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Shattered City: The Halifax Explosion is a two-part miniseries produced in 2003 by CBC Television. It presents a fictionalized version of the Halifax Explosion, a 1917 catastrophe that destroyed much of the city of Halifax. It was drected by Bruce Pittman and written by Keith Ross Leckie. The Film Stars Vincent Walsh, Tamara Hope, Clare Stone, Zachary Bennett, Shauna MacDonald and Ted Dykstra.
The series was expensive by Canadian television standards with a budget of $10.4 million. It was heavily promoted by the CBC and paired with a number of non-fiction documentaries. The broadcast drew a sizable Canadian audience of 1.5 million viewers. It drew some praise for the adept use of special effects to show the destruction of the explosion. However the miniseries was poorly received critically. One critic at the Globe and Mail described it as "execrably written and acted" while another strained to find positive elements, "At times, there is a plodding workmanlike quality to Shattered City." The large scale of the production guaranteed a number of Canadian television Gemini Award nominations in 2004 and the miniseries won awards for photography, special effects, costume and sound but was passd over for any direction or writing awards and won only a single supporting acting award for Ted Dykstra.
Serious concerns were raised over the depiction of history in the miniseries. Descendants of explosion victims and professional historians objected to the historical distortions and numerous liberties with historical truth. Significant deviations include:
Shattered City, an epic two-part mini-series, dramatizes a compelling piece of Canadian history. It is the story of how a tragic incident at the height of the First World War became a living metaphor for the worldwide conflict, and how Halifax arose from the ashes after severe destruction and devastation. In the early hours of December 6, 1917, the Mont Blanc, a French-owned freighter loaded to the gunnels with thousands of tons of TNT, collided with a Belgian relief ship and exploded in the Halifax Harbour. The explosion was so vast that it killed more than 2,000 people, injured 9,000 more and completely flattened two square kilometres of northern Halifax. Written by Anonymous


