During the Second World War, 1.1 million Canadian men and women served in the Canadian Army, Royal Canadian Navy, and Royal Canadian Air Force.
That’s 10 percent of the population.
42,000 of those who served never came home.
The war even reached our shores, as German U-Boats patrolled the waters looking to strike at the great Atlantic convoys.
But nowhere was the war closer than in Halifax.
Men and women left for Europe, or came home, changed from what they saw.
Then, after six long years of war, the conflict ended when Germany surrendered.
From the smallest town to the biggest city, everyone cheered.
But nowhere was the end of the War in Europe celebrated like in Halifax.
And for that… a bit of math.
Take 9,000 soldiers.
Add in 61,000 litres of hard liquor, 1,500 cases of wine and 8,000 cases of beer.
What does that equal?
It equals one massive, and very destructive, party.
I’m Craig Baird, this is Canadian History Ehx and today we are cracking open a few cold ones and letting loose on the dance floor as I share the story of the Halifax Riot!
Since its founding in the mid-18th century, Halifax has always become important during war time.
The American Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, the Boer War, were all a boon for the city as a major British Empire port.
During the First World War, Halifax played a major role as troops and supplies left North America from its harbour in huge convoys, destined for the war in Europe.
That same harbour welcomed home soldiers who had spent months, or even years, in the meat grinder of the Western Front.
On Dec. 6, 1917, all that war activity led to the Halifax Explosion, the largest manmade explosion in history until the birth of the nuclear era.
I talked about this terrible event that killed 2,000 people in an episode earlier in 2024.
Reconstruction efforts that followed the Halifax Explosion helped the local economy somewhat but a huge decline in worldwide shipping following the war brought difficult times for many in the city and the economy fell into a heavy slump.
When The Great Depression began in 1929, the city’s economy fell further.
But…as it had so often been the case, a new war was on the horizon, and Halifax went from bust to boom once more.
In September 1939, the Second World War began, and Halifax became a major port for the Allies.
The city was a vital link during the Battle of Britain and the Battle of the Atlantic.
Supplies flowed out to help them withstand the blitz and a potential amphibious invasion by the Germans.
One British admiral went so far as to call Halifax the most important port in the world.
From 1939 to 1945, the population of the city increased by 60 percent, but the infrastructure and city’s facilities did not keep up with the pace.
At every level, the number of soldiers in the city created issues.
Going out for dinner meant standing in a long line just to get in the door.
Movie theatres didn’t fare much better.
Standing in line for hours to see a movie was usual during war years.
Things were even worse when it came to grocery shopping.
Wartime rationing had already made many items difficult to find.
Beginning in 1942, sugar, coffee, tea, butter, and meat were all rationed. Even food served in restaurants and cafeterias was rationed and diverted from grocery stores to feed thousands of hungry pilots, sailors and soldiers stationed in the city and surrounding areas.
Often, Halifax residents would find empty shelves when they went to the grocery store.
And if you wanted to drown your sorrows in a glass of beer, you were out of luck.
To prevent profiteering during the war, the government of Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King shortened the hours of operation for beer parlours and liquor stores and prohibited all alcohol advertising. They also reduced the alcohol content of beer by 10 per cent, wine by 20 per cent and spirits by 30 per cent.
Most of that watered-down beer went to the men and women in service, who spent their off-hours in Halifax enjoying life knowing that they could ship out at any moment.
This created resentment between residents and soldiers as the city burst at the seams.
Soldiers felt residents were taking advantage of them with high prices on everything from rent to food.
That anger was not unfounded.
A housing shortage caused rents to increase exponentially and remained that way throughout the war.
Finding a place to stay was nearly impossible and encampments popped up in parks across Halifax.
But everyone kept it together through the war.
They knew there was a greater issue to deal with than inconveniences of daily life.
Tension didn’t go away, they just simmered under the surface.
Every day, animosity grew like a pot of water on low.
Until one day…
It reached a boiling point.
Halifax was a city ready to boil over.
