Leveled by the largest blast before the atomic bomb
Halifax was founded in 1749 as a British counterweight to the French fortress at Louisbourg, on Mi'kmaq land called Kjipuktuk — the great harbour — and that harbour explains most of what followed. On the morning of December 6, 1917, the French munitions ship Mont-Blanc collided with the Imo in the Narrows and caught fire. The explosion flattened the north end of the city, killed roughly 2,000 people, and remained the largest human-made blast on earth until 1945. Boston sent a relief train within a day, and Nova Scotia has shipped a Christmas tree south in thanks every year since 1971. Five years before the explosion, Halifax was the recovery port for the Titanic; 121 of the dead are buried at Fairview Lawn in curving rows, many headstones marked only with a number. The noon gun still fires from Citadel Hill, and the Public Gardens have kept their Victorian layout since 1867.
