Halifax Explosion victims honoured in Braille scroll
Artist Laurie Swim says volunteers hand stitched beads for each known person killed in the blast
Laurie Swim, an award-winning textile artist originally from Lockeport, N.S., is in the process of making a 12-meter Braille scroll to honour the victims of the Halifax Explosion.
"There were a lot of eye injuries and some people lost an eye or were blinded completely. I wanted to represent that as a piece," said Swim, who is aiming to have the project complete by 2017 — the 100-year anniversary of the blast.
The explosion killed about 2,000 people so there many names to bead.
Swim enlisted volunteers — including the author of this article whose great uncle died in the explosion — to help stitch the tiny black beads into each sheet containing the names and ages of the victims.
She says to her surprise, volunteers kept returning sheets and asking for more. The results, she says, are stunning.
"They work very beautifully because they're sparkly and they have some reference to the oil that came down over people after the blast." said Swim.
Coloured cloth to represent survivors scars
In addition to the scroll, Swim has also dyed cloth black and blue that shows what Halifax looked like after the explosion. She used powdered pigments and snow to get the look.
Swim says the blue represents the colour of the survivors' scars. She says the snow represents the storm that followed the explosion and complicated relief efforts.
The Halifax Explosion occurred on Dec. 6, 1917 when the French cargo ship Mont-Blanc, fully loaded with explosives, collided with the Norwegian vessel Imo in The Narrows, a strait between Halifax and Dartmouth.
A fire on board Mont-Blanc ignited the explosives in the ship's hold, causing the largest man-made explosion the world had ever seen.
The blast was felt hundreds of kilometres away. It levelled much of the city and sent shards of glass and burning debris flying for kilometres.
About 1,500 people died immediately and the explosion wounded about 9,000 others.
Swim says she was inspired to do the memorial project after reading the 1989 book Shattered City: The Halifax Explosion and the Road to Recovery by Halifax-based author Janet Kitz.