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Atlantic Canada Deaf Community News January 2018 Published about the Deaf Community in Atlantic Provinces

Today’s Theme – : The Deaf Experience

Featured Quilted stories of events in the time of Halifax Explosion exhibited at the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic Introduction

Two people from the group of Halifax Explosion Commemoration event approached me to beg me to write up a newsletter about Halifax Explosion Events for Deaf Independent Filmmakers Facebook Page and the Atlantic Deaf Community. I thought hard about the benefits of this newsletter for the Atlantic Deaf Community because it will eventually become historical in years to come. After any event I have been to, I am willing to write up. Such experiences to remember are a helpful tool for me to start writing something. In fact, it is not an easy task for me to keep up putting articles or stories together for the Deaf Community. Yet, I will try my best. Please share your stories or articles with me for the news. May the Deaf Community have a blessed, prosperous year in the New Year. Best regards, Kathern B. Geldart

Atlantic Canada Deaf Community News, Jan 2018, Halifax Explosion: The Deaf Experience by Kathern B. Geldart P a g e | 2

Launch of the Documentary Deaf-Made Film - Halifax Explosion Kathern Geldart

People came together at the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic in Halifax, Nova Scotia, at the waterfront to see the launch of the Community Premiere - documentary film “Halifax Explosion: The Deaf Experience” made by Jim McDermott and Linda Campbell, local co-producers. The people celebrating the launch were the film crew, actors, interpreters, sign language students, and fans. Before the film, we took the opportunity to take a tour at the museum which exhibited very interesting cases of documents, art works, and photos about Halifax Explosion that happened 100 years ago. The Maritimers were very proud that the film was especially unique for it was produced locally. We had viewed Deaf films that were produced in U.S.A or another country. After the show, Alan William led the commentary period. Jim and Linda described their challenging process of making their own film and answered the questions to the audience. Jim explained, “Most challenging process of film-making was to find and gather documents about the Deaf experiencing Halifax Explosion. This is where it was lacking. Very little information, but we got stories from those people who heard and remembered them. We found a bit more from the Nova Scotia Archives. Ideas started spinning and making into the film.” “After the story was put together in the final stage, editing the film was extremely challenging and time-consuming. We tried to accommodate captions with actors / narrators signing. At times, captions were so long that we had to adjust them into short blocks,” Linda’s hands fluttered. The co-producers were grateful to have found three documents from the Archives that described the experiences of Principal James Fearon, former student and employee Mary MacLean, and blind

Atlantic Canada Deaf Community News, Jan 2018, Halifax Explosion: The Deaf Experience by Kathern B. Geldart P a g e | 3 deaf student Jean Venoit. The letters were published in the probably-first Community Premiere Commemoration Book distributed to the audience. The event was wrapped up with a beautiful, delightful reception with people mingling among one another. The NSCSD held its 8th Annual Deaf Film to show the film again at NSCC Ivany Campus Theatre (Waterfront) in Dartmouth on the 9th of December 2017.

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Halifax Explosion Film Presentation at Children’s Theatre Kathern Geldart

Visitors from Boston and Halifax surroundings, the members of Rotary Club, were invited to watch the only-captioned film “Halifax Explosion: The Deaf Experience at Cineplex O.E. Smith Theatre, the children’s theatre, at IWK Hospital in Halifax in the evening of December 5, 2017. The film was produced by Jim McDermott, instructor of Nova Scotia Community College Waterfront; and Linda Campbell, professor of St. Mary University. In awe of the production, some people made comments or asked questions through the facilitation of interpreting by Robyn Sauks who recently moved from Edmonton. They realized that there was a difference in film-making for Deaf people that the film was merely visual-oriented. No sound production filmed of the ship collision and long-distance beyond Halifax and Dartmouth; only visual production such as broken pieces of glass on the floor and glass impaled in a deaf victim’s arm. This is how we, the Deaf people, view the world every day. One from the audience commented that he had heard of people experiencing Halifax Explosion through media, including Black people and Mi’Kmaq tribe residing in one district of Halifax