There was so much concern over the simmering tensions that as the end of the War approached in the spring of 1945, city organizers planned to stop all tram service to prevent sailors from getting into downtown Halifax to celebrate.
Even liquor stores, restaurants and retailers closed their doors for a few days when the war finally ended.
The mentality was that if everything was closed, troops would remain at bases and ships.
But, in the words of Dr. Ian Malcolm, Life…finds a way.[1]
If someone wants to party, they are going to make it happen.
The powder keg of Halifax was ready to blow.
All it needed was a match and that match’s name was Rear Admiral Leonard W. Murray.
Rear Admiral Leonard W. Murray was one of the most respected men in Canada during the Second World War.
Born in Nova Scotia in 1896, he was drawn to the ocean from an early age.
When Murray was 14 in 1910, he joined the first 21 recruits into the Royal Naval College of Canada in Halifax.
The college was created that same year and Murray described his first winter there as hell.
Measles broke out among the recruits, and there were no proper uniforms to help keep them warm from the cold.
Three years later, he graduated from the college and joined the naval service on the British HMS Berwick.
When the First World War began, Murray was stationed aboard Canada’s first naval ship, HMCS Niobe.
Later he was assigned to Canada’s second ship, HMCS Rainbow.
Over the course of the First World War, he served on three of Canada’s six Royal Canadian Navy ships.
When peace finally arrived, he remained with the Royal Canadian Navy, and worked his way up the ranks.
He eventually became the commander of the Canadian destroyer HMCS Saguenay and went on to serve as commander of Canadian naval bases on both coasts.
As soon as the Second World War began, Murray was appointed as the Deputy Chief of Naval Staff and was instrumental in the rapid growth of the Royal Canadian Navy from six ships in 1939 to over 330 by 1945.
Due to his experience, he was also given command of a fleet of five Canadian ships, which were sent to the United Kingdom to help defend the country during the Battle of Britain.
Murray was later assigned to the east coast of Canada, eventually rising to the rank of Commander-in-Chief, Canadian Northwest Atlantic.
In that capacity, he helped lead the Allied forces to victory in the Battle of the Atlantic.
Murray was so respected that he received the honour of giving Prime Minister Winston Churchill a personal tour of Halifax on Sept. 14, 1943.
That same year, Murray was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire.
He was admired.
His record was excellent.
But one event would tarnish everything.
Following the suicide of Adolf Hitler on April 30, 1945, it was only a matter of time before Germany surrendered to the Allies.
That happened at 2:41 a.m. on May 7.
Across the Western World, people erupted in celebrations at the news that the Second World War had ended.
By the afternoon of May 7, people filled the streets of every major Canadian city.
In Toronto, Bay Street was crowded with people. Schools let out early and confetti rained down on city streets, grinding traffic to a halt.
The Toronto Star reported,
“Front and rear bumpers along the running boards of cars are packed with flag waving kids, cheering and singing…It is possible to wade up to your knees in wrapping paper, ticker tape and such on the east end of Yonge, near King.”
In Ottawa, a similar scene as thousands of people poured on to the streets and paper was thrown from nearby office buildings.
In Vancouver, thousands of people cheered and sang to celebrate the end of the war. The sky was described as a snowstorm of paper and the entire city took the day off to make the most of it.
Across the country, on the east coast, Halifax was getting ready to celebrate and it would be one the city would never forget.
War wasn’t the only worry for Halifax.
Well before it ended, citizens warned Mayor Allan Butler in 1944 that extra protection would be needed to protect the city from partying soldiers.
The mayor didn’t take action, but Police Chief Judson Conrod did.
He began preparing for the day the war ended and communicated with the armed services in the city about their intentions.
He also recommended that the day be declared a holiday so businesses could close.
One month later, the day finally came, and whistles blew around Halifax to announce the end of the war.
Sales clerks closed their doors, servers walked out of restaurants and before long the citizens of Halifax were celebrating in the streets.
While it was a rambunctious celebration, there was no violence, nor looting or vandalism.
All that was about to change.
