Laura M. Mac Donald is a former television and film producer who began writing the Curse of the Narrows when she emigrated to New York City from Toronto in 2000. Unable to work because of immigration, Laura began researching the explosion that literally knocked half of her native city of Halifax off the map in 1917. After reading the extant literature on the explosion, she decided not to write about the explosion as most of it had already been documented. Two weeks later, she woke up on September 11, 2001 and watched in incredulity so many of the details that she had just read about were repeated in her adopted city.
“I was immediately struck by the similarities between the explosion and the terrorist attack. Walking out onto First Avenue in East Harlem, one of the noisiest neighborhoods in Manhattan, I found everyone silent. The parade of people from downtown streaming up First Avenue walking out of the city was also silent. Women who would be afraid to drive through my neighborhood were passing through Harlem without the least sign of distress other than heat and thirst. As the day progressed I began anticipating what would happen next and was surprised to see my guesses prove correct: People going from hospital to hospital in search of loved ones; the affected area being cordoned off; the warnings against profiteering; the importance of milk; the preservation of details around the site; abandoned pets; the use of the armories; the importance of accurate, flowing information; people traveling long distances to help. Over the following weeks I was impressed not so much by the politicians or the police chief but by the average people working in long shifts to restore order. Telephone wire crews were working constantly in Tribeca. Crane operators and dump truck drivers were everywhere.
I knew that I had an emotional commitment to the story that I did not have before but it was not enough to write a book detailing a catastrophe almost one hundred years old. A book must be bigger than that to capture the minds of smart readers. I did not want to write a ‘disaster book’ so I returned to researching the explosion and discovered that the same people who had produced the first handbook on the problems and solutions disasters pose for the American Red Cross were the same people who traveled to Halifax. When I found and read the book, I was astonished to realize that the same practices they put into place in 1917 were still being used in 2001. Then my father-in-law, Dr. David Murphy, a pediatric heart surgeon then told me the story of Dr. Williams E. Ladd, a surgeon who traveled to Halifax from Boston to assist with the medical relief, and whose work their helped him to build the first pediatric surgery ward in North America. For readers these are not the most exciting parts of the book but they were exciting for me because they took the explosion out of its hermetic history.
Ultimately what I learned on 911 and which was born out by my research, and which I hope I have conveyed in Curse of the Narrows, is that different people experience disasters and catastrophes (Halifax was a catastrophe; 911 was a disaster) in different ways. Some people see the experience as an opportunity (Dr. Cox and Dr. Ladd) to increase their knowledge; some people enjoy the hiatus from everyday life (Ginger Fraser), some took much longer than others to understand its meaning (Jean Lindsay) while others lives were irrevocably shattered (the Duggan family). And while their experiences are not all equally weighted, they are certainly all honest.”
“I was immediately struck by the similarities between the explosion and the terrorist attack. Walking out onto First Avenue in East Harlem, one of the noisiest neighborhoods in Manhattan, I found everyone silent. The parade of people from downtown streaming up First Avenue walking out of the city was also silent. Women who would be afraid to drive through my neighborhood were passing through Harlem without the least sign of distress other than heat and thirst. As the day progressed I began anticipating what would happen next and was surprised to see my guesses prove correct: People going from hospital to hospital in search of loved ones; the affected area being cordoned off; the warnings against profiteering; the importance of milk; the preservation of details around the site; abandoned pets; the use of the armories; the importance of accurate, flowing information; people traveling long distances to help. Over the following weeks I was impressed not so much by the politicians or the police chief but by the average people working in long shifts to restore order. Telephone wire crews were working constantly in Tribeca. Crane operators and dump truck drivers were everywhere.
I knew that I had an emotional commitment to the story that I did not have before but it was not enough to write a book detailing a catastrophe almost one hundred years old. A book must be bigger than that to capture the minds of smart readers. I did not want to write a ‘disaster book’ so I returned to researching the explosion and discovered that the same people who had produced the first handbook on the problems and solutions disasters pose for the American Red Cross were the same people who traveled to Halifax. When I found and read the book, I was astonished to realize that the same practices they put into place in 1917 were still being used in 2001. Then my father-in-law, Dr. David Murphy, a pediatric heart surgeon then told me the story of Dr. Williams E. Ladd, a surgeon who traveled to Halifax from Boston to assist with the medical relief, and whose work their helped him to build the first pediatric surgery ward in North America. For readers these are not the most exciting parts of the book but they were exciting for me because they took the explosion out of its hermetic history.
Ultimately what I learned on 911 and which was born out by my research, and which I hope I have conveyed in Curse of the Narrows, is that different people experience disasters and catastrophes (Halifax was a catastrophe; 911 was a disaster) in different ways. Some people see the experience as an opportunity (Dr. Cox and Dr. Ladd) to increase their knowledge; some people enjoy the hiatus from everyday life (Ginger Fraser), some took much longer than others to understand its meaning (Jean Lindsay) while others lives were irrevocably shattered (the Duggan family). And while their experiences are not all equally weighted, they are certainly all honest.”