[legendsport]

Halifax, Nova Scotia - December 6, 1917::

Jack Barrell was sitting in the lobby of the Dartmouth Hotel, holding a telegram from his father. Jack was in town as part of a "select" group of young players who were under contract to, but hadn't yet played in the North American Hockey Confederation. They were there to play an exhibition game with the local Dartmouth team, though they'd do it across the harbor in Halifax.

He had spent the previous day traveling by train from Montreal and hadn't slept all that well - one of the other guys apparently thought it'd be fun to have a party in his room. Normally, that wouldn't be something that Jack would have given a thought to, but the problem was that the room was right next to his own.

The telegram in his hand relayed some big news: Jack Barrell had been drafted by the Boston Minutemen in the FABL draft the previous day. His excited father had some trouble tracking him down, having first telegraphed Vera in Montreal right after Jack had been drafted by the Minutemen. Naturally the reply came back that Jack was in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia with his hockey team. So Rufus had perservered and the telegram in Jack's hand was the result.

Jack had quite forgotten that the draft had been held the previous day - baseball was the furthest thing from his mind in December. He wondered how he'd work out all the logistics of trying to play both baseball and hockey; even if the seasons didn't overlap, there would be a lot of travel involved.

"Thirteenth round, Barrell? That's not that impressive, is it?" growled a voice from behind him, snapping him out of his reverie. He craned his neck and was unsurprised to see a sneering Clark Goodman looking over his shoulder. Goodman, like Jack a right winger, was Nova Scotian - though from Sydney, which was a good distance away from Halifax. Nevertheless he considered himself the "hometown favorite" and had immediately set himself up as rival to the more highly-touted Barrell.

"Oh, stow it Goodman," Jack said wearily. He simply wasn't in the mood for Goodman's jibes.

Bill Spiers, the team's equipment man came into the lobby from outside. "There's a fire in the harbor. Apparently two ships collided and one of them's burning pretty good," he said breathlessly, pointing over his shoulder with his thumb.

Jack looked at the telegram in his hand and read it again. It said:

Drafted by Boston in 13 rd STOP
Mom and I so proud STOP
Call when back in Mtl STOP
Go get them today! STOP

Jack grinned. His dad just... got it. He folded the telegram and tucked it into his coat pocket. It was really cold and snow was in the forecast. He started buttoning up his coat.

Suddenly the earth tilted, all the lobby windows shattered and Jack (along with everyone else in the lobby) was thrown to the ground as an immense booming noise was heard.

A moment later Jack rose shakily to one knee and then stood. He looked around and saw others rising as well, everyone looking around dazedly.

He turned and helped an older woman to her feet, asking if she was hurt. She didn't hear him, and he suddenly realized he couldn't hear himself - or anything else - either.

Bill Spiers stumbled back into the lobby, holding a hand to his head. Blood seeped through his fingers. He appeared to be screaming, though Jack still couldn't really make out any noise except a faint buzzing.

He pushed past Spiers, stopping to help Goodman to his feet, and looked towards the distant harbor. A massive, smoke-colored cloud was rising rapidly and obscured the view of both the harbor and Halifax. Jack wondered if the Germans had somehow caused this, then remembered Spiers talking about a collision in the harbor. Had that caused this?

Others joined him outside the hotel. Gradually the smoke began to drift in the wind and everyone saw what the explosion did to Halifax. It seemed that anything not flattened was burning. As Jack's hearing returned slowly, the first words he heard were, "Oh my God!"

----------------------------------------------

The game that night was, obviously, canceled.

Jack and several of his team mates (including Goodman) had trekked down to the waterfront and were helping those who had been hurt. Details, some of them conflicting, others unbelievable (yet somehow plausible in light of the evidence everyone could see with their own two eyes) began to circulate.

Spiers - who had been cut by a piece of metal falling from the sky (he'd be okay) - had been right about a collision between two ships in the harbor. The SS Imo had collided with the SS Mont-Blanc, which had been laden with munitions bound for France out of New York. The collision had cut open a fuel tank and sparks caused when the Imo backed out of the collision with a rending of metal had started a fire. The Mont-Blanc's crew immediately abandoned ship, knowing that their ship would explode.

By abandoning their ship the crew had (with one exception) saved their own lives, but it would turn out that about 2000 people had been killed and 9000 more injured in the explosion, which was the largest man-made explosion in history at the time. Many of the dead were bystanders who had gone to the waterfront to watch the fire and been there when the explosion obliterated the Mont-Blanc. Pieces of the ship had fallen out of the sky in a large area around the harbor: for example, the 90-mm deck gun of the Mont-Blanc was blown 3.5 miles north while a large piece of the anchor landed two miles south.

The explosion had also displaced enough water to briefly expose the bottom of the harbor - and when gravity re-exerted its influence, the rushing water caused a 60-foot high tidal wave that shoved the Ino across the harbor and beached it on the Dartmouth side.

Jack spent the next two days working with others to help dig people out of collapsed buildings. He found himself working with some American sailors as both the USS Tacoma and USS Von Steuben arrived on the afternoon of the blast to lend aid, alongside the Royal Navy vessels that had been in the harbor and others arriving from nearby. But soon enough, as relief poured in first from the rest of the Maritimes and later (slowed by heavy blizzards) from the rest of Canada and the northeastern U.S., Jack and his team mates were instructed to return to Montreal.

Arriving in his adopted hometown on the 9th, Jack stepped off the train and spotted his grandmother waiting on the platform. He dropped his bag, ran over to her and hugged her fiercely, telling her he loved her. For once in her life, Vera Reid was left completely speechless.