In the words of Beastie Boys… you gotta fight… for your right to party… and the army was about to invade the city.
As VE Day celebrations continued, the men and women of Canada’s Army, Air Force and Navy felt relieved to be at the end of one of the most difficult times of their lives.
Many had faced death while others saw friends die. Every moment was stalked by death which could be around the next corner.
Then, in an instant, that fear was gone.
And as that tension was released soldiers were ready to party.
The Royal Canadian Air Force and Canadian Army put in strict schedules and rules of conduct for their personnel to prevent them from getting out of hand.
Instead of allowing men to go into the city, they provided them with planned activities within the garrisons so they could celebrate, but in a supervised and contained way.
The Royal Canadian Navy went a different route.
Rear Admiral Leonard W. Murray believed that his sailors had proven themselves during the war and should be allowed to celebrate the end of six, very long years.
His senior officers advised him that he should limit sailors, but Murray wanted his men to enjoy themselves.
Murray told them they could go ashore to Halifax t but added they should be quote,
“Joyful without being destructive or distasteful.”
To say the sailors didn’t heed his advice would be an understatement.
The wet canteen on HMCS Stadacona, docked in Halifax Harbour, opened with a stock of 6,000 bottles of beer, enough to give nearly every sailor one bottle to celebrate with.
The Navy believed that was surely going to be enough.
It was not.
At 9 p.m., the bottles were gone, and the canteen was closed.
But last call did not mean the party was over.
It was just beginning, and the sailors looked towards Halifax as their next destination.
At 9:15 p.m., Lt. Commander R.W. Wood, Chief of the Navy Shore Patrol, looked out his window towards the Stadacona and saw sailors swarming a streetcar like ants.
They were punching out the windows and scaring Halifax residents inside the car.
Wood sent 30 of his officers to disperse the sailors, while he spoke to Warrant Officer John Barbour from City Hall.
He quickly discovered that the commotion in front of him was just a small part of what was going on.
Barbour told him,
“The police have given up. There are 4,000 people jamming the streets. They are ripping down flags and having a hell of a time.”
Meanwhile, the horde made up of 4,000 sailors and growing started to travel down Barrington Street in Downtown Halifax, causing mayhem along the way.
The city police were able to get all the street cars into their barns except for the one that the troops had surrounded.
There was little else the police, or the navy patrol, could do to stop the growing crowd in the downtown core.
A policy was in place that allowed crowds, which also prevented the arrest of any sailors for public drunkenness.
The policy was developed by Rear Admiral Leonard Murray because, according to a later testimony, he wanted to protect the Shore Patrol from civilians who might take offense to the rough treatment of sailors.
Murray said,
“Here is a man who helped win the war and you are going to arrest him for being a little tight on VE-Day.”
With police and navy patrol officers unable to do much more than watch, the street car was set on fire by the sailors.
When firemen arrived, the sailors slashed the hose to ribbons.
When the firefighters attached another hose, the sailors punched the firefighters, forcing them to flee.
And it was about to get much worse.
The problem with an unruly crowd is that as damage increases so does participation. It is called herd mentality.
If there is a large enough group, humans will tend to conform to their behaviour. If that group is sitting around singing folk songs, new arrivals will do the same.
If the group is black out drunk and causing mayhem on the street, people who would have never thought of doing the same will get caught up in it and join in.
This sort of situation has been covered many times on this show.
The Richard Riot, which I covered in early 2024, involved people who opposed the Rocket Richard suspension and smashed up downtown Montreal.
The Christie Pits Riot, which I covered in late-2022, saw 10,000 people take to the streets to cause mayhem after swastika was flown at a baseball game.
Anytime one of Canada’s NHL teams advances in the playoffs, there is always a growing worry of carnage and destruction from fans. Vancouver experienced this twice in 1994 and 2011 when thousands of people caused $4 million in damage.
In Edmonton, the Oilers went to the Stanley Cup Final in 2006. Even when the team won, people smashed windows, tipped cars, and tore down street signs to celebrate.
