The survivors of two neighboring congregations, although belonging to different denominations, united in erecting a temporary church building—their respective churches having been destroyed—and have since worshipped together—a demonstration of the practicability of church union under circumstantial pressure.
The display apartments of a furniture concern were utilized as actual living rooms by refugees for a period, while at the same time business was in operation throughout the rest of the establishment.
The necessary functioning of relief activities, seven days in the week, the keeping of stores open on Sundays and the general disorganization of the parishes was reflected for a long period in a changed attitude upon the part of many towards Sabbath observance.
German residents of the city were immediately placed under arrest when the disaster occurred, but all were later given their freedom.
The citizens of Halifax were almost entirely oblivious to the progress of the war and other matters of world interest, for many days after the disaster.
The reversion to the use of candles, oil lamps and lanterns was an interesting temporary effect.
The rapidity of the reorganization, as well as the subsequent expansion, noted later, was largely effected by the social law of imitation already noticed. Many of the conditions affecting the rate of imitation were present. There was a crisis, there was necessity, there was trade and business advantage, social pressure, public demand, shibboleths—“a new Halifax” for example—but above all there was a multitude of models. The extent and scale of the rebuilding program in one area, the civic-improvement plans which accompanied the work in that district, the record time in which relief houses were completed, the marvellous speed at which the demolition companies cleared away the debris acted as models and stimuli to all inhabitants. The process of speeding-up spread like a great contagion, until the most hardened pessimist began to marvel at the recuperation daily enacted before his eyes.
Among the models thus presented may be mentioned that of the rapid establishment of the morgue. This, the largest ever organized in Canada, was fitted up by forty soldiers and mechanics in the brief period of a day and a half. Another instance was that of the American Hospital. “At nine a. m. Bellevue was an officer's mess. By ten p. m. the same day it was a first-class sixty-six bed hospital, stocked with food and medicine and, in charge of Major Giddings;” it expressed a veritable “triumph of organizing ability.” In the record time of three months, Messrs. Cavicchi and Pagano, with a maximum strength of nine hundred and fifty men and two hundred and seventy horses working ten hours a day removed every vestige of the debris in the devastated area. Apartments were built at the rate of one an hour. Motor lorries multiplied so rapidly that visitors said there had been an outbreak of “truck fever” in the place.
By the stimulus of models, such as these, fresh vitality and motive were imparted to the members of the community. Halifax became busy as never before. New homes, new stores, new piers, new banks, replaced the old as if by magic. Men worked desperately hard.
An influence which must not be left unrecorded because of its continuity of functioning is that of the stimulus of lookers-on. More than two hundred cities in all parts of the world had contributed to the reconstruction, and citizens of Halifax knew they were not unobserved. Articles, lectures and sermons were telling forth to interested thousands how a city blown to pieces, swept by fire, buried under ice and snow, and deluged by rain, was a city courageous beyond words. During the month of December, five leading periodicals in Canada and twelve in the United States arranged for articles and photographs descriptive of the city's advantages commercial and residential.[107] Halifax became a world-known city. This added still further spur to action. Halifax simply had to make good. She was bonded to the world.