On the night of April 14 - 15, 1912, the "unsinkable" RMS Titanic struck an iceberg and sank in two hours and forty minutes. She claimed 1,506 lives. And almost 115 years later, she lives on, fuelled by stories of weakened hulls, coal fires, brittle rivets, poor seamanship, and renegade submersible designers.
But woven through the disaster are Canadians. Samuel Cunard, for whom the Titanic was built to complete. Lord William Pirrie, the Chairman of Harland & Wolff, who connived the sale of White Star Line to J.P Morgan. Charles Melville Hays, railway president and visionary of Ottawa's Château Laurier. Harry Molson, heir to the brewing dynasty. Major Arthur Peuchen, the Toronto yachtsman, and Manitoba-born Albert Dick shunned for their survival. And when the sea surrendered its dead, it was Halifax's cable ships CS Mackay-Bennett Minia, LS Montmagny, and Newfoundland's SS Algerine that sailed into the wreck field?recovering 306 bodies and bringing them home to Nova Scotia graves.
From first-class salons to the freezing, starlit sea: Titanic's Canadian connection?and the theories that refuse to let her rest.