Atlantic Canada Deaf Community News, Jan 2018, Halifax Explosion: The Deaf Experience by Kathern B. Geldart P a g e | 4 who had to root up into the Millbrook Nation Community in the aftermath; yet, they heard nothing of Deaf people experiencing the likewise. The producers passionately decided to their own film after they took a course “Film making 101” at Nova Scotia Community College Waterfront, offered by Toronto International Deaf Film and Art Festival (TIDFAF) three years earlier. The attendants were asked to think of an ideal title to make the film. Jim could not think of anything until the last morning, coming up with an idea about Deaf people experiencing Halifax Explosion. His group loved that idea! Through challenging process, they made it so far to send their filming work to TIDFAF for its biennial festival last spring, and they won the Best Canadian Deaf Film of 2017 award. The producers admitted challenges to find details about the Deaf experiences in the aftermath of Halifax explosion. They could easily find a lot of stories told among the hearing communities, but very little from Halifax School for the Deaf. The stories were documented in vintage newspapers, newsletters and magazines. They had to gather facts from the interviews with several deaf people who heard stories from the elders, and they found only three articles written by three people witnessing the experiences: Principal James Fearon; deaf and blind student; Jean Venoit, and Mary Ann MacLean, a student / a school clerk / a teacher. The film also included a part: an interview with Deaf man, Allison MacKay Pye who narrated in Maritime Sign Language (MSL) as he remembered the experience of aftermath at the school for the deaf. The producers had enough to put stories together to make the film possible. ------Halifax Explosion Commemoration Service Kathern Geldart

December 6, 2017 was a special day in the city of Halifax, Nova Scotia as it marked its100th year memorial since Halifax Explosion. People trudged up Richmond Staircase from Union Street to the Memorial Plaza at recently-upgraded Fort Needham Memorial Park. Waiting for a service to start, early bird arrivers hid ourselves under the VIP tent. Jim McDermott / Linda Campbell, representatives of Nova Scotia Cultural Society of the Deaf (NSCSD); Mike Perrier / Kathern Geldart, representatives of Eastern Canada Association of the Deaf (ECAD); Irv Mac Donald, photographer; and Alan William / Frank D’Eon, faithful citizens, were waiting closely as we saw Mike Savage, the Halifax mayor, waiting and greeting others. As suggested by Linda, conscious of our need for message reception, we slipped through a maze of the waiting crowd on the plaza to the front near Memorial Bell Tower for our Deaf space. If we had lingered longer, we would have not woven through the crowd. Holding umbrellas above our heads, we were surrounded by many other attendants. Water drips everywhere from the umbrella canopies in all colors.

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The musical Prelude started a commemoration service at 8:45 am. Glimpses of a musical band, soldiers dressed in 1917 uniforms, firemen from Boston and Nova Scotia, Navy men lined up behind the Bell Tower, and a few old women in wheelchairs. In moments of haunting wind, a standing remembrance wreath kept falling off a cement box. Packed tightly in the crowd, we peeked barely between heads of Girl Guides and Leaders to watch historic documents, stories, and poems conveyed in American Sign Language (ASL) by Corrina Burris and Susan Cargill. In spite of the umbrella canopies and heads in the way of our vision, we managed to get glimpses of guests invited at the platform on the left side to comment or narrate. Councillor Lindell Smith, District 8, a colored man in a gold waffle-knot toque, led the service as a Master of Ceremonies. The Honourable Stephen McNeil, Premier of Nova Scotia and Halifax Mayor Mike Savage had their hair soaked wet while they were listening to the service and speaking. In white gloves on her hands, Susan amazingly fluttered a poignant poem about the time of Halifax Explosion by the Parliamentary Poet Laureate, George Elliot Clarke, flipping pages of the wet paper. Our hearts were touched. After the VIP laid their wreaths at the base of Bell Tower, common people came to lay theirs. Jim, Linda, Mike and Kathern walked with a wreath ribbed with the phrase “In Memory of Deaf Survivors” dedicated by Nova Scotia Cultural Society of the Deaf and Eastern Canada Association of the Deaf. Instantly, Corrina, saddened face, came toward us, glancing up the tower, with her stretched arm and pointed finger. Her hands fluttered, “Hear bells chime”, and “Hear cries”.

