LEWIS COOPER was serving as a Private with the 5th Canadian Mounted Rifles, Quebec Division when he was killed in the devastating explosion in Halifax, Nova Scotia on 6th December 1917. He was aged 28 and his body was never recovered.

He was the son of James and Elizabeth Cooper of Churchill, and brother of Percy Cooper, below, and before the war had worked as a farm labourer. On 14th March 1913 he embarked on the"Virginian" at Liverpool, bound for Halifax, Canada.before emigrating to Canada.  He enlisted into the Canadian Army on 30th August 1915 in Sussex, New Brunswick.The Halifax Explosion occurred in Halifax, Nova Scotia in Canada on the morning of 6th December  1917. The SS Mont-Blanc, a French freighter fully loaded with wartime explosives, was involved in a collision with the Norwegian vessel SS Imo. Approximately twenty minutes later, a fire on board the French ship ignited her explosive cargo, causing a cataclysmic explosion that devastated the Richmond District of Halifax. Approximately 2,000 people were killed by debris, fires, and collapsed buildings, and it is estimated that nearly 9,000 others were injured. The blast was the largest man-made explosion prior to the development of nuclear weapons. 

Steve Kingsford