The idea of trashing my own city to celebrate the team I love isn’t logical to me, but if I was part of that crowd, maybe herd mentality would have taken over for me too.
Herd mentality was on full display during the riot on VE Day in 1945.
Rivers of people flowed into the initial group of 4000 to 5000 sailors, and the crowd swelled to 8,000 people. Sailors, citizens, even some Air Force and Army personnel were all swept up in the carnage.
And the long night was just beginning.
The rioters in downtown Halifax were an unrelenting wave of destruction, rolling over everything in their path and leaving nothing untouched.
If there was a flagpole in their path, they tore it down.
If they saw a window, they smashed it.
If there was a liquor store, they swarmed inside and took every bottle.
A young man, Donald Douglas, wrote a letter home after the riot, stating.
“The three liquor commissions were broken into and the entire contents released to the use of the people. Every store on Barrington Street, the main street, was almost demolished. There wasn’t a window left and the contents were either looted or thrown out in the street…there were shoes, boots, chesterfields, clothes, cash registers, pots, pans and nearly everything you could imagine on the street.”
When one liquor store was broken into, the security guard called police and when they arrived, the mob threw bricks and stones at them.
The police retreated, and the liquor store was liberated of every drop of beer, wine, and hard liquor.
The Halifax Herald wrote,
“The mob smashed the plate glass windows in the store, rushed in oblivious of the jagged glass edges and came out with many bottles of liquor…Amid cheers of onlookers, the mob members brandished the bottles in hilarious joy, some carrying three or four quarts in their arms.”
Some intrepid members of the mob deduced that if they could rob a liquor store, they could also pillage the source.
A portion of the crowd went to the Alexander Keith Brewery and overpowered the guards. A steady stream of people carrying boxes of beer out of the brewery began. Within a short time, the brewery was empty.
One police officer said the crowd was not drinking beer by the case, they were drinking whiskey by the case.
A fire was started at People’s Credit Jewelry Store. That fire spread next door to D’Allaird’s Women’s Wear Store, and then Fader’s Drug Store. All three buildings were destroyed.
At 11:30 p.m., a patrol wagon arrived, and 50 people seized it, tipped it on its side and lit it on fire as the officers inside barely escaped with their lives.
By midnight, the crowd downtown had swelled to 12,000 people.
Along Barrington Street, it was said there was so much broken glass it covered all the sidewalks and half the road on either side.
The Vancouver Sun wrote,
“It was the same everywhere, Halifax, by early evening an anything goes madhouse where Canadian sailors walked the street in their underwear under a giant V-for-Victory canopy of searchlight beams, became by midnight a bedlam of wrecked street cars, damaged patrol wagons and ransacked liquor stores.”
As May 7 became May 8, the rioting continued.
Destroying a downtown core burns a lot of calories, and the mob was hungry.
They turned their attention away from alcohol, they had plenty of that around now, and ransacked stores and shops of every morsel of food.
Lucy Van Gogh wrote,
“Halifax was full of men who had been doing their bit in the war, who had helped finish off the war, and who thought they were entitled to have a day’s celebration, complete with food, when it was announced that the war was finished. When they found they could not buy food, it occurred to them that they might as well take it, and they began to do so.”
As the sun slowly rose on Halifax, on the first day without a world war in six years, civilians found no peace.
The Montreal Gazette reported,
“Drunken rioters tore through downtown Halifax today and tonight looting, smashing and burning at least ten city blocks in the wildest orgy of victory celebrations reported from any city on the entire continent.”
In his diary, Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King called the riot in Halifax a disgraceful affair. King, who did not drink, put all the blame on alcohol.
Halifax was quiet, but the downtown looked as though a retreating army had come through and pillaged it on their way home with stolen items to sleep off a monster hangover.
One workman who started early on repairs said he counted 800 broken windows and had only just started work. Most store owners boarded up their windows while they waited for repairs.
The Halifax Herald wrote,
“The destruction is the worst visited on Halifax since the great explosion of 1917 when buildings were flattened, and thousands of windows smashed. No buildings were flattened in the victory riot but there is scarcely a window in the city’s main business section that has not been smashed.”
