Words Jackie LaPlante
I know I should try to stretch my reading by occasionally choosing non-fiction. But sometimes the thought of reading it can seem dull. Factful. Serious. But I like to learn and am always delighted when I find a novel based on or inspired by a real event that piques my interest and propels me toward a factual account. Historical fiction novels can be a starter to the main course, if you will, of historical events.
When the World Fell Silent by Donna Jones Alward is a romantic story set in the aftermath of the Halifax Explosion. On December 6, 1917, when Halifax Harbour was working at capacity in the war effort, the Imo, a Belgian relief ship, and the Montblanc, a heavily-laden French munitions ship, collided, triggering an explosion that flattened the city’s North End and the Indigenous settlement of Turtle Grove. Many Haligonians were blinded by glass shards blown from shattering windows, and over-taxed wartime hospitals struggled to offer care to those injured by the blast. A record snowstorm the next day put even more pressure on the devastated city.
However bleak the details of the disaster, there were examples of human resiliency. Donna Jones Alward focuses on characters, particularly women, who find their strength in the disaster, from a military “Bluebird” nurse who, despite losing her family, works tirelessly to help the wounded; to a young housemaid who loses her infant daughter in the blast yet manages to push on, ever hoping to find her child. Given the loss of young men to war and the further losses of working men to the disaster, it rings true that women would have been at the forefront of helping those remaining.
Jones is a Haligonian who demonstrates great knowledge of her city, and there are tidbits of local history woven nicely into the story, including the aid that came from Boston, still commemorated today by Nova Scotia’s yearly gift of a Christmas tree to the Massachusetts city. Alward does not focus on the details of the disaster but uses specific events – visiting the morgues, the discovery of parentless children – as catalysts to create stories that highlight humanity’s capability to help one another during adversity.
This event is so fascinating that I have read two non-fiction accounts: Laura MacDonald’s The Curse of the Narrows and John U. Bacon’s The Great Halifax Explosion.
The following recommendations are further fiction “appetizers” based on events in Canadian history:
1. Barometer Rising by Hugh MacLennan
2. The Home for Unwanted Girls, by Joanna Goodman
3. Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood
