Nova Scotia (40 page)

“That Arch Fiend, the Emperor of
the Germans”

Before anyone fully understood why
the explosion had occurred, there was a wave of rising anti-German
sentiment. Many still thought that the devastation was a German act
of sabotage or some kind of planned attack. It setemed that the
compassion, kindness and generosity shown toward the victims of the
explosion was soon replaced in Halifax by prejudice in the extreme
toward anyone with a German-sounding last name.

   
One headline a few days after the explosion stated flat out,
“Practically All the Germans in Halifax Are To Be
Arrested.”

   
Michael Bird, in his book
The Town That Died
, reports that “Men, women and children, with names like
Richter or Schultz, were stoned in the streets or chased by angry
crowds that were largely made up of people who, only a week
earlier, had been friendly neighbours.” There were even rumours
that some families of German descent had underground gun
emplacements to aid in some mythical German invasion or that some
of these families had preapared themselves for the blast, having
been informed ahead of time.

   
The newspapers helped increase the animosity
with stories playing on the fears and hatred that arose. On
December 12, the
Herald
ran an
editorial concerning the explosion that said, “We now know, too,
that the prime responsibility for this, as for every other
catastrophe which has afflicted the peoples of the earth as a
by-product of the war, rests with that close co-partner, that arch
fiend, the Emperor of the Germans . . .” B

   
The editorial went on to discuss “certain people of German
extraction and birth . . . who have repaid us within the past few
days by laughing openly at our distress and mocking our
sorrow.”

   
All of this hate-mongering didn’t do much to alleviate any of
the suffering or get at the root of understanding what went wrong
and who was to blame. It did, however, help to bolster support for
the war against Germany, even though this blast was not an actual
attack by the Germans.

   
The explosion fostered a more vivid sense of the calamity of
actual warfare: no other city in North America in the twentieth
century would know firsthand the ravages of modern war as did
Halifax.

Rebuilding a City

By
December 13, an official inquiry was underway in Halifax and
Justice Arthur Drysdale heard testimony that the
Imo
had not been given permission to leave port. It was also
revealed that the ship pilots in the harbour didn’t always follow
instructions. However, when it came to pinning the blame on
someone, charges were laid against Aimét Le Medec, captain of
the
Mont
Blanc
, and his local pilot,
Francis Mackey, as well as naval Commander Whyatt, who was
considered negligent. Amazingly, all three had survived the blast.
They were now arrested on charges of manslaughter but immediately
released on bail and charges were dropped three weeks later. Mackey
was allowed to continue on as a pilot and Le Medec went back to
work for his French shipping company. Whyatt was posted elsewhere
for military duties.

   
A royal commission made the tardy and obvious
recommendation for changes to the Halifax Pilotage Authority. The
owners of the
Imo
were sued by the owners of
the
Mont Blanc
and then issued a counter-suit. This
rattled around in the Canadian courts for a while until the Supreme
Court of Canada ruled that they were both to
blame.

   
The Halifax Relief Commission was in charge of rebuilding the
city. It was a powerful governmental force that was not dissolved
until as recently as 1976. It appropriated land in the North End
and oversaw $30 million in relief aid. Decisions were often made
with little or no public input.

   
The first job was to clear the rubble of the North End
neighbourhoods – a job that took 450 men and three months. It would
look like a lifeless, stripmined piece of earth. Many former
residents refused to return, some believing it was a cursed or
haunted area. Although the Halifax Relief Commission created
short-lived wooden apartment buildings *– tenements really – the
construction of more permanent housing didn’t begin until 1918 when
Thomas Adams, an English town planner, drew up plans for street
alignment, parks and the distinctive “Hydrostone” housing that
still exists in that part of Halifax today. The Hydrostone was a
dense concrete block manufactured by an American company in
Dartmouth. The cost of one of these abodes was from $1,800 to
$2,500 and the housing was completed by 1921. As a result of the
damage and the reconstruction, much of the physical city of Halifax
was changed forever. The scars left in the bodies and memories of
her residents, however, remained to haunt the survivors right up to
the end of the century.

Chapter 35

Chapter 35

A Province Afloat on Rum

Prohibition created wonderful
opportunities for adventure and prosperity for hundreds of Nova
Scotians. Commonly known as rum-running, the business was at once
illegal, glamorous and respectable in many ports on the Soulth
Shore and along the Bay of Fundy. Rum-running was motivated by more
than mere opportunism, I might argue, for booze – rum, in
particular – has played a meaningful role in shaping Nova Scotia.
In fact, rum had been popular in this province for well over 300
years. Rum had been on hand with the earliest naval expeditions and
had remained an integral part of the daily life of the English and
Canadian navy men anchored in Halifax Harbour or having their fun
ashore.

   
The beverage that was once viewed on these
shores as a kind of medicinal and social luxury evolved into a
necessity and over the years created economic prosperity, cultural
identity and social havoc. When the legendary d
Bluenose
would finally meet her fate in 1946, appropriately enough,
a good portion of her cargo would be rum.

   
Nova Scotian rum historian James Moreira,
in
Tempered by
Rum
, goes so far as to
suggest of rum that “It has made and lost fortunes; it has won and
lost elections; it has fuelled riots and provided comfort in the
wake of disaster; it has been a factor in rebellion and, by not
completely patriotic means, it has even been a source of loyalty.”
Moreira and other Nova Scotian history professors have even
gathered in large forums to discuss a the impact of rum on Nova
Scotia and have concluded that it is profound.