There was one building that was not damaged.
It was the barber shop of Jack Sutherland. Not a single window was broken. That was all thanks to Emma Mackay.
From the afternoon until the crowd went to bed, for 12 hours, she stood in front of the store where she convinced at least a dozen people not to break a window.
To keep some sailors out, she fabricated a story to appeal to their hearts.
She told them there was a dying girl in the back of the shop and asked the sailors to let her die in peace.
Despite being intoxicated, they agreed and moved on to smash up another store.
She said the next day,
“The store has been here for 56 years, and it wasn’t even broken in the Halifax Explosion of 1917. It was divine protection.”
Things may have been quiet that morning, but the riot was not over.
Those who had partied the night before were sleeping off their day of drinking.
But soon enough, they would arise to pick up right where they left off.
Rear Admiral Leonard Murray had an excellent sleep the night of the riot.
He was not awoken by his officers, and he likely had happy dreams about the end of the war.
As he sat down for his breakfast, he opened the newspaper and saw what his sailors had been up to the night before.
Vandalism.
Arson.
Violence.
And he knew he had to do something about it.
Did he gather his severely hungover sailors in a group and scream at them?
Did he yell at his officers for not waking him up so he could have stopped the carnage?
No.
He blamed the newspapers for inflating the scale of the riot and said any destruction was caused by civilians, not sailors.
He estimated, without evidence, that only 200 of his sailors were part of the crowd of 12,000 people who swept like a wave of orcs over the city.
Those 200 sailors, he added, were only involved because they were instigated by civilians.
Despite the violence of the night before, Halifax was still in the mood to celebrate the end of the war.
Around the city, VE Day Celebrations began, mostly low-key due to the events of the previous night.
City council and the RCMP held a meeting where they decided if there was a repeat of the night before, a curfew would be enacted.
The RCMP also ordered all available officers and personnel to be ready to go to the streets.
And then the sailors woke up.
The canteen of the Stadacona opened again, this time with a fresh stock of alcohol.
By 1 p.m., it was out.
With no more liquor on the ships, the sailors made their way ashore to continue the party from the night before.
Rear Admiral Murray took no steps at all to stop 9,500 sailors from partying in Halifax.
I’ve made a lot of dumb choices in my life. Spiking my hair and getting frosted tips when I was 22 comes to mind.
But that pales in comparison to Leonard Murray doing nothing to stop a repeat t of the night before.
He said,
“If the civilians are allowed downtown to celebrate, why not the Navy?”
And, again, carnage reigned supreme.
Anything that wasn’t nailed down was looted, including the mannequins from stores which sailors danced with in the streets.
Several sailors abandoned their uniforms completely and danced around completely naked.
Much like Ginger Spice decades later, one sailor wore only a Union Jack flag.
To protect the liquor stores and Alexander Keith’s Brewery, police cordoned off areas and stationed extra men to manage the crowd.
Amid all the mayhem and revelry, some sailors decided to make amends for the night before. Rather than get drunk for a second day, they assisted the shore patrol and police by holding back crowds at some liquor stores and department stores.
Fires broke out, started by partying men and women. Power lines were also cut, sending the city into darkness for over an hour.
At 7 p.m., Mayor Alan Butler issued his curfew.
He got into a sound truck with Rear Admiral Leonard Murray, who read the proclamation and ordered his sailors to return to their ships.
Mayor Butler ordered all citizens to return to their homes, or they would be leaving themselves open to the full extent of the law.
With a curfew in place, and a strong police presence now in the downtown core, the riot finally quieted down.
By 8 p.m., the streets were cleared, and Mayor Butler told the media that the halt to the rioting was successful, and any further disorders would be controlled.
After two days of drunken partying, the catalogue of destruction was staggering.
363 people were arrested.
654 businesses were damaged and 207 were looted.
In downtown Halifax, 2,624 sheets of glass had been smashed.
