A century after its sinking the Titanic haunts this Canadian port where some 150 victims are buried, but has helped spur a tourist boom as it commemorates the sombre anniversary.
The Titanic is everywhere in Halifax. The flags of the ship’s owner, the now defunct White Star Line, are draped across the city’s streets on the 100th anniversary of one of the worst nautical disasters in history.
Models and photos of the ship adorn store windows, as artists, historians, researchers, local authorities and naval museums commemorate the sinking.
“Our goal is to help Nova Scotians and visitors make a connection with Halifax’s very historic role” in the days following the disaster, said Kyla Friel, spokeswoman for the Nova Scotia culture ministry, which is helping to coordinate events.
The Titanic, billed as the world’s most luxurious passenger linerand reputedly unsinkable, left Southampton, southern England, for New York City on its maiden voyage across the Atlantic on April 10, 1912.
Four days into the voyage it struck an iceberg and sank 604 kilometres off Newfoundland with the loss of 1,514 of the 2,224 people on board.
Survivors were picked up by the liner Carpathia and taken to New York, while four Canadian ships dispatched from Halifax with embalming supplies, undertakers, and clergy recovered 328 bodies.
The port itself went into mourning for the loss of one of its favourite sons, George Wright, a millionaire philanthropist who perished with the Titanic, said Garry Shutlak of the Nova Scotia Archives.
Rescue ships recovered numerous objects from the Titanic,including deckchairs. Purchased by the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic in Halifax, these form part of the largest collection of Titanic memorabilia in the world.
Visitors to the permanent exhibition are invited to sit in the chairs and “imagine what it would have been like to relax aboard the most luxurious vessel in its time.”
Other events include a “musical memoir” by Rosalee Peppard who portrays the only Nova Scotian to have survived the disaster.
And there are performances of a play by Anthony Sherwood about “the only black on the Titanic,” Haitian engineer Joseph Laroche, denouncing the racism of the era.
Shutlak says it is difficult to calculate the huge impact the ship has had on tourism in the Canadian province. But it is certainly on the minds of every passenger of the 120 cruise ships that dock here each year.