LOSS, LARCENY & LEGACY
Saskatchewan’s ties to the Titanic
Landlocked Saskatchewan is far removed from the icy Atlantic that’s become Titanic’s graveyard, but it still has plenty of ties to the disaster — from five people who went down with the ship to a shyster who tried to capitalize on the tragedy.
Immigrants coming to Saskatchewan for a new life, others returning to their adopted home after a visit abroad, and an intriguing tale about Regina newlyweds who may have missed the boat, only to perish three months later in the Regina Cyclone, are some of the enduring stories of this province’s link to the century-old catastrophe.
“Titanic Struck Iceberg” proclaimed the April 15, 1912 Regina Morning Leader.
The story filled the front page for a week, and as the scope of the nightmare unfolded, the city’s then-mayor James Mcara asked citizens to put their flags at half mast.
“The shadows of death and suffering lies heavily,” he said.
Moose Jaw Mayor Alfred Maybery chaired the regularly scheduled meeting of city council on April 15, 1912, no doubt taking some comfort in the fact headlines in the day’s Moose Jaw Evening Times read: “Passengers on Titanic Being Safely Transferred to Lifeboat.”
The mayor’s 36-year-old brother Frank Maybery, planning to return to Moose Jaw after bringing his wife and two daughters to England, was on board.
Alfred, Frank and another brother Arnold operated a real estate business in the growing community.
“Vessel is sinking, Efforts being made to beach her, No cause for alarm, Ready help from other lines forthcoming,” cried the secondary headlines.
The tragic truth dominated those same headlines two days later.
Some of those read: “No News of Mr. F.H. Maybery” and “Who sent the false messages,” referring to 16 hours of wireless messages that reported all the passengers were saved.
Second-class passenger Frank Mayberry was, in fact, never found. The community would gather to pay tribute to his memory, with the minister calling Maybery “a man of quiet, strong and unobtrusive optimism.”
At the same time, some residents in Moose Jaw and area were mourning the loss of Maybery’s travelling companion Rev. Charles Kirkland, coming to Saskatchewan to visit his sister in Tuxford. The Moose Jaw paper reported that the evangelist preacher had been a frequent visitor to the city and area, having just spent three months in Tuxford the summer before.
In third class, passengers Lewis, 22, and Owen Braund, 29, brothers from England who were heading to the Qu’appelle Valley to find work as farm labourers perished. Working in the Saskatoon area, their brother Jim had come home to get his brothers, but had passage on a different ship, according to encyclopedia-titanica.org.
Also in third class, Leo Zimmerman, a German farmer reportedly heading to the Saskatoon area was lost.
Those are the doomed passengers with clear ties to Saskatchewan, but the newspapers show many families in a province filled with new immigrants were eagerly awaiting word on the fate of friends and relatives. The Moose Jaw newspaper was “besieged” with inquiries.
It’s possible some of those news reports were fed by L. Mckenna Robinson, who was then a Halifax Herald reporter covering the arrival of the bodies, but later became a prominent Regina lawyer.
Two people who were clearly not among the passengers are Regina couple Frank and Bertha Blenkhorn — but the lists reflect those who got on the ocean liner. A 1911 city directory shows Frank Blenkhorn was then an advertising agent with the Regina Standard newspaper. Several local historians have reported the pair, from Lancashire, were in England for their wedding or possibly on a honeymoon trip, and were late getting on board the Titanic. By 1912, Blenkhorn had gone into partnership with John Boyes in a real estate company.
Blenkhorn, 35, and his wife, 30, were walking home through Victoria Park on June 30, 1912 when they were swept up by the Regina Cyclone, tossed against the library building on Lorne Street, and crushed when the wall of the nearby church manse collapsed. According to Regina author Sandra Bingaman, who recently published Storm of the Century about the tornado, the Regina Standard reported after their deaths that Blenkhorn had told co-workers he had booked passage on Titanic but never made it aboard.
One of the more bizarre links between the sinking of the Titanic and this province hit the news a year afterwards. The Morning Leader tells the story of the arrest of D.A. Williams. The Chicago man had come to Chamberlain to deliver a lecture on the Titanic disaster.
“Williams claims to be a survivor of Titanic and carried with him several papers establishing his claim. All inquiries at the White Star Line offices have revealed the fact that Williams was not a passenger on the ill-fated vessel,” the paper reported, noting he faced larceny charges in Chicago. It added that he would cover himself in a religious cloak and “won his way to the hearts of his victims,” getting away with “several snug amounts.”
If there can be any doubt that the disaster had a lasting legacy, regardless of the distance, a former rural post office in the Duck Lake area of Saskatchewan was named Titanic. According to Bill Barry’s book on Saskatchewan place names, several Canadian communities applied to change their post office’s name to commemorate the downed ship, but the Saskatchewan application reached Ottawa first.