   
Rum was never manufactured here until recent times. Instead,
it probably originated in the sixteenth century on West Indian
plantations when discarded molasses and cane juice from the sugar
mills fermented in ponds intoo a kind of funky beer that was drunk
by the slaves, who were looking for whatever form of escape was
possible from their cruel owners. Soon, white entrepreneurs were
distilling the fermented goo and shipping it to New England, Nova
Scotia and Newfoundland. Rum rations began on British naval ships
in 1655 after the capture of Jamaica. There was mention of rum at
Port Royal in 1710 and Colonel Samuel Vetch was annoyed by the high
cost of the beverage for his men in 1711, but he said it was a
necessity in place of “beer, which the severity of the winter
freezes.”

   
Issuing rum to sailors became a standard practice and it was
pretty strong stuff doled out at a half-pint per man, not to be
watered down to “grog” in a three to one mix until 1740, when it
was becoming obvious that drunkenness was reducing the
effectiveness of the military. Rum was part of the trade going to
Louisbourg and it found its way to the Acadians in various parts of
the province. Halifax, however, became the city that floateda on
rum. New Englanders who were in the liquor importing business found
it a very receptive and thirsty port. To lure settlers, the English
were offering an allowance of nearly four gallons per person per
year. As if that wasn’t enough, the sale of rum became big business
in the growing city. A man named George Hick gave up blacksmithing
to sell it by the quart. He boasted, “I sell rum by the quart and
smaller quantities. I buy it at 3s. [shillings] a gallon, and lays
out two guineas a week in it, by which I get fast money.” Mr. Hick
would be followed by a legion of liquor vendors, legal and
otherwise, who would profit from rum in Nova Scotia.
'

   
It was Joshua Mauger, the “Agent Victualler” for the navy,
who made the biggest killing, founding his own Halifax distillery
in 1751. Some believe he became so wealthy and powerful that the
first legislative council here was made up of men he hand-picked.
Despite his government contract, he brewed with smuggled molasses,
trading with French and Dutch islands alike.

   
Since Halifax became a warehouse for supplies during the
American Revolution, rum again allowed some entrepreneurs from this
tipsy city to profit heartily from the trade. During the years of
immigration that followed, rum was a part of everyday commerce and
seen as a reward for hard work. Licensed merchants and tavern
keepers sold it in pints or quarts in black glass bottles or in the
economy-size three-gallon stone jug. Five- or ten-gallon kegs could
be had at a favourable discount. In a nineteenth-century Halifax
tavern you could still buy a cheap “gill” (quarter pint!) from the
keg on the bar or have your rum in a punch, a flip (a hot drink) or
“folded” into a spruce beer. Gin and brandy were available but much
more expensive. Beer just wasn’t as popular as rum and there was
still that problem of it freezing on inhospitable Victorian winter
nights.

   
A working day for many labourers involved a rum break at
eleven a.m. and one at four p.m. It was sometimes a factor in
labour negotiations. Joseph Salter, for example, was willing to
give his men a shorter work day if they promised to stay sober on
the job of building his wharf. For others, it was considered to be
of great value to the maintenance of one’s
health.

   
Despite the so-called therapeutic effects, drinking rum
produced plenty of family abuse, brawls and even street riots
brought on by drunkenness or arguments over the quality of rum. The
backlash to all this Nova Scotian alcohol gave birth to the
temperance movement, with societies popping up all over the region
by the middle of the nineteenth century. “The demon rum” was now
given a very bad reputation by well-meaning religious men and a
growing force of women who wanted an all-out prohibition. Battle
lines were drawn between the “wet” and the “dry.” Tales were told
of the destruction – including spontaneous self-combustion – of
those who drank too much. For those who converted, oaths like the
following could be heard in the jail cells:

• If ever I gain my
  liberty
  

• that enemy will I shun
  

• Street walking and bad
  company,
  

• and likewise drinking
  rum.
  

Booze Wars and Big Money

Temperance societies proved to be a
valuable springboard for all manner of social reform and helped
women to gain some political power. Prohibition-type legislation
came and went, including a province-wide act after the aFirst World
War that could not successfully curtail the great tradition, but
stayed on the books all the way until 1929.

   
During those dark (or enlightened, if you wish) days of
prohibition, liquor was supposedly available “for medical purposes”
only. People bearing alochol were occasionally arrested, but the
law did little to interfere with the most profitable of the
bootleggers and the smugglers.

   
The big profits, however, were to be had from engaging in the
smuggling of liquor into the U.S. In 1920, the Americans saw the
passage of the Volstead Act calling for total prohibition. As
another rum historian, D.A. Walker, asserts, “An era of
unprecedented organized crime began and millions of usually
law-abiding citizens became criminals.” New supply avenues would
open up to accommodate the illegal cargo and one of the main
sources would be the French island of St. Pierre. Nova Scotians
would be among the primary players in this smuggling racket,
initially hauling booze in fishing schooners from England and
Europe to the U.S. and later opening up the supply route from St.
Pierre to various East Coast destinations.

   
Along the South Shore, fish prices had been dropping. The
same quintal of cod that brought $13.62 in 1918 was fetching only
$6.25 by 1927. The number of vessels actively fishing dropped in
ports like Lunenburg as it became less profitable to fish and
harder to even make a meagre living. The rum-running business came
at a good time for South Shore fishermen who were being squeezed
out of a livelihood by the slump in the fish
market.

   
The schooners which started up the rum-running
trade proved too slow eventually for the U.S. Coast Guard as it
geared up for an all-out war using former naval destroyers to track
and nab Bluenose smugglers. The new American ships proved to be a
challenge for Nova Scotian rum-runners, but the local boat builders
were ready to meet the test. The first U.S. destroyer to get
involved in the war on booze, the
Henley
, went into
service in 1924 and a fleet of twenty-four more would be
commissioned, including former sub-chasers. The first of the new
boats designed as rum-runners capable of evading these naval
monsters saw action in 1926.