At this time of year, Christmas trees are lighted in public squares in many cities of the world. In Boston, Massachusetts, the fifty-foot Douglas fir (with sixteen thousand lights on it) that goes up at the Prudential Center in the Back Bay, regularly comes as a gift from the people of Nova Scotia. It renews their gratitude for the generous help rendered by the people of Boston to the people of Halifax in December 1917, when Halifax was devastated by an explosion and fire that resulted from the collision of two steamers, the Mont Blanc and the Imo.
The First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston was one of many organizations and individuals that responded. Immediately, The Christian Science Board of Directors appointed a relief committee of five church members, who organized a special train to run from Bangor, Maine, to Halifax with warm clothing and provisions. Among the passengers were doctors, nurses, newspaper reporters, and anxious relatives of Halifax people.
The train left in a snowstorm, but, as one committee member reported, the people on board set out with uplifted thought, to go "not to a city of disaster, but to a city whose 'builder and maker is God,' See Heb. 11:10. a city of harmony, in the ever-present kingdom of heaven." Christian Science War Time Activities (Boston: The Christian Science Publishing Society, 1922), p. 61.
