a new world.
—Dr. Afua Cooper

Dr. Afua Cooper is a celebrated poet, author, scholar, and historian. Her many books range across such genres as poetry, history, fiction, and children’s literature. She served as the Poet Laureate of the Halifax Regional Municipality for the 2018-2020 term and is the recipient of numerous prizes and awards. A full professor at Dalhousie University, Dr. Cooper is the foremost expert on Black Canadian history. She is the principal investigator for A Black People’s History of Canada, a project that engages in research on Black history and is accompanied by a new Black history curriculum. In 2022, for her work on Black Canadian history, Dr. Cooper was awarded the Royal Society of Canada’s J.B. Tyrell Historical Medal for Outstanding Contributions to Canadian history.

Author-illustrator Rebecca Bender is best known for her award-winning Giraffe and Bird books. her illustrations also grace the chapter books Slug Days, Penguin Days, and Duck Days. Rebecca’s awards and honors include the OLA Blue Spruce Award A Cooperative Children’s Book Centre best-of-the-year choice, and a Toronto Public Library best-of-the-year selection. Rebecca graduated from the Ontario College of Art and Design at the top of her class, earning the Medal for Illustration. She lives in Burlington, Ontario, with her husband and three children.

ISBN: 9781778242809
Format: Hardback
Pages: 36
Publisher: Plumleaf Press
Published: October 10, 2023

The Halifax Explosion was a tragedy. And it was all the more crushing for the racism African Nova Scotians were still subjected to in its aftermath. With The Halifax Explosion: 6 December 1917, at 9:05 in the Morning, Halifax's seventh poet laureate, Dr. Afua Cooper, goes beyond the event and instead goes with the people...With powerful and weighty words, she makes us see and feel for the disaster and how African Nova Scotians were impacted. Her words come from a place beyond the archives. Unlike most picture books in which the illustrations carry much of a story's weight, The Halifax Explosion rests squarely on Dr. Afua Cooper's words. (The poem in its entirety is posted at the conclusion of the book.) Perhaps that's why there is much austerity in the cover and the artwork. The impact of the devastation is well-documented, and key photographs were used to support the details. However, by blending historical photographs with only occasional illustrations by Rebecca Bender, the book goes beyond the reality and extends to the humanity, even if that benevolence was sadly lacking towards African Nova Scotians at the time.

There is power in Dr. Afua Cooper's poem of African Nova Scotians whose stories are little known and perhaps less remembered. However, remembered they should be. There are those whose legacies are solid in Canadian history beyond the Halifax explosion, such as Viola Desmond and Dr. Clement Ligoure, but then there are those whose deaths are perhaps not even recorded, or their injuries and losses disavowed. Dr. Afua Cooper tells us their names and about their families. She acknowledges them. The last words of her poem are "Does Halifax remember?" With her poem, they are less lost and truly commemorated.

- Helen Kubiw, CanLit for Little Canadians

Most people know a little about The Halifax Explosion and perhaps the name Vince Coleman from the “Heritage Minute”. Much of the aftermath of the ships Imo and Mont-Blanc colliding and exploding in Halifax Harbour on December 6, 1917, is well-documented, but more attention was paid to some aspects of the event than others. In The Halifax Explosion: 6 December 1917, at 9:05 in the Morning, Afua Cooper brings attention to the devastation experienced by marginalized communities, as well as their contributions in the aftermath, including stories like that of Dr. Clement Ligoure who ran a private clinic because, at the time, Black doctors were not allowed to work in hospitals, and, yet, he didn’t think twice about running to help those who needed medical attention, many of whom would have supported that exclusion policy.

By Cooper’s using a mix of colourful, lively drawings and historical photos, readers get the full history of the explosion through well-known photos alongside drawings depicting people and events that weren’t well recorded in the aftermath of the explosion and are often omitted from history. The text, varying in size and font, guides readers, showing them where the author would emphasize and fade when reading the text aloud. For those who prefer to read the poem without illustrations or suggested emphasis, the poem is included at the back of the book in plain text. The book ends with a historical note about how Black and Indigenous communities have often been left out or ignored in accounts of the Halifax Explosion, and how the author was intentional in focusing on these communities, bringing locations and people back into the story of the Halifax Explosion.