Tomorrow is 100th anniversary of the Halifax Explosion. My great-grandfather was a survivor of the explosion. I know I've told this story before but I'm gonna tell it one more time because 100th anniversary.

My great-grandfather's name was William Cave and he grew up in Halifax's North End. He was 14 when the explosion happened. It was his first day of work.

He'd just been through a rough few years - his mother, two sisters (one of whom I'm named after - Annie Florence) and grandmother had all died of TB. It was just him and his father left.

On the day of the explosion he was starting work at a newspaper plant. He was supposed to start at 9 but was running late, which turned out to be super lucky.

At 9:04 am when the explosion happened he was out in the street. Like I said, this was super lucky, because both his home and the plant where he was going to work were destroyed.

He didn't know for two days after the explosion whether his father was alive or dead. I can't even imagine being 14 & losing your home & not knowing whether you have any living family left.

He lost an aunt and uncle in the explosion. Everyone from the north end who survived lost someone. He was fortunate to have made it out alive.

His father also survived. And somehow managed to save the two dolls that had belonged to his two daughters. He later gave them to my great-grandfather's first two daughters.

This is my great-grandfather with my great-grandmother on their 65th wedding anniversary. I was 9 when he died.

He was obviously deeply traumatized by the explosion and his childhood in general, but somehow those two things made him appreciate life even more (SORRY, I KNOW THAT SOUNDS LIKE A GREETING CARD)

I remember him being one of the kindest, funniest, happiest people I ever met. Even if he couldn't keep all of us great-grandkids straight (he had ten kids and ... many more grandkids and great-grandkids)

Sometimes I think he had such a big family to replace the family he lost. Which seems to have worked out ok for him because he loved having so many kids around.

One of my favourite stories about him is that he would come home every day from working on the docks and change out of his overalls into a suit. Because he thought that was what gentlemen did.

Anyway! Tomorrow being the anniversary that it is, I wanted to take some time to remember my Grampy Cave and think about the challenges and rewards for surviving.

2,000 people died during the Halifax Explosion. 9,000 were injured. An entire Mi'kmaq community was wiped out by the ensuing tidal wave.

It remains the largest man-made explosion other than the atomic bombs dropped on Japan in WWII. In fact, those were measured against the Halifax Explosion. Hiroshima was said to be 7 times the force of the Halifax Explosion.

Boston was the first city to send aid to Halifax after the explosion, because the rail lines had been destroyed but travel by sea was still easy enough.

Boston sent doctors, nurses, glaziers (because all the windows had been blown out) and all other kinds of help. This is why Nova Scotia sends a Christmas tree to Boston every year.

This is why Halifax and Boston are sister cities <3

If you want to hear something nice after all of that, let me tell you about how my great-grandfather and great-grandmother met! She was 18 and he was 20.

He was working on some kind of construction on Victoria General Hospital in Halifax and she was a scullery maid. He would see her through the window every day.

She had just fled a very difficult family situation in Cape Breton and was living in Halifax and spoke almost no English. My great-grandfather spoke no French.

Somehow, though, they got to know each other (we used to tease him and ask how they'd spoken and he'd say "we had other ways of talking!")

My grandmother has a valentine that he sent her in which he called her the most beautiful lassie in the world.