From liquor stores and breweries, the mob stole 61,500 litres of liquor, 8,000 cases of beer and 1,500 cases of wine.
A total of $5 million in damages occurred during the riot, amounting to $88 million today.
The Toronto Star reported that downtown Halifax looked like London after the blitz.
Dozens of people were also injured.
Donald Douglas, who was helping gather the wounded in the city, wrote in his letter home to his family that the first person he came across was knocked out with a face slashed to pieces by a broken bottle. He loaded that man, then three more on the same trip who were described as just as bad, on their way to the hospital.
He wrote,
“One had his arm cut at an artery and was nearly gone and if I had not stopped the bleeding then couldn’t have lasted much longer. I got one fellow who had had a broken bottle shoved in his back and twisted till it made a hole. Folks, there were things that I could hardly look at but had to.”
Douglas wrote that by the end of his shift, he had handled broken bones, cuts, gashes, concussions, and everything imaginable.
Among the injured were three dead men.
Vern Tucker collapsed while celebrating and died from alcohol poisoning.
Ernest Fitzgerald lost his life for the same reason.
Lt. Commander George Smith was found dead on the campus of Dalhousie College.
Foul play was suspected but no one was ever arrested.
Even with two days of carnage behind them, the Navy did what it could to limit the blame on sailors. Navy Minister Douglas Abbott stated,
“Many of the naval ratings who took part in these unfortunate disturbances are the same men who have earned the country’s gratitude for their courage and endurance in the long and arduous Atlantic campaign.”
Leonard Murray echoed this when he once again blamed the citizens of Halifax for encouraging the service personnel to riot.
The citizens blamed the soldiers, and the soldiers blamed the citizens. It would take the federal government to get to the bottom of who was truly at fault.
On May 9 at 5 p.m., Halifax City Council held an emergency meeting. A resolution was adopted that called for an investigation to find out who was responsible and to gain compensation from the federal government to the tune of $4.5 million.
The federal government quickly appointed E.L. Cousins, a part-time port administrator, to oversee a probe.
This was not greeted warmly by Halifax residents who wanted a royal commission into the matter. The Halifax Daily Star wrote,
“The people of Halifax have the highest regard for Mr. Cousins in his capacity as port administrator but in an affair of such magnitude as the outbreaks and disorders of the present week, the circumstances demand that at the very least a Justice of the Supreme Court be placed in full charge of investigations.”
Hearing the anger of Halifax residents, on May 10, the federal government ordered a royal commission to investigate what happened and it would be led by Supreme Court of Canada Justice Roy Kellock.
The riots were over, but the people of Halifax were not going to forget the carnage brought upon them by those who partied in the streets.
Katherine Stevens, who was a member of the Women’s Royal Navy Service, stated,
“I wouldn’t want to go through it again. After everything was over, we weren’t allowed into some of the restaurants.”
Mayor Butler added to this by stating,
“I speak the solemn protest of the citizens against the Royal Canadian Navy. It will be long before the people of Halifax forget that great crime.”
On May 12, Murray was removed from his command and replaced with Vice Admiral George Jones. This move angered Murray because he and Jones had been rivals since they were in the same class at the Royal Naval College of Canada in 1910.
On May 13, Rear Admiral V.G. Brodeur was appointed to investigate the naval participation in the riot for the Naval Board of Inquiry.
The Kellock Commission released its report first. Kellock put nearly all the blame for the riot on Murray and the navy. Murray was criticized for not exercising better control over the sailors and their celebrations in the city.
Justice Kellock wrote in his report,
“The disorders which actually occurred on May 7 and 8 owe their origin, in my opinion, to failure on the part of the Naval Command in Halifax to plan for their personnel…Once stated, the development and continuance of the disorders were due to the failure of the Naval Command to put down the initial disorders on each of the two days, May 7 and 8.”
Murray responded by stating that he was being unfairly blamed along with his officers when civilians were at fault.
He also criticized the fact he and his men were not given the opportunity to defend themselves to the commission.
