[Dazrin]

I've been out of town for a few days and didn't have a chance to chime in here (although I have been following along.)

Overall, I enjoyed this more than I enjoyed The Radium Girls. Not because the topic is more interesting or the writing is much better (I would call it a wash) but because it didn't feel completely biased like TRG did.

I gave this book 4 stars. It was engaging, informative, and (seemingly) well researched. And then I read this thread....after reading an learning more here I have to drop my rating a couple stars.

My take on "fault" is that the explosion is almost entirely the fault of the Imo -they were on the wrong side of the channel, going too fast, and not following accepted procedures (not moving over when the Mont-Blanc responded that no they wouldn't switch sides). I don't fault the MB for fleeing and not putting up a red flag even though it would have normally been required and would have been easy to do. They were specifically told not to earlier due to the war and the pilot should have told them to do that if it was required for Halifax at the time. I wish we knew whether or not the pilot on the Imo told the captain to yield and move over. That seems like the main intentional rather than accidental cause for the incident. The rest of it was a series of unfortunate events (both trying to swerve at the same time, etc.) but the Imo plowing forward on the wrong side of the channel and then refusing to correct themselves was deliberate.

I have a hard time blaming the crew of the Mont-Blanc for fleeing. Given the nature of the explosives the fact that there was ~15 minutes before the explosion to flee was surprising. It was obvious they didn't think that would happen. Yes, looking back they should have taken more time to warn off everyone else but even if they knew they had 10+ minutes, could they really have saved much? Some of the boats would have been able to get away (although the wave might have gotten them anyway) but could the neighborhoods on both sides of the harbor have been warned and evacuated in time? The situation really called for an in-depth what if...

Rather than re-hash much of what has already been said, I will just comment on some of the other things that have already been said.

Originally Posted by bfisher

The author gave a convincing account of the legal proceedings for me. I'd wondered about the perversity of the legal proceedings before reading this book.

I really would have liked more on the legal proceedings. It felt like we only had the executive summary of them and barely any of the actual substance.

Originally Posted by Catlady

I never knew that Canadians worried about U.S. annexation as recently as a century ago; I didn't realize that the idea of manifest destiny had survived that long.

As an American I was surprised by this too. I have heard the joke about Canada being the 51st state but never really gave it much thought other than as commentary about how similar we are in many respects.

Originally Posted by Dngrsone

This book read like a reference piece, the author assuming that it would be used for research and not read entirely in one sitting. That is fine, but I wondered several times during the narrative if he were not fictionalizing some of the conversations and thoughts of individuals. That there were no citations or footnotes in the text itself reinforced this, though I gathered by the time I got to the end that these conversations, et al were well-researched.

I was a little skeptical about the conversations but he referred to letters enough as sources that I wasn't turned off by them even when a letter or other source wasn't mentioned with each one.

Originally Posted by issybird

The Christmas tree in Boston should not have been the hook for a history of a Canadian event. Bacon in fact has the attitude he ascribes (falsely) to the United States government; it's all about the US. Just those first few paragraphs would have had me looking for a different book if I came to this as a Canadian.

If the opening was completely true and all there was to it, I can see it working as a great hook for this book. This was obviously written for a US audience and getting a US centric hook makes sense. After finding out that the tree was a blatent act of advertisement and way of promoting tourism it turned my stomach. Really?! The hook for you book is an advertisement? Ugh.

Originally Posted by issybird

Second, Barss. Whatever has Barss to do with anything? Pages and pages of his boyhood, young manhood, and experience in the trenches (compare that to the cursory treatment of the inquiry) which were entirely irrelevant to the event. And then it turns out Barss, like that Christmas tree* one of the two fulcra of the entire account of a major disaster, is there because his three days helping out afterwards served as the epiphany for his changing his life.

I agree about Barss too, even while reading I was confused why there was so much about his small role in this. My guess at the time was that Bacon needed to hit some page length/word count and there wasn't enough other "personal" background available to have a good build-up of what the area was like. I suppose since this is a WWI era tragedy he needed someone that had participated in the trench warfare so that he had an excuse to describe some of that. It still felt like he could have done something different (or just excised that entirely.) I didn't realize Barss had featured in other books of his.

Originally Posted by issybird

Guess what? The company, which did manufacture lanterns in both world wars, was located in Halifax, England, not Halifax, Canada.

This is the stuff that made me re-think my score. Yes, I still enjoyed it and learned a lot but how much of it can I trust? Argh!

Originally Posted by Bookpossum

1. In his lead-up to the terrible event itself, describing one of the families that was to be affected, he wrote "With fourteen kids, the milking cow in the backyard wasn't for show-and-tell". I don't know whether he thought he was being funny in saying this, but it jars badly.

2. In one of his later chapters devoted to the exploits of Joseph Barss, we are told: "He also sang in the First Congregational Church under the leadership of Lloyd C Douglas, who would go on to write The Robe, which sold 2 million copies and became a movie starring Richard Burton.

When reading about the Halifax explosion, I really needed to know that fascinating piece of information!

I personally liked the asides. Some of them were less useful than others but overall they worked for me. If they had been longer I would not have liked them as much though.