Halifax Explosion exhibit lacks stories about African-Nova Scotians

An African-Nova Scotian actor performing in a Halifax Explosion play about racism says a Maritime Museum of the Atlantic exhibit about the disaster fails to tell the factual story of blacks.

"They say that one person [from Africville] died in the explosion and that there wasn't any damage to Africville, which is not the case at all," Troy Adams said.

"Just from the research that I did on Africville and my character for this show, there was at least six people that died. And even in the Book of Remembrance, there's about two or three who are actually from Africville."

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Troy Adams grew up in Mulgrave Park, a public housing complex just up the hill from Africville. He is one of three actors featured in the play Lullaby: Inside the Halifax Explosion. The play introduces audiences to three characters — one black, one white and one Indigenous — who meet moments after the explosion and are forced to work together under terrible conditions to help each other.

Black experience of the explosion diminished

Once he arrived in Halifax from Toronto for the play, Adams said he was excited to see there would be a Halifax Explosion exhibit on display at the museum for the entire run of the play, which has its final show on Dec. 10.

"So I checked the exhibit out and I thought, 'Oh great, they have a huge … First Nations section.' … And then there was two lines regarding Africville in the explosion. So that whole black experience of the Halifax Explosion was diminished," Adams said. 

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"And it broke my heart because it's like, OK, here again history is being rewritten and hidden from everybody."

The only reference to Africville — or to African-Nova Scotians at all — in the museum's entire explosion exhibit is a small wall panel which states that Africville, which was located on the shore of the Bedford Basin before it was razed in the 1960s, "was largely sheltered by high ground" and that only one resident was killed.

More than one Africville victim listed

However, just three metres from the panel in the same room, the first few of many pages of the Halifax Explosion Remembrance Book clearly list the names of more than one dead Africville resident. In all, there are about 10 known black victims listed in the book, although not all of them were from Africville.

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Africville descendent Irvine Carvery disputes claims that Africville was spared by the explosion.

"Windows were blown in, roofs were blown off, doors were knocked down," Carvery told CBC News.

Thought it was Armageddon

"As a matter of fact, when the explosion occurred, what my grandmother and [other elders] said was that the people of Africville all came to the church. They thought it was Armageddon — they thought the end had come."

Simply put, Carvery said there is so little documentation about the damage done in Africville because "the city didn't care enough to send somebody to Africville to assess the damage."

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At least 32 families from Africville applied to the Halifax Relief Commission for compensation of property damage.

In a personal narrative given to Archibald MacMechan, director of the Halifax Disaster Record Office, in June 1918, architect Andrew Cobb also spoke of the devastation Africville suffered. Cobb was in a train travelling toward Halifax on Dec. 6, 1917.

Personal narrative recounts Africville damage

According to his account, when the train stopped in Africville, Cobb saw people carrying their injured in sheets. Cobb ended up being one of six men who volunteered in rescue efforts until 1 a.m. the next day.

"There were large sections of roof and walls to be torn apart," his narrative said. "The only effective implement would have been a giant crane which might have lifted the heavy masses of woodwork off the people buried beneath."

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The volunteers, Cobb said, "could hear the cries of the people underneath the ruins, shrieking or sobbing or giving directions."

Cobb later made his way into the city along Campbell Road "over the debris and among the corpses," the document said.

In another account in the New York Times, A.J. Goldberg, a button merchant from New York who was travelling to Halifax by train with a Montreal salesman, said they were "horrified" at the sight they saw when the train made a sudden stop in Africville that morning.

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"The platform of the railroad station was crowded with wounded people, most of them children," the New York Times article said.

Many of the children could not see because their eyes were filled with small pieces of glass.

"I noticed, too, that most of the children were cut about the neck," Goldberg said in the report. "It seemed just as if a keen-edge knife had slashed each little throat."

Trying to close cultural gaps

The museum's curator was not available for an interview.

However, Lisa Jarrett, a spokeswoman for the Department of Communities, Culture and Heritage, said in an email that the blast's impact on African-Nova Scotian communities has been identified as a key element of the story that needs to be more fully represented. And that will happen, she said, as the permanent exhibit is refreshed.

"We know that we need to do better in having our provincial museum system focus on diverse stories of provincial significance to close the gaps in our provincial narrative," Jarrett wrote.

"The Nova Scotia Museum system has been in existence for about 149 years, and has been, for most of this time, telling stories predominantly through the lens of Anglo-Scottish culture."