Navy Minister Douglas Abbott defended his friend and stated he hoped that the excellent record of Rear Admiral Murray would not be lost because of the report.
Wanting to clear his name, Murray asked for a court martial trial, but this was denied. The Government of Canada instead issues a press release, stating,
“It would be a regrettable thing if, resultant upon the Halifax disturbances, the truly great services of this officer and those under his command were to be forgotten by the people of Canada.”—Canadian Government press release.”
Rear Admiral Brodeur released his own report soon after the Kellock Report. It also put the blame on naval command.
“The disorders of 7th and 8th May cannot be attributed to one cause but rather to a series of events which led a normal body of men, prepared to celebrate in an innocuous manner, to disorders of a serious nature. Once started, the development and continuance of the disorders were due to the failure of the naval command to put down the initial disorders on each of the two days.”
By September 1945, Murray was still waiting to get a new command, but this was not coming.
On Sept. 6, 1945, he received a letter from the government stating that due to recent developments, there was no suitable appointment for him to be employed in.”
Murray, a man who had helped defend Canada and the United Kingdom during the Battle of the Atlantic, saw this as a slap in the face.
Rather than challenge the decision, he chose to leave the Navy completely. He said,
“I thought it best to withdraw quietly. For the good of the service, I went into voluntary exile.”
By the end of the month, Murray had left Canada for England.
Halifax continued to pick up the pieces as summer turned to autumn.
The federal government announced it would provide $1 million in compensation to businesses that had suffered in the riot. Nearly 20 per cent of that amount went to the Nova Scotia Liquor Commission to cover their losses.
By Oct. 4, 12 of 16 men who had been given jail sentences for participation in the riot were released after a review of their sentences by the Justice Department. They were released by Justice Minister Louis St. Laurent, on the recommendation of John Diefenbaker for clemency. Both men would go on to serve as Prime Minister of Canada.
Those released were three members of the navy, two from the merchant navy, four from the army and three civilians. According to Minister St. Laurent, the offenses arising from the riots had been on a special basis. Not everyone was so lucky. One petty officer from Regina did receive five years in prison for stealing, while another from Saskatoon got three years.
That is the story of the Halifax Riot, a time when a lot of people partied hard, but what happened to the man who took most of the blame, Rear Admiral Leonard Murray?
The man who was blamed for the Halifax Riot settled initially in Sussex. In his retirement, he qualified as a lawyer and worked in maritime law.
He served on school boards, and various village councils as well.
His love of the sea never left him, and he became a member of the Bar Yacht Club where he was Racing Captain for a decade. He also helped lead the local Sea Scouts for years.
In 1960, he left law to care for his wife, who died two years later.
He remarried in 1963 to a surgeon named Antonina Schcheyteenin after meeting her on a Greek cruise.
As he aged, he spoke out against changes in the Canadian military, specifically the Unification of the Canadian Armed Forces in 1968.
Murray never forgave the government for his treatment after the Halifax Riot. Despite this, he did return home on occasion. His last visit was in 1970 when he unveiled a Battle of the Atlantic stained-glass window at the chapel at CFB Halifax.
That was the last time he saw his homeland.
He died peacefully in his sleep on Nov. 25, 1971. His ashes were placed at St. Paul’s Church in Halifax.
Back home in Canada, his death made the inside pages of newspapers. Only a few blurbs were devoted to his life story.
Since his death, Murray has become remembered more for his years of service to Canada and the Navy, rather than the riot.
The Canadian Naval Operations School building at CFB Halifax was named for him in 1985, and exhibits honour him at the Juno Beach Centre and Canadian War Museum. In 1977, he was designated as a National Historic Person.
And perhaps in the greatest honour of them all, a character was created for him in the online game World of Warships: Legends.
Well, maybe not the greatest honour…but still pretty cool.
Information comes from CBC, Canadian Encyclopedia, Wikipedia, Forprosterityssake.ca, the Canadian War Museum, Halifax.ca, Canadian Military Magazine, CTV News, MacLeans, Legion Magazine,
