Halifax Riot

The Halifax VE-Day riots, 7–8 May 1945 in Halifax and Dartmouth, Nova Scotia began as a celebration of the World War II Victory in Europe. This rapidly evolved into a rampage by several thousand servicemen, merchant seamen and civilians, who looted the City of Halifax. Although a subsequent Royal Commission chaired by Justice Roy Kellock blamed lax naval authority and specifically Rear-Admiral Leonard W. Murray, it is generally accepted that the underlying causes were a combination of 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.

Tensions had been building for six years as war transformed Halifax from a small and conservative maritime city into what a British admiral called the "most important port in the world," the Canadian Headquarters of the Battle of the Atlantic and the western terminus for the vital North Atlantic convoys to England. By 1945, Halifax had become a bustling, overcrowded, underserviced port city.

During the war, Halifax's population doubled; its facilities did not. Landlords charged top rents for what amounted to closets. Merchants would take one look at a man in uniform and jack up their prices. There were huge lineups to get into the city's few restaurants, several-hour waits outside movie theatres. There was no legal place anyone could go to buy a drink, but there were dozens of illegal ones. For their part, locals claimed there was never anything for them to buy on store shelves anymore because ungrateful come-from-aways had bought it all, or the military had commandeered it to supply a departing convoy. Though there were honourable landlords, friendly merchants and plenty of locals eager to make the visitors welcome, there were also rumblings from early on in the war that Halifax ("Slackers," as the sailors called it) would get "what was coming" when the war finally ended. Fear, in fact, dominated planning for the celebration of the Allied victory. Organizers decided that on VE Day tram service would stop for the day, to discourage sailors from going downtown. Liquor commission outlets, restaurants, retailers and movie theatres all decided to shut and shutter their premises, ostensibly to prevent trouble.

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