Resolve and Rebirth: The Narrative Environment of Fort Needham Memorial Park

Chapter 6—The Halifax Explosion

John deWolf wrote an essay for Speaking Up: New Voices on War and Peace in Nova Scotia. This anthology spotlights diverse and historically marginalized perspectives on war and peace in Nova Scotia.

Chapter 6 focuses on the Halifax Explosion. The three contributions in this chapter focus on the 2017 centenary of the Halifax Explosion as an occasion for different communities (local, national, and international) to remember the wartime disaster and to reflect on questions about commemoration and public memory. Designer John deWolf describes the process of redesigning Fort Needham Memorial Park, including important stages of community consultation and historical research, and the creative exploration of topography, vistas, and materials as tools for telling explosion stories. Catherine Martin, Juanita Peters, and Paige Farah engage in a poignant and powerful exchange of what the explosion means to them now, a hundred years later, from perspectives deeply informed by knowledge and experience of racism, colonization, and class oppression. Artists Robert Bean and Angela Henderson write about the work that NiS+TS has done using architectural models of buildings related to the explosion as part of their larger project Walking the Debris Field of the Halifax Explosion. 

Published by Nimbus Publishing Limited in November 2022, Speaking Up: New Voices on War and Peace in Nova Scotia is edited by Maya Eichler, Reina Green, and Tracy Moniz.

Nimbus is the largest English-language publisher east of Toronto. Nimbus produces more than fifty new titles a year on a range of subjects relevant to the Atlantic Provinces—children’s picture books and fiction, literary non-fiction, social and cultural history, nature photography, current events, biography, sports, and cultural issues. Nimbus publishes the best books on Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland.