Halifax Explosion quilt captures fragments of city torn apart

Laurie Swim operates her sewing machine like she's drawing.

In her studio in Lunenburg, N.S., she has spent the past four years stitching the story of the 1917 Halifax Explosion, creating scenes that illustrate the devastating blast and its aftermath.

Through a series of panels, she blended accounts she'd read and researched with images that came to her of the city in ruins.

In one section, she recreated the narrow passage of the Halifax Harbour where the Imo and the Mont-Blanc collided.

She used a palette of blues, greys and the occasional pop of red. Much of the fabric she hand-dyed piece by piece — putting it in a bin, piling snow on top and then sprinkling it with indigo powder. 

She chose the shade of blue to represent both the residue that fell from the sky immediately after the blast and the Dec. 7, 1917, snowstorm that hampered recovery efforts.

"There was an oily rain that came down for about 20 minutes and it coated people. When wounds were healed, the scars were indigo blue," she said. 

Swim's quilt is now on display at the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic in Halifax. 

Some of the images are based on real stories. The little girl with the red scarf was inspired by Barbara Orr, who was lifted into the air by the force of the explosion and the resulting wave and thrown onto Fort Needham. She survived, but couldn't walk for several months. Her parents, brother and sister died. 

Orr later donated the bells that ring out at Fort Needham Memorial Park every year on Dec. 6. 

Another piece of the quilt features a clock that stopped when the burning munitions ship exploded.

"Those circumstances that change history, and how it affects the everyday man, that's what interests me about doing the community projects. It gives me a sense of place," Swim said. 

Swim's fascination with the dark period in Halifax's history began on a cross-country train trip in 2000 when she read Janet Kitz's book Shattered City: The Halifax Explosion and the Road to Recovery.

Though she'd published three books of her own, Swim initially didn't think such immense loss could be turned into a story for children.

But she began weaving together the stories in her quilt.This fall, Nova Scotia's Department of Education distributed Hope and Survival to schools across the province. 

The Halifax Explosion was the largest man-made disaster in Canadian history, killing nearly 2,000 people and injuring about 9,000 others. 

A pressure wave blew out the windows across Halifax and flung shards of glass in every direction. About 1,000 people lost their sight that day. The mass blinding would help birth the Canadian National Institute for the Blind.

Swim wanted her exhibit to recognize the massive loss of vision and she enlisted help from people across Nova Scotia and different parts of Canada.

She said she took "a leap of faith" when she mailed out black beads, needles and 173 sheets with 12 names on them to volunteers. All but one returned completed.

Underneath the names of people who died, volunteers stitched their names in braille.

The scroll of remembrance is now on display at the waterfront museum next to Swim's quilt. The stained fabric was designed to represent the shrouds that covered the dead, she said. 

Swim's book tells the story of 11-year-old Jess, the girl with the red scarf, who was caught in the explosion. She awoke in hospital to find her mother comforting her. 

Jess's family is reunited slowly in the chaos after the blast. Swim said connecting babies with their families was a particular challenge. She said it wasn't uncommon for soldiers to return home after the First World War and have to try to identify infant children who they had never met.

The 1917 blast "affected all of Nova Scotia and it made big changes in the world as we know it," Swim said, adding that she wanted "to bring up those personal accounts or different things that happened because of the explosion, and to pass that forward to the next generation."