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It was an exceptionally emotional day to remember the commemoration service for explosion victims and survivors.

------100th Anniversary – Halifax Explosion commemorated MICHAEL MACDONALD, THE CANADIAN PRESS in The Chronicle Herald Thursday, December 7, 2017

Despite howling wind and rain, hundreds of people took part in the ceremony marking the 100th anniversary of the Halifax Explosion at Fort Needham Memorial Park in Halifax on Wednesday. (TIM KROCHAK / Staff, THE CHRONICLE HERALD)

Rose Poirier stood on a hill overlooking at 9:04 a.m. Wednesday, quietly marking the moment precisely 100 years before when the city’s bustling North End was obliterated by the worst human-caused disaster in Canadian history.

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Before the poets and the politicians spoke at a ceremony marking the grim centennial, Poirier recalled a harrowing story from a 106-year-old relative who miraculously survived the Halifax Explosion and still lives in the city’s west end.

Poirier said her husband’s great aunt, Halifax resident Hazel Forrest, was staying with her sister in a home on Bilby Street on Dec. 6, 1917, when two wartime ships collided in the harbour, sparking a massive explosion that killed almost 2,000 people, wounded 9,000 and left 25,000 homeless.

It was the world’s largest human-made blast until an atomic bomb was detonated in 1945.

As a white-hot shock wave rolled up from the harbour, razing much of the city’s North End, six- year-old Hazel was hurled through a crumbling wall.

“She remembers being thrown down from an upper floor into her uncle’s arms because the wall and the stairs had been blown off,” Poirier said Wednesday as a steady downpour pelted the hundreds of onlookers who gathered for a commemorative service at Fort Needham Memorial Park — not far from what was ground zero in 1917.

“Her sister Evelyn had been bathing their baby brother and she was thrown down the cellar stairs. The baby was scalded because they were near the stove. They found that baby across the street.”

Forrest, one of the oldest survivors of the Explosion, now lives in a nursing home and was unable to attend the ceremony because of blustery weather.

Halifax Mayor Mike Savage told the crowd it’s the heart-rending stories of individual Haligonians that help Canadians understand an otherwise incomprehensible tragedy.

To make his point, Savage singled out the Jackson family, represented by several relatives in the crowd, which lost more than 40 members to the Explosion and ensuing conflagration.

“To whomever you seek comfort from, to whomever you pray to in the evening . . . when you close your eyes tonight, ask for a blessing for those who lived 100 years ago — for those who were killed, for those who survived and to those who rebuilt,” the mayor said as gusts of wind blew the rain sideways.

“We say to them what we say to our great military heroes on Remembrance Day: ‘We will remember them.’”

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In a heated tent near the park’s Halifax Explosion Memorial Bell Tower, 82-year-old Gerald Edward Jackson recalled how his father was trapped in the rubble of a house for three days before a searcher with a dog found him.

“He was blown down into the basement of the house and the house caved in on top of him and it was burning,” he said as family members leaned in to hear the story. “It was a chaotic thing. . . My dad never spoke about the Explosion at all.”

As the ceremony began at 9:04 a.m. — the exact time of the blast — a cannon was fired at the Halifax Citadel National Historic Site and ships in the harbour sounded their horns, the mournful wail echoing across the city as the crowd observed a moment of silence.

Halifax’s poet laureate, Rebecca Thomas, said most historical accounts of the Explosion fail to recognize the shabby way the city’s black and Indigenous populations were treated after the disaster.

“Nostalgia can sometimes be toxic and . . . many voices often disappear into the past without ever being heard,” she told the crowd.

African Nova Scotians living in the Africville neighbourhood, which was severely damaged by the Explosion, were given only a fraction of the rebuilding funds offered to white Haligonians, she said. As for Turtle Grove, a Mi’kmaq village of children as they went off to school in the city’s Richmond neighbourhood.

