Halifax parade a sombre affair
“I also grew up feeling very sad about it, until recently when I discovered that he was a hero. He stayed below, kept the lights going and maybe saved some lives. It’s changed my whole feeling about him from what I knew when I was a kid.”
Ervine was one of thousands, of all ages, who gathered Saturday on the Halifax waterfront, to walk in a public parade from the city’s harbour to a large downtown square for the Night of the Bells, an outdoor commemoration of the tragedy, where actor Gordon Pinsent narrated the ill-fated ship’s story.
The event concluded at 12:27 a.m. Sunday with the ringing of church bells and the firing of emergency flares at precisely the moment, a century ago, when the last SOS wireless signals from the Titanic were heard.
Halifax played an important role in the aftermath of the disaster, as the base of operations for the recovery of victims from the sea. More than 200 bodies were brought back to Halifax and 150 of those now lie in cemeteries here.
Saturday night’s parade was a sombre affair, led by a horse-drawn funeral wagon with a simple wooden casket on the back. It wound past the building that once housed the funeral home where many Titanic victims were embalmed and also past St. Paul’s Church, where the city held its first services to mourn the dead, among them one of Halifax’s own prominent citizens.
People came not just from Halifax but from across Canada and around the world to take part in the anniversary ceremonies.
“I wanted to experience all this, not just read about the story of Titanic in a book,” said Lori-anne Beckford, a federal civil servant and self-described Titanic fan from Newmarket.
Halifax played an important role in the aftermath of the disaster as the operations base for recovery of victims
“My mother first told me the story when I was little, and I was always fascinated by it,” said Beckford, on her first visit to Halifax.
She and other pilgrims couldn’t help but notice that the weather was as clear and the sea as calm as it had been on April 14, 1912, when the ship struck the fatal iceberg.
This weekend, two anniversary cruise ships — one from New York and one from England — were to arrive at the spot out in the North Atlantic where Titanic went down.
“I looked a couple of months ago into doing the cruise from New York,” said Beckford. “But that was a little too expensive. So last week I decided to book a flight and just come here for the anniversary. It’s definitely been worth it. “It’s amazing to see the turnout tonight,” she said. “It gives me hope that we’ll remember the lessons learned from the Titanic, that nothing is unsinkable, and that we as a society should never be too arrogant and or complacent about our power.” Connor and Pauline O’daly, a retired couple from London, England, were on a spring vacation tour of Canada when they learned that Halifax was hosting Titanic ceremonies. Connor knew right away he needed to be here this weekend. “My parents emigrated from Ireland to New York about 100 years ago,” he said. “They had tickets booked on Titanic but, for whatever reason, they were unable to make the ship so they took another instead. “Just as well,” Connor said, as he watched the military band marching past, behind the horse-drawn hearse. “If my parents had sailed on Titanic, I might not be here right now.”