VE-Day Riots

ARTICLE CONTENTS:  |  Suggested Reading  |  Links to Other Sites
VE-Day Riots, 7-8 May 1945 in Halifax and Dartmouth, NS, began as a poorly co-ordinated celebration of the WORLD WAR II Victory in Europe. This rapidly declined into a rampage by several thousand servicemen (predominantly naval), merchant seamen and civilians, who drank, smashed and looted their way through downtown Halifax. Dartmouth suffered on a smaller scale. Although a subsequent federal inquiry expediently blamed lax naval authority, the true causes lay in bureaucratic confusion, insufficient policing and antipathy between the military and civilians, fueled by the presence of 25 000 servicemen who had strained Halifax wartime resources to the limit.

Author LOIS KERNAGHAN


Suggested Reading
S.R. Redman, Open Gangway: The (Real) Story of the Halifax Navy Riot (1981).


Links to Other Sites
The Memory Project: HMCS Cornwallis
Listen to an interview with Canadian veteran Eileen Cole about her wartime military service at HMCS Cornwallis in the Annapolis Valley, Nova Scotia. Also check out related digitized artefacts and memorabilia. From the Historica-Dominion Institute.

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