the great halifax explosion

John U. Bacon’s latest book, The Great Halifax Explosion: A World War I Story of Treachery, Tragedy, and Extraordinary Heroism, debuts November 7. The book was described by George Will as “an astonishing episode of horror and heroism,” and by David Maraniss as “absorbing from first page to last.” Bacon will start his book tour at 7 p.m., Tuesday night, November 7, at Michigan’s Rackham Auditorium, where he’ll be introduced by Michigan Radio’s Cynthia Canty. The book is available through Harper-Collins, and will be found on Amazon (pre-order), Barnes & Noble, Indies, Nicola’s, Literati, and elsewhere.

This exclusive excerpt focuses on the book’s central figure, Joseph Ernest Barss. After being wounded in World War I, he returned to Nova Scotia to rehabilitate when a ship blew up in Halifax Harbour. After spending three days helping victims, he was inspired to attend the medical school at the University of Michigan, where he started Michigan’s hockey program. completing one of the most remarkable journeys of any Michigan Man.

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Joseph Ernest Barss is one of the most important people in the long, rich history of Michigan athletics. But you wouldn’t have guessed that from his background – and certainly not from his family’s.

The story of the founder of Michigan hockey goes through the greatest tragedy in Canadian history

His great-grandfather, Joseph Barss Jr., was the most notorious privateer in Canadian history, capturing, sinking, or burning more than 60 American ships during the War of 1812, making him America’s most wanted man.

Three generations later, Joseph Ernest Barss was born in India in 1892, the son of Baptist missionaries. He grew up in Wolfville, Nova Scotia, just a few miles from Windsor, Nova Scotia, the birthplace of hockey. He attended the hometown Acadia University, which his grandfather helped found, where Ernest starred in football, hockey, baseball, and boxing.

“He was sort of a stocky fella, big thighs, who carried himself very straight,” his son, Dr. Joseph Andrew Barss, told me in 1999. “A tough guy. His ankles were so strong, he didn’t have to lace up his skates.”

After graduating cum laude in 1912 at age 19, Barss moved to Montreal, where he rose to become a district manager for Imperial Oil, earning $1,500 a year – big money for a young man at the time. He seemed to have it all: a great career, money, and fun. But Barss’s letters give the unmistakable sense that he was not fulfilled.

That changed in 1915, World War I’s second year, when one of Barss’s rowing club friends read out loud that the Germans had gassed a famed Canadian unit, the Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry (PPCLI) killing 461 of the 1,068 men, including many friends of theirs from Montreal. The four men were “filled with indignation,” Barss wrote, and decided to enlist right then and there.

In his early letters back to his parents, Barss was bursting with enthusiasm for the cause, and the role he had trained to play: machine gunner. The reason the PPCLI was in such need of reinforcements, he explained, was because “there are only 53 left out of 1500. So we have some reputation to keep up. Of course, as you have probably noted, I am full of this thing. So are the other fellows.”

[Hit the JUMP for how Halifax became a WWI battleground in a flash, and Canada became a United States friend in a fortnight, and how this all resulted in Michigan starting a hockey program]

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