“Punctual salutations resonate in Richmond homes as spouses trudge to factory or menial jobs. Children troop to school and many of those cheery, kissed-cheek goodbyes will prove unknowingly final,” he said, reading from a soaked page.

Clarke also remembered Vincent Coleman, the telegraph dispatcher who, “alert and alarmed, tapped out urgent, percussive Morse (code)” to warn an incoming train to stop, before he died in the Explosion.

Coleman’s grandson, Calgary lawyer Jim Coleman, also spoke at the ceremony, recalling how earlier generations refused to talk about what happened.

After 100 years, that is changing, he said, adding that his grandfather’s legacy as a hero should never be forgottenon the Dartmouth side of the harbour, it was wiped out by a tsunami created by the blast.

“Those who survived were segregated and kept out of the hospitals,” Thomas said.

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George Elliott Clarke, the Nova Scotia-born parliamentary poet laureate, recited a poem recalling the poignant moments leading up to the deadly detonation, including the imagined last goodbyes

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HALIFAX EXPLOSION

Halifax Explosion: Film explores school for deaf Nobody in the Halifax School for the Deaf was killed during the 1917 explosion

By Chelsea Rozansky, The Signal

DECEMBER 6, 2017, 3:34 PM AST Last Updated: December 6, 2017, 3:34 pm AST' Reddit Filmmaker Jim McDermott signs the story of the Halifax Explosion. CHELSEA ROZANSKY

One hundred years after the Halifax Explosion, another part of the story is being told: how students at the Halifax School for the Deaf survived.

On Tuesday evening, one day before the Halifax Explosion’s centenary, the showcased six local films about the 1917 disaster. The first was a live-action documentary about the Halifax School for the Deaf made by two deaf filmmakers. It was awarded best Canadian film at the Toronto International Deaf Film and Arts Festival.

Jim McDermott, the writer and on-screen narrator of Halifax Explosion: the Deaf Experience, warned his audience before the film, “it’s not the technology that’s a problem. There is actually no sound.”

An unconventional narrator, McDermott stood superimposed throughout the documentary, telling the story in sign.

The Halifax School for the Deaf stood where the George Dixon Centre is now located on Gottingen Street. The school was approximately one kilometre from the explosion in The Narrows, a waterway between the Halifax Harbour and Bedford Basin. The explosion was felt as far as Prince Edward Island, and 2,000 people were killed from the accident and the following snowstorm. Yet everyone at the deaf school remained unscathed, save for a few minor wounds from broken windows.

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Both McDermott and director Linda Campbell are deaf. They learned the story of the deaf school’s survival as it was passed down within the deaf community, but there were no published accounts of the event.

Digging through archives, Campbell found that the story she uncovered was consistent with the stories told to her by the deaf community.

“It’s important that we have these stories to share with our deaf community,” Campbell signed after the screening. “It also opens up the door for people to see that we did have a tragic experience for those students. Many books and stories were published, and nothing related to the deaf community.”

Short films

Following the documentary, the debuts of five animated shorts commissioned by the Atlantic Film Cooperative were screened.

In her animated short, Sincerely Yours, Mrs. Taylor, experimental animator Sam Decoste recounts a story originally sent in an email to CBC about a black grandmother’s struggle for survival in the aftermath of the explosion. The explosion left many black children orphans, and led to the creation of the Nova Scotia Home for Colored Children.

Decoste said in the question and answer period after her film that she also had trouble finding information.

“The focus on history has been on a certain segment of society, and I found it really difficult to find information on communities that fell outside of that,” Decoste said.

The Atlantic Filmmakers Cooperative was commissioned $8,500 by the Halifax Regional Municipality to create art in commemoration of the explosion. The money was divided into $1,700 for each of the five animators to make their short.

Cooley said she thought animation could open a door to tell untold stories, in an interview before the screening.

“It just struck me that animation could be this new way to re-imagine some of the events, or to tell some of the stories that didn’t actually have any live footage connected to them,” Cooley said.

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Atlantic Canada Deaf Community News, Jan 2018, Halifax Explosion: The Deaf Experience by Kathern B. Geldart