Poet Duncan M. Matheson lived in troubled times. These were times of World War I and its accompanying carnage, privation and pervasive adversity. Then to add to this there was the explosion - the December 1917 Halifax explosion - the Canadian maritime disaster that would leave in its wake nearly 2,000 dead and 9,000 injured. Matheson was the principal of Alexander McKay School in Halifax at the time of the explosion and would witness the resultant death of fifty of his school's students. <br />But despite this backdrop of horror, Matheson - the skilled and observant poet, the man who not only was responsible as principal for the edification of young minds, but who, as a poet, assumed the added burden of explicating life's events through his writing - shone as a bastion of hope and courage in a seemingly crumbling world. <br />This man, this principal, this scholar, this gifted poet could in his writing transcend the horror of everyday events and speak of the beauty, splendor and potent
