Barometer Rising

Hugh MacLennan

4 ideas

1. Neil Macrae's return before the explosion

   In December 1917 Neil Macrae comes back to Halifax under an assumed identity. He has been officially disgraced after his uncle, Colonel Geoffrey Wain, blamed him for a failed attack in France, and he is trying to clear his name while Wain's daughter Penny, whom he loves, believes him dead. On the morning of December 6 the munitions ship Mont-Blanc collides with the Imo in the Narrows and explodes, levelling much of the city, and the private dramas are overtaken by mass death and rescue work.

2. Catastrophe replaces rank with demonstrated competence

   When the explosion destroys the city's normal order, formal authority stops mattering and people follow whoever can actually organize rescue and triage. Neil, a man officially disgraced, earns authority through visible usefulness in the ruins, while the old establishment's claim to command depended on the social structure the disaster erased.

3. A colonial city outgrowing imperial deference

   The novel reads Halifax, and Canada, as a society still taking its values and hierarchies from Britain while its younger people are becoming something distinctly North American. Colonel Wain embodies the old colonial deference to rank and Empire. The explosion that ends his order works as a violent birth of national self-reliance, with Canada seen as a hinge between Britain and the United States rather than an appendage of either.

4. Rising pressure before a sudden release

   As the title suggests, the novel builds tension the way a barometer measures pressure. Over a few days, private secrets, wartime strain and personal grievances accumulate in a confined city until an outside shock releases them all at once. The disaster does not resolve conflicts by justice. It resolves them arbitrarily, by removing some people and exposing others, so the outcome depends on the catastrophe rather than on anyone's merit or scheming.

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