Jesse Redgrave

“Although I haven’t lived here for a while, I have a lot of history in Dartmouth. My grandmother lives here, and my great grandmother used to live here too, close to where we are right now. My great grandmother was actually travelling from Dartmouth on the ferry during the Halifax Explosion. They used to have two tiers to the ferry — women were meant to be on the bottom, and men at the top. She was a little bit of a rebel, so she was on the top. When the Halifax Explosion went off, everyone on the bottom died because they didn’t have safety glass, and my great grandmother survived because she was on the top. She was blown into the water, and picked up as a survivor, which is pretty cool. She even volunteered to help out victims after the explosion. She lived the rest of her life in Dartmouth, on Victoria Ave. I always called her GG [for great grandmother], but her name was Dorothy Chisholm. She was quite the lady. She was very tough — she wasn’t going to be relegated to the bottom.”