The Nova Scotia - Boston Tree

November 30, 2020 6:39 AM

This tree from Nova Scotia is now in Boston Common. The Nova Scotians send one every year. Why? [Twitter][Threadreader]

The Halifax Explosion was a disaster that occurred in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, on the morning of 6 December 1917. SS Mont-Blanc, a French cargo ship laden with high explosives, collided with the Norwegian vessel SS Imo in the Narrows, a strait connecting the upper Halifax Harbour to Bedford Basin. A fire on board the French ship ignited her cargo, causing a massive explosion that devastated the Richmond district of Halifax. Approximately 2,000 people were killed by the blast, debris, fires, or collapsed buildings, and an estimated 9,000 others were injured [Wikipedia]

Canadian Forces in 🇺🇸 [@CAFinUS - “Nice people. Maple syrup.”] tells the the tale behind the reason Nova Scotia sends a Christmas Tree to Boston every year.

posted by jazon (15 comments total)

>devastated the Richmond district of Halifax

and caused a tsunami that destroyed the Mi'kmaq village at Tuft's Cove.
posted by Stoof at 6:59 AM on November 30, 2020 [17 favorites]

You know something, I really needed to read about people helping people today.
posted by tommasz at 7:18 AM on November 30, 2020 [3 favorites]

Here is a sobering article about the centenary at Tuft's Cove, formerly Turtle Grove, a community inhabited by Mi'kmaq who were undergoing years of racism from neighbours, and foot-dragging on relocation assistance from the settlers' government.

After the initial shock,“the big thing that happens is the thing that doesn’t happen,” said Remes. “The school doesn’t get rebuilt, the settlement is prevented from being rebuilt.” The explosion had ultimately helped the government and settler neighbours raze the community—a goal they tried to achieve for years.

The Boston Tree is about white people helping white people. No one did shit for the Mi'kmaq. So go ahead, let's pat ourselves on the back, sure. You can be nice and be racist as fuck too.
posted by seanmpuckett at 7:29 AM on November 30, 2020 [23 favorites]

It usually gets trucked down but this year they had to find a container ship to send it down. Can't find an image, but saw it on one news spot.
posted by sammyo at 7:39 AM on November 30, 2020

My mother's side of the family are Halifax people. My grandmother was a little girl at school when the explosion hit. It killed half her class -- basically the kids sitting in the rows closest to the windows. And almost all the kids on the lower floor died when the building collapsed down on them. She died about eighty years later with a few slivers of glass still in her.

My mom finally left Nova Scotia for good in her mid-twenties and is now very old herself. One thing she's never been shy about is reminding people of how racist so much of Nova Scotia was and sadly, in some places anyway, still is. And not just toward the Mi'kmaq, but also blacks. But even she didn't get around to telling us until maybe ten years ago that her grandmother was half-Mi'kmag. It just wasn't information that anyone from her generation would have considered helpful in any way. "Just be glad it doesn't show," and all that.

You can be nice and be racist as fuck too.

True. And yet ...
posted by philip-random at 8:17 AM on November 30, 2020 [11 favorites]

For folks who are interested in diving deeper into this sort of history, Rebecca Solnit's A Paradise Built In Hell explores episodes of mutual aid and solidarity in the wake of disasters and includes a chapter on the Halifax explosion.
posted by bl1nk at 8:36 AM on November 30, 2020 [3 favorites]

The MA governor's letter speaks of "the strongest affection for your city"...besides being eastern port cities (so I'm sure trade partners and some cross-migration) was there a significant connection between Boston and Halifax?
posted by Reasonably Everything Happens at 8:54 AM on November 30, 2020

I just learned that Shaggy (yes, that Shaggy) is performing at the tree lighting and I'm feeling decidedly more inclined to attend.
posted by ChuraChura at 9:13 AM on November 30, 2020

The MA governor's letter speaks of "the strongest affection for your city"...besides being eastern port cities (so I'm sure trade partners and some cross-migration) was there a significant connection between Boston and Halifax?

When the Revolution broke out, Nova Scotia was also Puritan country. The British Navy showed up to build Halifax as an alternative to Boston, with enough personnel to send an implicit "don't even think about it" to the colonists. But there were still blood ties between Nova and New England.
posted by ocschwar at 9:27 AM on November 30, 2020 [2 favorites]

>as there a significant connection between Boston and Halifax?

Yes I believe so. This page can give a bit of summary. https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/halifax

I think there were ties all the way back to the colonial era, in the 1700s. I am a little foggy on the details because I haven't looked into this in some time, but Halifax was an English settlement (amid a lot of French settlements in the Atlantic region of Canada) and I think they looked towards Boston and points south (and the UK). IIRC in the 1770s a lot of Loyalists from Boston and New England settled in Nova Scotia as well. And the interactions continued through the 19th century.
posted by philfromhavelock at 9:30 AM on November 30, 2020 [1 favorite]

Many Black Loyalists moved to Halifax after the war, which is why there's such a significant Black population there. Of course, they were/are still treated like shit by the whites.
posted by seanmpuckett at 9:37 AM on November 30, 2020 [3 favorites]

I hope they checked it for owls
posted by gottabefunky at 9:42 AM on November 30, 2020 [5 favorites]

My great-grandma was involved in the relief efforts; her brother died and she had to identify his body. I wrote a song about the tree a few years ago, and the tree lighting is one of my dream gigs.

I’ve thought about writing a song for the Mi’kmaq, but that’s not my experience to write about. So I donate money to them instead.
posted by pxe2000 at 9:50 AM on November 30, 2020 [2 favorites]

Prior thread on the Halifax explosion on its 100th anniversary in 2017. My favorite comment from that thread is that they are still finding metal from the explosion in the trunks of trees.
posted by inflatablekiwi at 12:04 PM on November 30, 2020

A somewhat more cynical take here from the Halifax Examiner:

[F]rom 1919 through 1970, the people of Nova Scotia were completely ungrateful for that help, at least not so grateful as to send another Christmas tree… The “give a tree to Boston” thing was revised in 1971, not out of gratitude… but to promote the provincial tourism and Christmas tree industry industries. [R]elief trains came from Moncton and Saint John, but we don’t thank those communities with trees because, let’s face it, we don’t need a bunch of New Brunswickians wandering around aimlessly downtown; rather, we need Americans spending their high-valued greenbacks.

posted by vasi at 6:38 PM on November 30, 2020 [4 favorites]