Hell Unleashed On Earth

 A collage of newspaper headlines here speak to how much the country was focused on the war.

It was a tense time at home, with debates about conscription.

An election was held during the war, with Prime Minister Robert Borden facing a former prime minister, Wilfrid Laurier, who by that time was in the twilight of his life.

The painting above is Convoy In Bedford Basin,by Arthur Lismer, a commissioned war artist, depicting the harbour at Halifax. After the war, Lismer and several of his friends founded the Group of Seven, which changed Canadian art forever.

Halifax saw an explosion in its harbour on the 6th of December, 1917. A collision between two ships, one of which was carrying explosives, set off one of the largest non-nuclear and artificial explosions in history, killing almost two thousand people and wounding nine thousand more.

A piece of one of the ships is displayed here, along with medals related to the response.

That fall in France, Canadians were called upon to do what British and French forces had been unable to do- to take the ridge at the village of Passchendaele. Once again, they did what couldn't be done, achieving victory in a brutal battle that comes as close to hell on earth as anything in the history of warfare.

This is particularly vivid- a recreation of the shattered landscape you can walk through, with equipment, weapons, and even a body pounded into the mud. The Western Front still surrenders bodies back to the surface to this day.