'Halifax was far and away the most affected by the war,' says naval historian
Canadian soldiers returning from trenches during the
Battle of the Somme, November 1916 (Library and Archives Canada under
the reproduction reference number PA-000832/Wikipedia)
While Canadian soldiers were fighting in Europe during the
First World War, the effects of the conflict were increasingly felt on
the home front — nowhere more so than in parts of Atlantic Canada.
From misfired artillery shells to
the first U-boat attacks off the coast, the war came home in real ways
for a population that was otherwise an ocean away from battles raging in
countries such as France and Belgium.
Halifax in particular would be marked in defining ways, as the old
military garrison with its massive harbour became a key cog in Canada's
war effort.
"Halifax was far and away the most affected by the war," says naval historian Roger Sarty of Wilfrid Laurier University.
While no event rivals the Halifax Explosion in December 1917, Sarty
said Haligonians were by then well aware of the dangers posed by living
in a working military port.
Dangers of a military port
One of the lesser-known reminders occurred in March 1915 when one of
two warning shells fired from one of the harbour's coastal defence guns
skipped off the water and into the city's south end.
The 12-pound shell fired from an army battery at Ives Point on McNabs
Island was meant to stop a small steamer, the Brandt, from entering the
inner harbour without proper authorization.
The shell crashed into the roof of a double home at 10 and 12 Lucknow St.
Sarty, a Halifax native, said he first came across files about the
incident while conducting research at the national archives in Ottawa in
the late 1970s.
While no one was hurt, Sarty said the military realized there needed
to be better co-ordination between the army and the navy, which had
cleared the Brandt to sail into the harbour under different rules of
engagement.
U-boat threat
As the war continued into 1918, Sarty said the Atlantic region began to feel the wrath of Germany's U-boat fleet.
The first attack off Halifax was launched by U-156 in early August,
when it chased, torpedoed and sank a tanker about 60 kilometres off
Chebucto Head.
"These were remarkable incidents right off shore and for this reason
some blackouts were instituted and there were greatly tightened security
measures."
Sarty said hundreds of fishermen
from Saint John, N.B., to Cape Breton were forced ashore from their
schooners after brushes with U-boats. He said in many instances the
German sailors observed international law and helped the schooner crews
into small boats before attacking their targets.
'They had to be brave men'
"There were also some reports in the Ottawa files of fishermen
finding floating mines and bringing them in and claiming their $25
reward, so the war came very close indeed," Sarty said.
Newfoundland's schooner fleet was devastated by U-boats as their
crews tried to keep the British colony's economy going by exporting salt
cod to European markets.
Annette Hurley of the Railway Coastal Museum in St. John's has
researched an exhibit that pays tribute to the men who were lost on the
high seas.
Hurley said 35 vessels were sunk by U-boats and another 36 by weather
and other mishaps during the voyages across the Atlantic. She was able
to verify the names of 128 men killed, but spotty records mean the
actual total of fatalities is unknown.
"If that (economic) link was
broken then it would have been devastation for outport Newfoundland,"
said Hurley. "They had to be brave men, men of steel."
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