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On Friday, I promised a thread in commemoration of today being the 103rd anniversary of the Halifax Explosion. https://twitter.com/jacremes/status/1334922889850740736
If you're Canadian, you almost certainly know of the Halifax Explosion. Maybe you learned about it as "World War I coming home." Maybe you learned about it because of the Vince Coleman heritage minute.
If you're American, you're much less likely to have heard of it. (I say this based on my having spent the past fifteen years or so talking about it to both Americans and Canadians.) But I think more Americans are hearing about it.
There were several popular books published about the explosion for it centenary, and in recent years there's been a lot more press about the Nova Scotian tree that Boston gets as a Christmas tree each year.
A week ago, the Canada-US military friendship account had a viral hit talking about the Boston tree. Maybe you saw it. It's a nice thread. https://twitter.com/CAFinUS/status/1333104768877797377
If you came to the Halifax explosion via the tree, this is probably what you know: there was a big munitions ship explosion in Halifax Harbor. It killed, maimed, and blinded thousands of people. It made homeless or jobless tens of thousands more.
And Americans in Massachusetts, expressing their love and friendship to their neighbors, their friends, their allies in World War I, quickly mobilized and sent aid and aid workers to Halifax--the first relief train to arrive from outside the region. US-Canadian friendship rah rah
Like I said, it's not a bad story. It's not wrong. (The tree tradition was invented in the 1970s and '80s, but that's okay too; invented traditions can be good and meaningful too.)
(Quick pause to say, yes, you read me right "the Canadian-US military friendship account." More here: https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/trust-and-situational-awareness-key-to-success-of-the-forces-most-famous-tweeter-1.5145985.)
Anyway, where things get complicated about the Massachusetts-Halifax Relief Committee--as the Boston efforts become--is about migration. As many as 500,000 people left the Maritimes between the 1860s and 1920s. Many of them moved to "the Boston States," i.e. New England.
In 1915, the Massachusetts census found nearly 80,000 people living in the commonwealth who had been born in Nova Scotia. In other words, the connections between Mass. and Halifax were familial, not just friendly.
Halifax set up an office to which people from outside the city could write to inquire about how their relatives had fared in the explosion. Here's a map of the towns from which 6,214 inquiries arrived. (It excluded Newfoundland and soldiers in Europe.) A map of the NS diaspora.
Anyway, this migration--these familial connections--shaped the Massachusetts-Halifax Relief Commission. Nova Scotians in Massachusetts raised money. Many of them even went to Halifax to help out. Here's me with some examples:
But here's what's interesting. It's not just that people in Massachusetts gave money and time. And it's not just that many of those people had direct personal connection to Nova Scotia. The relief didn't just rely on past and preexisting relationships
The disaster relief also built something new: it built a transnational political community. People in Halifax, dissatisfied with the aid they'd gotten, wrote to the governor of Massachusetts and mayor of Boston making demands, as if they were constituents.
People in Massachusetts wrote to officials in Halifax demanding accountability. They told the Halifax officials to give money to their friends and relatives--again, as if they were constituents.
The cross-border solidarity, itself built on a history of migration and on family ties, created the possibility for transnational political accountability. Bostonians could make demands on the premier of Nova Scotia; Haligonians made demands on the governor of Massachusetts.
When the Boston tree makes us remember the Massachusetts-Halifax Relief Committee, we should remember it not as Americans helping Canadians, not as an act of charity from outsiders.
The Boston tree itself is about trade; it was born as an advertisement for Nova Scotia Christmas trees in the Boston market. But the story it tells is about the true heart of the US-Canada relationship: the people who cross and recross the border, and the relationships they build
That's the point I want to make, as it is always the point I try to make about the US and Canada: that the relationship isn't about trade or security or military cooperation; its center is people going back and forth, sharing ideas and building relationships.
A little coda, special for this year: if the Christmas tree is an invented tradition, how did Halifax thank Boston? The Spanish Flu hit Boston hard in October 1918. Halifax, explicitly remembering the help it got--especially the doctors and nurses who came up--returned the favor.
Here's a short discussion of the Nova Scotia nurses who went to aid Boston, from @ns_museum. https://museum.novascotia.ca/collections-research/virtual-exhibits/remembering-forgotten-dead/repaying-neighbourly-kindness
It seems especially worth it right now--when the US-Canada border is ostensibly closed as a Covid-control measure--to remember cross-border solidarity and cross-border travel during the Spanish Flu.
If I've whetted your interest, let me remind you that the book I wrote about the Halifax explosion is 50% off right now from @IllinoisPress using the code HOLIDAY50. That's a good deal! https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/catalog/83dew9ze9780252039836.html
The paragraph I quoted above isn't from my book, though. It's from an article I wrote on the Halifax explosion in transnational perspective. If you want to read it but you don't have institutional access, ask and I'll send it to you. http://libkey.io/10.1080/02722011.2015.1012377
So, in summary: the heart of the Canada-US relationship is people and ideas crossing the border; the Massachusetts aid to Halifax shows this; and you should buy my book. The end. https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/catalog/83dew9ze9780252039836.html
